Well simply its just another the PC has to access. It seems so impractical really. No matter what having the cache built into a CPU was always the better route. Im sure others can talk more about all this.

I had two Pentiums with a burst cache module. Never had a problem. Perhaps some boards and/or modules had lousy quality connectors. But mine didn't suffer any problems. It's very similar to a PCI slot, just a tiny edge connector. It's used for tons of hardware, and generally not very troublesome.

I have a 256K COAST module installed in my Pentium i200. I've recently recorded footage comparing the performance differences between no L2 cache, 256K, and 512K. I've yet to edit the footage, but my results suggest that adding more L2 cache on a stick does slightly improve the performance. For example, playing a 256Kbps MP3 file with no L2 cache uses about 50% of the CPU, about 40% for 256K, and about 35% for 512K. Perhaps the performance could be better using 512K of old-fashioned L2 cache, but I don't know because I never tried that.

One obnoxious problem I have with COAST is inserting and removing the cache module. Pushing in the module is so hard to do because the connectors are excessively tight, and I'm worried I'll bend the motherboard too much. It doesn't help that there weren't many usable mounting holes on my board! Pulling the module back out is equally terrible. I'm guessing the connection is so vice tight because there's nothing extra to hold the chip in place, like plastic tabs seen in DIMM slots. It might vary between motherboards; I used an MS-5128.

Socket 5 & 7 Motherboard VGA Benchmark comparison

Alot of Pentium boards benched with several types of cache. Please note that the benches focuses on DOS gaming.

Orkay wrote:

I have a 256K COAST module installed in my Pentium i200. I've recently recorded footage comparing the performance differences between no L2 cache, 256K, and 512K. I've yet to edit the footage, but my results suggest that adding more L2 cache on a stick does slightly improve the performance. For example, playing a 256Kbps MP3 file with no L2 cache uses about 50% of the CPU, about 40% for 256K, and about 35% for 512K. Perhaps the performance could be better using 512K of old-fashioned L2 cache, but I don't know because I never tried that.

One obnoxious problem I have with COAST is inserting and removing the cache module. Pushing in the module is so hard to do because the connectors are excessively tight, and I'm worried I'll bend the motherboard too much. It doesn't help that there weren't many usable mounting holes on my board! Pulling the module back out is equally terrible. I'm guessing the connection is so vice tight because there's nothing extra to hold the chip in place, like plastic tabs seen in DIMM slots. It might vary between motherboards; I used an MS-5128.

WOW, 50% of a cacheless Pentium 200 is used up playing a single 256kb mp3!!?? I had no idea these computers were so underpowered they can't even play a simple audio file efficiently... Hehe. Did WAV files take any less cpu power?

computergeek92 wrote:

WOW, 50% of a cacheless Pentium 200 is used up playing a single 256kb mp3!!?? I had no idea these computers were so underpowered they can't even play a simple audio file efficiently... Hehe. Did WAV files take any less cpu power?

Well, at least it played through the whole song uninterrupted and in full quality! Keep in mind that MP3 files were only starting to become popular in 1997. On top of that, 256Kbps is a high bitrate for an MP3 file.

I did play back the original WAV file just now, and the CPU usage was around 25% to 30% without the external cache. Perhaps I should've taken the CPU usage from background processes into account (possibly IE 5.5 garbage and IntelliPoint) when I gave my results, but then again, real world Windows usage would've probably been more clogged than what I reported. As for WAV playback with 512KB of external cache, the CPU usage is around 15%.

My sound card is a Sound Blaster AWE64, in case that factors into anything.

computergeek92 wrote:

WOW, 50% of a cacheless Pentium 200 is used up playing a single 256kb mp3!!?? I had no idea these computers were so underpowered they can't even play a simple audio file efficiently... Hehe. Did WAV files take any less cpu power?

Depends on the player you use as well.
On my P133, I could play a 128 kbit mp3 with about 20-30% CPU using WinAMP.
If I used Sonique however, it would take 50-60%.
However, Sonique sounded notably better, because it had higher internal precision.

Typically a P75 is sufficient to play a 128 kBit/s MP3. Also on the old machines Winamp was the player of choice as Scali mentioned already.
Cubic Player plays MP3s as well (I think it's based on the MaPlay code?!?) and a newer player is MPXPlay of course.
I am not sure how the current version of XMPlay compares in CPU usage against Winamp (2.95).

Scali wrote:

Depends on the player you use as well. On my P133, I could play a 128 kbit mp3 with about 20-30% CPU using WinAMP. If I used Son […]
Show full quote

computergeek92 wrote:

WOW, 50% of a cacheless Pentium 200 is used up playing a single 256kb mp3!!?? I had no idea these computers were so underpowered they can't even play a simple audio file efficiently... Hehe. Did WAV files take any less cpu power?

Depends on the player you use as well.
On my P133, I could play a 128 kbit mp3 with about 20-30% CPU using WinAMP.
If I used Sonique however, it would take 50-60%.
However, Sonique sounded notably better, because it had higher internal precision.

In the W95 era I used a little-known audio player called Kjofol for my mp3 needs. I don't recall numbers, but it was giving me the lowest CPU usage of several players I tested on my P75 laptop (Thinkpad 755CX). It was also the first program I used that had a non-rectangular window and at the time the concept blew my mind. 😀

stamasd wrote:

In the W95 era I used a little-known audio player called Kjofol for my mp3 needs.

Yes, I also used that for a while.

I feel remarkably pedestrian in admitting I used Winamp like any other casual on my 95 machine. Of course, at this point I still didn't have MP3s -- I was using it to play audio CDs. This was in, like, 2002 -- I was using a hand-me-down system.

I commited a sin back in win95, I used realplayer for MP3's

elianda wrote:

Typically a P75 is sufficient to play a 128 kBit/s MP3.

Typically we started collecting and playing 128kbps MP3s on 486 DX2/4s and Winamp, but we weren't doing anything else at the same time, not even moving the mouse 🤣 You would move the mouse to prevent the screensaver for appearing and you had a good chance of interrupting playback, depending on what it'd hover

candle_86 wrote:

I commited a sin back in win95, I used realplayer for MP3's

Is self flagellation a sin?

gdjacobs wrote:

Is self flagellation a sin?

only if you enjoy it :>

computergeek92 wrote:

WOW, 50% of a cacheless Pentium 200 is used up playing a single 256kb mp3!!?? I had no idea these computers were so underpowered they can't even play a simple audio file efficiently... Hehe. Did WAV files take any less cpu power?

There was a time when playing back MP3 was a very demanding and CPU intensive activity. It took 2-3x the time to create the MP3, and it takes a lot of CPU to play it back. I remember playing an MP3 on a DX2-66 with a DOS-based player as well as WinPlay3 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinPlay3). I downloaded a 2-3 MB MP3 file from usenet and was surprised at the sound quality - and that it was the full song! Oh, yes, it took a while to download that file on 14.4k. 😀

GuyTechie wrote on 2016-09-20, 22:37:

computergeek92 wrote:

WOW, 50% of a cacheless Pentium 200 is used up playing a single 256kb mp3!!?? I had no idea these computers were so underpowered they can't even play a simple audio file efficiently... Hehe. Did WAV files take any less cpu power?

There was a time when playing back MP3 was a very demanding and CPU intensive activity. It took 2-3x the time to create the MP3, and it takes a lot of CPU to play it back. I remember playing an MP3 on a DX2-66 with a DOS-based player as well as WinPlay3 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinPlay3). I downloaded a 2-3 MB MP3 file from usenet and was surprised at the sound quality - and that it was the full song! Oh, yes, it took a while to download that file on 14.4k. 😀

The good old days. How many nights spent on Napster downloading mp3's on a 14.4kbps connection... Not much else you could have done on a DX4-100 while listening to mp3's (Win95), it was that CPU intensive..