VOGONS


First post, by Gahhhrrrlic

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What began as a suspicion that my graphics card sucked has slowly morphed into a suspicion that my machine is generally running slower than it should. Here's a brief summary:

Shuttle HOT-557 board with 256kb integrated cache (just got a COAST module but it didn't work for some reason)
Pentium 120 (Overclocked to 133 via FSB from 60 to 66, 2x mult)
64MB SD-RAM PC66 CL2
ATI 3D Rage II 2MB EDO
SB16 ISA
NIC PCI
Modem ISA
IN-2000 SCSI Card ISA

- ALL games that support DX5 that I have tried are horrendously slow, no matter what their min specs are or how old or primitive they are
-Tomb Raider 2, F-22 Raptor, Mech Warrior 2, Wipeout, Descent Freespace Great War (all lowest settings)
-In all cases, performance seems unusually INSENSITIVE to resolution (ie. twice the resolution is only maybe 30% slower)
- Youtube confirms games like wipeout and Mech2 should be playable at low settings on a Rage 1 let alone a Rage 2
- I installed every version of DX in order from 5 through 8 and tested the same game each time - Very marginal bumps in speed of maybe 1%
- I tried multiple ATI drivers and got largely the same performance from all of them except the really early ones that had glitches.
- Sysinfo and Freespace launcher report the memory transfer of the graphics card to be 30 MB/sec
- Sysinfo shows the DRAM at 130 MB/sec
- Sysinfo shows the CPU operating at 63, which is short of what the reference tick for a P133 shows (100?)

I don't really understand what's going on but while I initially thought the graphics card sucked or was broken, I now think the entire system is running slow for some reason. The DRAM timings are maxed out and stable. There are no issues with the clock misreporting the speed - it is indeed 133. Cache is working. I am at a loss guys. I don't get why the computer is acting like a 486.

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Reply 1 of 56, by cyclone3d

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What about that ISA SCSI card? That thing is going to saturate the ISA bus when the drive(s) are reading or writing.

The built in IDE is going to be way faster than SCSI could ever be over the ISA bus.

Are you sure the cache is properly working on the CPU and the motherboard?

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Reply 2 of 56, by Gahhhrrrlic

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cyclone3d wrote:

What about that ISA SCSI card? That thing is going to saturate the ISA bus when the drive(s) are reading or writing.

The built in IDE is going to be way faster than SCSI could ever be over the ISA bus.

Are you sure the cache is properly working on the CPU and the motherboard?

On the one hand, the SCSI will increase ISA bandwidth usage but on the other hand, not having it would increase CPU usage and in the current situation, I have to ask how the ISA would end up affecting CPU, memory and graphics performance? Especially in games, the game content is loaded into memory and then after that, there's no more disk access until new content is needed so that should manifest itself as periodic stalls in framerate but instead the framerates are just low all the time.

I'm not 100% certain the cache is working, except that it is reporting as being present. I could turn it off from the BIOS and run a back-to-back bench to check that.

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Reply 3 of 56, by Ozzuneoj

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I would definitely try without the ISA SCSI card, and with the CPU at stock clocks. An SCSI storage interface would be several generations older than a Pentium 120 (let alone 133). PCI and VLB had been around for years because ISA was a bottleneck.

I'd also remove any unneeded cards\devices temporarily for testing.

Try running a program to test the CPU cache too.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 4 of 56, by Gahhhrrrlic

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OK. Good thing I talked to you both because I would not have thought that to be a problem. Testing the cache should be easy. Not sure the best way to test without the scsi. The hard drive is scsi so I'd have to have either another scsi card or use a different hard drive, both of which are at least temporarily not possible. Maybe I can use a floppy utility like 3dbench to test with/without, without having to use a hard drive at all?

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Reply 5 of 56, by yawetaG

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Ozzuneoj wrote:

I would definitely try without the ISA SCSI card, and with the CPU at stock clocks. An SCSI storage interface would be several generations older than a Pentium 120 (let alone 133). PCI and VLB had been around for years because ISA was a bottleneck.

Can't say I ever had performance issues as described in the OP when using both IDE and a ISA SCSI-2 card on my 486 systems back in the day (but then the card I used was a Adaptec card)...

Why use a modem card?

Also, is the video integrated or a separate card?

Reply 7 of 56, by Deksor

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I have a HOT 557, it doesn't have turbo feature. Are you sure L2 cache is enabled on the mobo ? Have you tried to strip the computer to the bare minimum and check if the problem still appears ?
I ran SDRAM on that board at some point and I had some issues with it (though it was quite newer than the board and it only detected a quarter of the sticks so maybe that wasn't abnormal), did you try with EDO RAM ?

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Reply 8 of 56, by Gahhhrrrlic

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Ok so...

With the BIOS as it was, speedsys score was 63 (between an AM5x86 @ 133 and a genuine P133 score)
With L2 cache turned off this drops to 43 (lost 33%)
With internal cache turned off it's down to 14.8 (lost like 80%)

so it definitely appears as though the cache is doing its job.

The case has a turbo button but as mentioned the mobo does not have this feature so I've smartly connected it to the "green PC" crap, whatever it is

The RAM is a funny thing. All 64 MB is reported, it does appear to run properly and yet it's reported as EDO RAM instead of DRAM, which still says none. Now EDO RAM says 2 banks are filled. Until very recently I had 70 nS regular sims in there (2 x 16) but honestly, this substandard performance predates the RAM change so I'm disinclined to think it is related in any way.

Video is a separate card.

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Reply 9 of 56, by Ozzuneoj

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I'd just start swapping parts out. Add a faster graphics card, try moving your whole installation of DOS and Windows over to another system/motherboard.

Also, keep in mind that most games were played at 30fps or less in those days, unless you had an exceptionally fast computer or a very old game.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 10 of 56, by oohms

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Could it be your processor? I remember playing most of those games on a pentium 200mmx and they ran passably but not perfectly smooth

edit: directx 5 came out in 1997 and the pentium 120/133 came out in 1995

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Reply 11 of 56, by Gahhhrrrlic

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Ozzuneoj: Oh for sure but I'm talking about FPS in the high single digits at best. I just played Wipeout again and it's barely managing the illusion of motion (often achieved with 6 FPS) except in the tunnel areas.

It's almost as though the PCI bus is the problem... 30MB/sec transfer for the video memory seems slow to me. That might explain why the graphics are slow. But then I would still need to explain how a slow PCI bus is limiting the CPU as well.

Tried disabling USB controller and no effect.
Tried disabling the entire IDE controller and no effect except to kill my cd-rom
Tried overclocking the ISA bus to CLK/3 (11 MHz). This gave a nice boost to my hard drive (the card even boasts it can handle overclocking) but my sound card is not happy and same cpu/gpu speeds.

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Reply 12 of 56, by cyclone3d

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Is there a PCI divider option?

Or maybe the board is really running at 50Mhz FSB instead of the expected 66Mhz FSB.

That would slow the PCI bus down to 25Mhz instead of 33Mhz and also make the CPU run at 100Mhz. That would also explain the low CPU score you are getting.

Or maybe there is something wrong with the board itself. Could be the chipset is dying.

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Reply 13 of 56, by Deksor

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Isn't this just the video memory speed ? If I'm correct, then it's doing fine. If not, try to clean the slot ?

Have you tried to remove anything that's not needed and is L1 cache enabled in the BIOS ? I think you should also disable any power reduction feature in the bios

I don't remember having a divider on mine though I didn't look after it either. This mobo has i430VX chipset by the way

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Reply 14 of 56, by Gahhhrrrlic

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Deksor wrote:

Isn't this just the video memory speed ? If I'm correct, then it's doing fine. If not, try to clean the slot ?

Have you tried to remove anything that's not needed and is L1 cache enabled in the BIOS ? I think you should also disable any power reduction feature in the bios

I don't remember having a divider on mine though I didn't look after it either. This mobo has i430VX chipset by the way

Mine is also a 430VX. I tested with and without cache above and got the expected speed reductions. Speedsys' memory test shows the graph of memory throughput, as expected for the first 8k, 256k and everything after that - all looks good. I can try turning off all the APM stuff.

Speedsys also reports the 66MHz FSB and 2x multiplier, which jives with the jumper configuration. I could try putting it back to 60 x 2, which was the stock setting. Counter-intuitive that this would speed the machine up though.

Are you saying the video memory speed of 30MB/sec is normal for that card? I have to say I don't know what the number should be. I only assumed it was slow because... well... it's SGRAM (I just found this in the advanced chipset properties) and shouldn't that be just as good as RAM if not better? If my DRAM is turning numbers like 170 MB/sec, then 30 for the graphics seems low.

I don't know how the PCI frequency is achieved on this board. With a 60MHz FSB, I don't see any clean math that reduces that to 33 so there's probably a crystal putting out something more sensible like 66 and everything is a multiple of that rather than a multiple of 60 or 50. In any case, I'd like to see what the PCI frequency is in case that's the problem. Not sure what else to do except to remove everything as suggested earlier and see if that fixes it. I doubt anything is really broken because the computer works normally - even well, just slower than your typical 133 in all respects. It acts more like a P90, which would explain the marginal performance.

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Reply 15 of 56, by Gahhhrrrlic

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I've determined that this page (http://vintage3d.org/rage2.php#sthash.cE2dVGSC.dpbs) is a good reference for me to follow, to see if my card is functioning properly. I think it's pretty clear from the benchmarks he ran, that it isn't putting out at full speed.

He talks about his "clocking tools" and even overclocking at one point. What tools can check the rage family's clock speeds and overclock them? So far all the ATI tools I've found that do this sort of thing are only good for the radeon family, not the mach64 based chips. It might be useful for me to gather info on the card using these tools so I can isolate where the problem is. If the card's core and memory frequency are what they should be for example, this would lend credence to the hypothesis that the system itself is the bottleneck or perhaps the PCI bus.

Anyone know what tools this guy might have used to read and adjust the card's frequencies?

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Reply 16 of 56, by Deksor

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Well that speed might not be normal, but that doesn't mean this is the PCI that is being slow. Since the whole computer is slow, maybe that's just another symptom and not the cause of it.

By the way, since I have the exact same board, and a 3D rage II+DVD (so close enough), I could dig mine out of storage and try to replicate the same situation. And if I can't, I could give you the exact configuration of mine (bios revision, settings, jumpers, expansions, etc)

But I'm busy right now, I won't be able to do that until next week

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Reply 17 of 56, by Gahhhrrrlic

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Deksor wrote:

Well that speed might not be normal, but that doesn't mean this is the PCI that is being slow. Since the whole computer is slow, maybe that's just another symptom and not the cause of it.

By the way, since I have the exact same board, and a 3D rage II+DVD (so close enough), I could dig mine out of storage and try to replicate the same situation. And if I can't, I could give you the exact configuration of mine (bios revision, settings, jumpers, expansions, etc)

But I'm busy right now, I won't be able to do that until next week

That would be really cool, if/when you have time for it. Do you have the same processor too? Meantime I will continue to do research on my end. I'm going to see if Powerstrip can read this card so I can get some data off of it. I agree the card is probably not the root-cause of the problem. I am suspecting the FSB or something like that which could slow everything down the way it has.

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Reply 18 of 56, by Deksor

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Yes I do, I have nearly all the consumer Pentium models released (not counting overdrive or laptops models), I only lack P66, P180 and P200 x) (and also a socket 4 mobo to test the P60 I own)

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Reply 19 of 56, by Ozzuneoj

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Gahhhrrrlic wrote:

Not sure what else to do except to remove everything as suggested earlier and see if that fixes it.

Why not just do it? It only takes a few minutes to remove all cards except for the video card.

With all drives and cards removed, just boot from a DOS floppy and have speedsys or some other small program you've used for testing on a second disk. Then you can compare the performance with only the video card installed and booting from a fresh DOS disk.

If performance is still bad, try removing something else... anything you can possibly swap out (RAM sticks, CPU, PSU, etc.). Clear the CMOS (make sure it is cleared... if your time and date don't reset, then it isn't really cleared). If its still performing poorly with a different CPU, different RAM, different PSU and a freshly cleared BIOS, then the board may need a BIOS update or have some other kind of obscure problem.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.