asdf53 wrote on 2024-03-18, 08:26:

That's pretty good already! This is what I'm getting on a Gigabyte GA-5AX with 128 MB RAM and a K6-2+ at 550 MHz: […]
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That's pretty good already! This is what I'm getting on a Gigabyte GA-5AX with 128 MB RAM and a K6-2+ at 550 MHz:

326 136 202.6

Here are some WPCREDIT settings that you can try:

48 and 72: This is where you can set the RAM timings, best I could do was 2-2-2-4-7. Not all boards will run at these timings, so you'll need to experiment.
49: SDRAM Internal Page detection = 1, SDRAM Enhanced Page Mode = 0, SDRAM precharge all insert 1 wait = 0
72: Delay SDRAM Controller 1 clk = 1

41: Fast DRAM Read = 1 (supposed to be faster, makes system freeze on my board)
43: Fast NAJ asserted in single write cycle = 1 (supposed to be faster, had no effect on my board)

The number refers to the memory offset where the setting can be found. One address I did not find was the setting for 4-bank memory interleaving, maybe this setting is the same as "SDRAM internal page detection" on ALI boards. I remember this having a large impact on speed on VIA boards.

If you want to compare your benchmark result to the one I posted above, remember to benchmark at 550 MHz and FSB 100 to have the same baseline.

This guy got some awesome numbers with a geforce3 but he doesn't run the full 3dmark test. I see he has his Enternal Page Detection enabled and Enhanced Page Mode Count enabled on page 2. I will try this later. I didn't want to push my luck changing to many options at the same time.

AMD K6 3DMARK, aiming for stars.

I maximized all bios ram settings and was able to achieve 312-150-210. I was getting 3150/7900 on 3dmark99 but had some stability issues with the ram tweaked so I lowered the cpu to 577mhz at 105 fsb and now get a stable 3000/7500. I will retest when the 128mb ram comes in.

After disabling GAT2 in the Ali AGP control center I got the system stable enough to go back to 112fsb multiplied by 5.5 which gives the best ram speeds of 337-162-195. I was getting 3000/8000 and the system is very snappy at 112fps.

I then installed the exact same make and model ram but 128mb instead of 512mb. Sadly all I could get was 333-122-195 out of this ram. However the system did speed up about 5% or 100 points. You wouldn’t think that would do much but I got a 5/6fps increase in 3dmark99 and 2000.The highest max fps I have seen out of hundreds of test and completely stable.

I then installed quake 2 v3.20 and ran a time demo in OpenGl and got 80fps in all resolutions including 1600x1200. Directx9 looks great and it runs seamlessly. I could also install the 3dnow patch or try a different OpenGL version.

I benched my FX 5600 benched on a Mendocino Celeron 533/66 Mhz today with 3DMark 99 today and scored 2675 3DMarks and 4245 CPU 3DMarks, for comparison.

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-03-26, 04:43:

I benched my FX 5600 benched on a Mendocino Celeron 533/66 Mhz today with 3DMark 99 today and scored 2675 3DMarks and 4245 CPU 3DMarks, for comparison.

I think 8000 cpu marks is pretty good for a k6 and got 2500 in 3dmark2000 which seems pretty respectable for this setup. I see others only getting 20-40fps in Quake2 with OpenGL. I ordered a few sticks of Kingston 7ns ram to hopefully get better ram speeds. I was also able to underclock the GPU from 325 to as little as 225 mhz and still get the same results. I haven't tried any lower but it may free up some CPU performance. Overall this system seems much more responsive than the k6-2 450 with voodo 3 3000 i had back in the day and it is nice to have 02/03 amenities like dx9,usb keyboard/mouse, usb 2.0, wifi, cd burner,and sata ssd. I could also disable my Soundblaster AEW64/Live5.1 Gamer Edition but I want to get real world numbers.

I disabled the sound blaster in my device profile and got 500 more cpu points and fps went to 87. I need to find less demanding drivers or possibly an ISA sound card. Otherwise I think I have gotten the most performance I can get out of this setup. Not bad for starting out at 2000/5000.

Wait, you disabled sound and your 3dmark score went up from 3000 to 3400? That shouldn't happen. Did you change anything else?

In any case, that's a very nice score, it must have been satisfying to see the much higher scores after tweaking everything. Was that without any WPCREDIT tweaks so far? Have you considered getting a Geforce 2 to reach even better scores? I believe you could get close to 4000 points with one.

Could it be that the 128 MB RAM module does not support 4-bank interleaving? Disable memory interleaving in the BIOS (probably "Internal Page Detection") and benchmark again, if you get the same score, this could be the problem.

Regarding sound I don't think it's the card or drivers, it's the games themselves and their sound implementation. I remember testing Quake 3 with a PCI and an ISA sound card, there was almost zero FPS difference between the cards.

But one thing I do remember is that Creative offers WDM and VXD drivers for their sound cards, and the older VXD drivers are supposed to be faster.

It's known that PCI sound cards can have a higher CPU driver overhead than ISA cards. There is a reason that vintage benchmarks have an option to disable sound/music.

asdf53 wrote on 2024-03-27, 21:26:

Wait, you disabled sound and your 3dmark score went up from 3000 to 3400? That shouldn't happen. Did you change anything else? […]
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Wait, you disabled sound and your 3dmark score went up from 3000 to 3400? That shouldn't happen. Did you change anything else?

In any case, that's a very nice score, it must have been satisfying to see the much higher scores after tweaking everything. Was that without any WPCREDIT tweaks so far? Have you considered getting a Geforce 2 to reach even better scores? I believe you could get close to 4000 points with one.

Could it be that the 128 MB RAM module does not support 4-bank interleaving? Disable memory interleaving in the BIOS (probably "Internal Page Detection") and benchmark again, if you get the same score, this could be the problem.

Regarding sound I don't think it's the card or drivers, it's the games themselves and their sound implementation. I remember testing Quake 3 with a PCI and an ISA sound card, there was almost zero FPS difference between the cards.

But one thing I do remember is that Creative offers WDM and VXD drivers for their sound cards, and the older VXD drivers are supposed to be faster.

It was about 3200 before i disabled the sound card. I got the best ram speeds with internal page detection on and only used bios tweeks. Increasing the fsb helped allot also. I tried the older LiveWire3.0 VXD drivers which are supposed to be best for the CT4760 Live5.1 and got 81fps instead of 77.8 with the newest drivers off Creatives website so it did help a little. I could try my isa AWE64 gold but I really like the pci Live5.1 Gamers sound. I could also do the k6-2+ mod to double the L2 cache. That should get me to 4000/9000. I do have a Geforce 2 GTS and GF3 TI200 on the way .

I reinstalled windows, to be sure I don’t have any driver conflicts or registry errors, with just the necessary drivers and installed the VXD sound card drivers directly from device manager instead of the whole driver cd.

Before I installed the sound card I had the best ram speed ever of 376-181-175 which explains the high 3dmark numbers. After installed it went back down to normal rams speeds. I am still getting 80fps in the time demo and it is still very playable at 3200/8000.

I don’t know how the sound card directly effects the ram but the cpu is bottlenecked because any settings that make the gpu points go up make the cpu points go down unless I increase the ram or cpu speed. I still get good numbers in 3dmark and games so I am satisfied.

I installed the 3DNow patch for Q2 that has special instructions for the k6-2 and got to 87fps with sound but was 104fps without. I then installed my isa awe64(ct4500). It is plug and play and uses the SB16 drivers off the 98SE cd. My ram speeds went back up to 375mbs and scores increased to 3400/8500 in 3dmark. I am now getting 92fps with sound. The pci Live5.1 sounded better to me but was more cpu intensive. I have read that some socket 7 boards have a prioritized isa connection to the cpu that will give about a 5% increase in performance.

The odd thing about this overpowered gpu is that it maintains the same fps even at the highest resolution. In some cases higher resolutions have a few more fps. 1080 32bit on a 144hz monitor really gives 98 a more modern feel.

Unreal is getting 30-50fps with dips in the 20s and looks very good with Dx9. The water and reflections look great. I’m sure I could find a mini gl or glide wrapper that would run faster.

adam731432 wrote on 2024-03-20, 12:23:

I maximized all bios ram settings and was able to achieve 312-150-210. I was getting 3150/7900 on 3dmark99 but had some stability issues with the ram tweaked so I lowered the cpu to 577mhz at 105 fsb and now get a stable 3000/7500. I will retest when the 128mb ram comes in.

IMG_2246.jpegIMG_2207.jpegIMG_2229.jpegIMG_2228.jpeg

I assume this is the effect of the cacheable area. Even with slower RAM settings the system is faster with 128MB compared to 512MB. But interesting would be also to test 256MB RAM, to test if the Asus board has maybe a larger cacheable are than others (?) Do you have an option for 256MB RAM available now?

CoffeeOne wrote on 2024-03-31, 21:13:

adam731432 wrote on 2024-03-20, 12:23:

I maximized all bios ram settings and was able to achieve 312-150-210. I was getting 3150/7900 on 3dmark99 but had some stability issues with the ram tweaked so I lowered the cpu to 577mhz at 105 fsb and now get a stable 3000/7500. I will retest when the 128mb ram comes in.

IMG_2246.jpegIMG_2207.jpegIMG_2229.jpegIMG_2228.jpeg

I assume this is the effect of the cacheable area. Even with slower RAM settings the system is faster with 128MB compared to 512MB. But interesting would be also to test 256MB RAM, to test if the Asus board has maybe a larger cacheable are than others (?) Do you have an option for 256MB RAM available now?

I was running 1 256mb stick in the previous test. Sometimes two. The cpu only takes about a 5% hit and extra ram may come in handy if are doing allot of web browsing or running a server or something. But most k7 boards just run faster with one stick of 128mb and that should be plenty for all period correct programs. Also the k6-2 always has the best ram speeds with the 5.5 multiplier no matter the fsb.

adam731432 wrote on 2024-04-01, 16:03:

CoffeeOne wrote on 2024-03-31, 21:13:

adam731432 wrote on 2024-03-20, 12:23:

I maximized all bios ram settings and was able to achieve 312-150-210. I was getting 3150/7900 on 3dmark99 but had some stability issues with the ram tweaked so I lowered the cpu to 577mhz at 105 fsb and now get a stable 3000/7500. I will retest when the 128mb ram comes in.

IMG_2246.jpegIMG_2207.jpegIMG_2229.jpegIMG_2228.jpeg

I assume this is the effect of the cacheable area. Even with slower RAM settings the system is faster with 128MB compared to 512MB. But interesting would be also to test 256MB RAM, to test if the Asus board has maybe a larger cacheable are than others (?) Do you have an option for 256MB RAM available now?

I was running 1 256mb stick in the previous test. Sometimes two. The cpu only takes about a 5% hit and extra ram may come in handy if are doing allot of web browsing or running a server or something. But most k7 boards just run faster with one stick of 128mb and that should be plenty for all period correct programs. Also the k6-2 always has the best ram speeds with the 5.5 multiplier no matter the fsb.

So the cacheable area is 128MB? Can you confirm with ctcm from Heise?

CoffeeOne wrote on 2024-04-01, 17:05:

adam731432 wrote on 2024-04-01, 16:03:

CoffeeOne wrote on 2024-03-31, 21:13:

I assume this is the effect of the cacheable area. Even with slower RAM settings the system is faster with 128MB compared to 512MB. But interesting would be also to test 256MB RAM, to test if the Asus board has maybe a larger cacheable are than others (?) Do you have an option for 256MB RAM available now?

I was running 1 256mb stick in the previous test. Sometimes two. The cpu only takes about a 5% hit and extra ram may come in handy if are doing allot of web browsing or running a server or something. But most k7 boards just run faster with one stick of 128mb and that should be plenty for all period correct programs. Also the k6-2 always has the best ram speeds with the 5.5 multiplier no matter the fsb.

So the cacheable area is 128MB? Can you confirm with ctcm from Heise?

My 1.04 version allows 128mb. The 1.05/06 has 1mb tag ram on the board which allows 512mb but also doesn't play well with K6+ cpus unless you do a mod. I am not familiar with that program I might try it later. Everest and CPUZ does show 512k onboard cache. Memory usage always stayed around 125mb max unless I disabled external cache. Then I think it got up to 160mb used after i ran 3dmark but it didn't seem worth it with the L3 cache disabled. I believe most K6 boards read the ram from top down so it is using uncached ram first when you use more than the cachable area.

I got everything running smoothly and added a bellkin 2.0 usb pci card. It doesn’t draw on the system when a flash drive is not connected and will come in handy for large file transfers like games and mods. Unfortunately it did not play well with any usb wifi sticks that are 98 compatible. I had an extra pci slot so I installed an Edimax 7128G with Ralink RT61/RT2561 chipset pci wifi card that is 802.11b/g with WPA2. It only uses up about 1% CPU resources while connected. If it uses up to many recourses while in a server I will just use a LAN card with a wifi to lan adapter.

I finally got my 64mb Gf3 Ti200 from Hungary. I went with the gf3 because it has a DVI out put and it is very hard to find a gf2 ultra for a decent price. I had to edit the 7.76 drivers .inf file to work with the Ti200.

Look for [Strings] and add this
[Strings]
NVIDIA&DEV_0200.DeviceDesc="NVIDIA GeForce3"
NVIDIA&DEV_0201.DeviceDesc="NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 200"
NVIDIA&DEV_0202.DeviceDesc="NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500"

The plain GeForce3 should already be there.

After using Driver Cleaner Pro and DirectX Buster I installed the card and 7.76 drivers. It smoked through 3dmark99 with a 1,350 or 40% increase in Gpu marks while only losing 100 Cpu points and 3dmark2000 almost doubled to 4100. 3dmark games gained 20fps but didn't look as good.

Unfortunately quake 2 suffered with only 60fps (compared to 90) no matter what version of OpenGL I used. The graphics where also not as good no matter what settings I used. Unreal had the exact same frame rates as my other card but the Dx8.1 this card came with doesn't look any where near as good as Dx9 does. Water isn’t clear and reflections and shadows aren’t as good. It is very stable and playable but graphics quality are voodoo3ish to me. I guess it is more period correct and what some people are going for.

This card is also overpowered because I am getting the same frame rate in every resolution where as a geforce2/voodoo3 would get less fps the higher the resolution. Overall I think it is a good card for maybe slightly older dx7/8 only games or a period correct system. It got high scores but I didn’t see real life improvements in my top two games and it seems to favor performance over graphics quality.

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