iraito wrote on 2023-05-31, 08:20:

Oh no worries, it saddens me a bit that you feel the disappointment but i myself learned the hard way how easily you can bottlen […]
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retep_110 wrote on 2023-05-31, 08:02:

Thanks for your answer. Too bad it is not very encouraging . I do not have one of the above mentioned gforce cards yet but I […]
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iraito wrote on 2023-05-31, 07:53:

I used a GF4 4200 and also a GF3 200 on a pentium 3 933, both bottlenecked pretty hard, i just couldn't put up with the fact that i couldn't run deus ex above 25fps with both cards, the CPU couldn't take it, then games more appropriate for the GPU like Nolf 2 lags and drops quite a bit of frames, i would go for a P4 or athlon XP.

Thanks for your answer. Too bad it is not very encouraging . I do not have one of the above mentioned gforce cards yet but I was about to get one of them soon. I will be the future owner of p3 800 MHZ System in june that I want to turn into a Voodoo 2 Sli and Geforce system. As my main direct 3d card I wanted to use either a geforce 2, 3 or 4. Or maybe one of the mx440 cards.

The GF 4 was recommmended to me as the maxium card I could go for win 98 p800 mhz system.

But reading such stuff that even p3 933 mhz could bottleneck such cards is not very encouraging fora future p3 800 mhz owner. But thanks for sharing your first hand impressions.

Oh no worries, it saddens me a bit that you feel the disappointment but i myself learned the hard way how easily you can bottleneck a system.
For this reason i was planning to start a thread where i will post benchmarks for all kinds of games on a wide variety of systems, i think that's one of the biggest things missing right now in the retro PC community, a vast amount of data on a really (and i mean REALLY) vast variety of games at different settings and resolutions, people usually bench the usual 10 games but cult stuff like deus ex? not a benchmark anywhere (and i tried for a whole year to find even just one)

I can tell you that any generic P4 or athlon XP would serve your GPU really well, so keep that in mind for a future build.

Such bench mark thread would be interesting for sure.

Thanks for the advice. I will keep a p4 athlon xp in mind for a potential second build.

The only reason I will go with the p3 800mhz system was that I want to go the easy way. The system in question is almost complete. Motherboard, Ram, CPU, hardrive and even disc drive is already there. Only the gpu and soundcard are missing. Considering the fact that I can get the system for almost nothing was too tempting to ignore it as a firs try. Adding, video cards and sound cards is way more beginner friendly then finding the right mainboard with proper chipset that is known to work for my configuration.

I will just turn the specs of gpu down a bit for my first build.

It is not a big loos to be honest. For now I am just interested in playing games from 1997 to 1999. For that era a lower tier geforce should suit me well.

It is still very interesting to figure out how far you can drive my upcoming system with bottlenecking it. That's why I wanted to figure out which card would be the most powerful card I could use in my upcoming system.

NostalgicAslinger wrote on 2023-05-17, 11:48:

Katmai 450 with later core stepping (kC0) should run fine with 600MHz with the default 2,00V voltage or maybe 2,05V. The earlier […]
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Katmai 450 with later core stepping (kC0) should run fine with 600MHz with the default 2,00V voltage or maybe 2,05V. The earlier Katmai stepping (kB0) could need more voltage and also the L2 cache modules could be the limiting factor. There is a tool named "WCPUL2" from h-oda for L2 Cache Latency settings, if the L2 Cache is the problem.

Many people have used a PIII 450 back in the day and overclocked it to FSB 133, because this was the cheapest option for i440BX FSB133 overclocking in the year 1999/2000.

From Wikipedia:
A notable stepping level for enthusiasts was SL35D. This version of Katmai was officially rated for 450 MHz, but often contained cache chips for the 600 MHz model and thus usually can run at 600 MHz.

Today, I have tested a 450 Katmai from my collection with the SL35D stepping (with a renewed thermalpaste) on my Abit BE6-II. Produced in Week 28/1999 Costa Rica. It runs stable with 600MHz (133FSB), but needs 2.20V VCore, otherwise it will not run Prime without any errors, also with disabled L2 Cache. 2.00, 2.05V-2.10V always boots fine, but are freezing in FPU heavy applications.