I've never seen much speed boost going from 166 to 200 much less 100 to 200. Quake will run faster though

i'd advise not using the Geforce2 but a Voodoo3 instead. The GF2 will be terribly bottlenecked, not only that but the compatibility with old games is just awful!

Even a Voodoo 2 or 1 will do

Let us know if you manage to find the computer's tag or any other info that may clue in on the model and/or motherboard.
The jump from 166 to 200 (or even 233 for that matter) doesn't feel like all that much. So just be content with what you have, unless you want that 5 (max.) extra average fps. Anything above a TNT or Voodoo2, in my opinion, would also be overkill for that processor.

True, but as the 233MMX chips are dirt cheap these days theres not really a reason for not having one nowdays (unless you only want this 1 chip and don't want to spend tons of $$$€€ on shipping the chip).

The first thing you should probably do, rather than upgrading/overclocking the CPU, is remove 64MB of RAM. You're running outside the 64MB cacheable area right now, and rectifying that is going to make a pretty significant boost in speed.

However, I do agree with Tetrium, the P233MMX are easy to get, so it'd be a worthwhile upgrade if you're wanting to run more demanding games on it.

jmrydholm wrote:

Is it worth an upgrade to 200 MhZ, say for the sake of playing games like Final Fantasy 7?

Y'know, if that's your principal reason for messing with all this, much work has been done to make FF7 compatible with newer systems. Someone even made a new, more compatible graphics engine. See http://www.finalfantasy7pc.com/ , specifically http://www.finalfantasy7pc.com/mods/aalis-cus … raphics-driver/ .

As I recall, I was running FF7 on a slightly faster computer back in the day, and while it mostly ran fine, the FMVs quickly went out of sync with the audio and overlayed sprites.

I found a Pentium MMX at 200MhZ online for about $10.00, no problem getting that. But you say removing Ram will make it go faster??? Srsly? 😳 I need more coffee 🤣 I'm probably not remembering something I learned way back in my high school days when this computer was new. I will pop open the beige case of awesomeness later and find the tag or motherboard number.

He might not need to remove any of the ram, he said it was EDO memory. Does that system run on the 430HX chipset? If so, try to find out if it's got the 430HX or 430FX. EDIT: I checked, it's 430FX 🙁

Still, I would hazard a guess that it's faster with uncached memory for the apps you're running (FF7). I know because I had a pentium 233 when others had Celly 300A's (stock) and PII 400's and 450's and I was running modern titles. I was always outgunned with the exception of my Voodoo Rush, but it was readily apparent that newer titles wanted more than the 48mb of ram I was running (and probably more than 64mb as well).

I would guess that late titles will run better with more ram installed, and early titles will run worse. That's okay though as early titles aren't exactly demanding. The exception would be build engine games (or other software rendered 2d DOS titles). Those need all of the performance you can throw at them on a Pentium 1 machine, and don't need more than 64MB of ram. I need to test this though to be sure, as it seems the consensus is just run with 64MB or less, but VOGONers are strange ducks and like to max out antiquated hardware and run it in optimal configurations.

@SavantStrike
Hmm, interesting. I actually have some Build games- Duke3D, Blood, and WW2GI. I have the first two installed and run them under pure Dos mode, but they run just fine for me. I noticed when I switched FF7 to 320 x 240 mode, it's a little faster than 640 x 480. So maybe it's because I only have an old PCI GeForce 2 card? If it were a 64MB AGP card, I'm sure it would be much faster. I guess I'm one of those "strange ducks." 😀 I've got a dynamic Sega Genesis XMB theme on my PS3 so go figure.

No. The reason is you're seeing software mode. A Voodoo card and a computer that age, will run the game fine, even on 32MB RAM. Even a mere Trident Blade can do FF7!
Also consider driver optimization - Nvidia isn't ASM aggressive like 3dfx were. If you want speed, go 3dfx.
You're not really taking advantage of the Geforce2 at all in a system like that. GF2's intended for like, 700-1400MHz PCs. A 64mb card, 128mb card, 256mb card or even 512mb card won't make an ounce of difference when you're terribly bottlenecked.

The keyword here is bottleneck.

Ah, I gotcha. My laptop suffers from a similar situation- Alienware m11x, R1. It's got a 335M GeForce, but only one of those ULV Core 2 Duo processors, running at 1.3 Ghz stock, ~1.7Ghz overclocked. Is there any type of 3dfx card you would recommend? I'm so not familiar with those; I'm a staunch NVidia consumer since 2000.

But thank you leileilol, now I want beer *smile* ahh bottlenecks!

jmrydholm wrote:

I found a Pentium MMX at 200MhZ online for about $10.00, no problem getting that. But you say removing Ram will make it go faster??? Srsly? 😳 I need more coffee 🤣 I'm probably not remembering something I learned way back in my high school days when this computer was new. I will pop open the beige case of awesomeness later and find the tag or motherboard number.

I found it cheaper to buy them at cpu-world, bought a small lot of 233MMX chips for like $1 each 😀