First post, by paradigital
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- Oldbie
I've been building myself a benchmarking rig for older graphics cards, trying not to CPU constrain them so using LGA775 and a 3.2GHz Core 2 Duo (E4700 overclocked). Current spec is:
Dimastech Bench Table
ASRock 4CoreDual SATA II (Rev 1.x)
Intel Core 2 Duo E4700
4GB Crucial BallistiX Sport DDR2-800
Gainward BL:ISS 7800gs+ AGP
Integral V-Series 120GB SSD
Bitfenix Whisper M Series 750W 80-Plus PSU
It's a triple-boot system (so I can directly compare how OS choice affects performance) running on a 120GB SATA SSD (BIOS is in IDE mode for the SATA ports), Windows 98 SE on the primary partition, Windows 2000 Professional on the second, and Windows XP on the third.
In Windows 2000 and Windows XP, the system performs similarly well (within a few % of each other) in the only test I've run so far (3DMark2001SE) 35000~ marks.
Windows 98 SE on the other hand scores WELL UNDER that of 2k/XP (I don't believe 3DMark2001SE is multi-threaded?), coming in at around 18000~ marks (52% of the 2k and XP installs)
Now, I am using the re-released RLOWE memory patch so that Windows 98 plays nicely with the RAM (so I don't have to use different memory configurations potentially skewing the benchmark results), and Zak's modified 7-series driver for the GPU.
So first question: Does anyone know if 3DMark2001SE is multi-threaded? If it is then I guess a roughly 50% performance deficit makes sense.
Second question: For anyone who has previously used the RLOWE patch, has anyone seen a performance deficit vs simply removing physical RAM?
Third question: Has anyone used Zak's modified driver, and if so how did you find the performance?
Another issue that has presented itself is around the storage. If I try to bench using SiSoft Sandra 2001 then the storage benchmark never completes in 98 SE. I'm not sure if this is a quirk of using an SSD in 98, or something to do with drivers for the storage controller?
So fourth question: Does anyone have a good set of drivers for this motherboard on 98SE? Is there a particular version of the Via/Hyperion 4-in-1 I should use?
Fifth question: Does 98SE play nice with solid state disks or should I go back to using a mechanical drive?
Sixth question: Should I perhaps ditch the on-board SATA controller (even though it's in IDE mode)?
Finally, 98 SE seems unable to wake from sleep. If I leave the machine running until the display goes blank, there's no way I can wake it, keyboard and mouse input don't wake it, and neither does a brief press of the power button. The only course of action is a reset of a hard power-off.
Final question: Is this a driver problem with ACPI? Win2K and WinXP are happy to sleep and wake.