m1so wrote:

Thanks for all the feedback folks. It seems like a very nice CPU for the mid-1990s, with most games of the time running nice and smooth (except for GLQuake). But how come it gets less FPS in GLQuake than the software version? Didn't GLQuake get 30 fps even on Pentium 100? Are you running Jedi Knight accelerated or unaccelerated?

Also, elianda, did you run UNIVBE for this test? And can you try running Quake II in software mode in 320x200 please? What resolution did you run Quake II accelerated here?

Does anyone here have Descent 2 by any chance? FPS testing there would also be easy, just type in "frametimer", without brackets of course.

I did not benched GLQuake. I also did not run UNIVBE as it doesn't help anything. It might even slow everything down.
The resolution is the same as shown in the Quake2 framegrab, 640x480. I can of course also run it in 320x200 if the windows driver supports low resolutions.
I have Descent 2 somewhere but as I wrote I benched only stuff that was installed on the hdd I used.

elianda wrote:

I did not benched GLQuake.

Ah, you're right. I thought that was GLQuake due to the change in brightness and the fact that it was right after the software Quake screengrabs. Could you give that a try with your PR166? Perhaps you can do GLQuake at 133MHz.

Running Win9x is impossible at 133 MHz.

Oh well. Can you do GLQuake with the PR166 at 116.7MHz?
I'd lvoe to see how much of a difference it makes. Demo2 at 320x200,512x384 and 640x480 if you can so that we may compare 😀.

I ran speedsys on my first generation K5 at 100 mhz(saddly,it doesn't overclock),also tried the 3dfx version of tomb raider,on a voodoo 1,i get 16 fps minimum and 30 fps max.

Btw i have a couple of older dos games like:jungle strike,desert strike,lotus
and they run fine on a pentium mmx 166mhz,but on the k 5 i get an error:
-run time error R 6003 -integer divide by 0

Is there something wrong with the proc?

Maybe a quirk of the SSA5 chip?

Quake2 3.05 Software 320x200 windowed 11.0 fps
GLQuake 320x240x16 43.5 fps
GLQuake 512x384x16 43.5 fps
GLQuake 640x480x16 42.6 fps
GLQuake 800x600x16 42.8 fps

How come your GLQuake scores are so much better than F2bnps (and also closer to the expected ones)?

I can't tell how he setup his system. You can find the screens of the benches here: ftp://78.46.141.148/pictures/K5_PR166/

Thank you very much. Very nice results. What about 2D games? I know Diablo and Starcraft run well, what about say Age of Empires 1? This CPU has no problems with 2D in SVGA right?

Also, is there any FPS difference between running Duke Nukem 3D in 640x480 with shadows on and off or other detail settings [except for the low detail one which would probably be useless even on higher end 486s]? Not that it doesn't run nice, hell, it runs faster than most current console games. Can you try dnrate in combat situations? Also, what are the DNRATE results for 320x400 (or whatever intermediate SVGA resolution it is)

swaaye wrote:

Maybe a quirk of the SSA5 chip?

I don't think they were that buggy. It seems this problem is far from SSA5 exclusive, this guy reports it on a Pentium 4 http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?4017 … rror-in-clipper . Maybe the K5 integer performance is driving these old DOS games "over the edge" in a similiar way to what Pentiums over 200 Mhz do?

I'll try an older version of GLQuake I guess and see what happens. Which version are you using elianda?

I used glq1114.
I noticed some other issues:
Quake 1.08 crashes on startup reproducable from DOS prompt on the same EIP. (0x0003c928) regardless of PR166 or PR200 setting.
It does run however from a DOS window within Win98SE. So thats a bit odd, maybe Windows replaces some critical protected mode switching with different code.
(Yes Windows 98SE makes it run more stable...)

If I change from PR166 to PR200 Duke3D reads garbled bytes when loading GAME.CON. Also within Win98. This can be prevented if I switch off the cache.

A fresh Win98 boots also with PR200 setting, Quake2 runs and Quake1 run, but Unreal crashes before the second timedemo loop ends. I could see a score close to 20 fps without sound in 640x480. (TX430 board, speedsys memory speed now 202 MB/s, Voodoo4 4500 PCI)
Some CPU feature seems to work incorrectly at PR200 setting, such that the code crashes in specific combinations.

I think for Pentium 1 era games PR166 will be ok. How does a PR166 compare to a Pentium 100 and 133? How do games like Terminal Velocity, Descent 1 and 2 run? I think the shareware versions are on the net and Descent 2 can display FPS like Duke 3D but the cheat is frametimer.

Well the problem with Quake was that I has set a BLASTER environment variable, while not having a soundcard plugged at the same time.
So I tried now 1.5x75 and 1.75x66 for the PR166 CPU (2x66 is not stable).
The higher FSB of 75 gives DOS 2D games as Doom a considerable boost = 82.6 fps

Nahkri wrote:

Btw i have a couple of older dos games like:jungle strike,desert strike,lotus and they run fine on a pentium mmx 166mhz,but on t […]
Show full quote

Btw i have a couple of older dos games like:jungle strike,desert strike,lotus
and they run fine on a pentium mmx 166mhz,but on the k 5 i get an error:
-run time error R 6003 -integer divide by 0

Is there something wrong with the proc?

I managed to get rid of the error by disabling lvl 1 cache in bios.

So I tried Descent 2 with ESS Audiodrive + General Midi and the result is:
320x200 62 fps
640x480 23 fps
800x600 16 fps

I also tried Age of Empires and it runs like a charm, well the Requirements are originally:
Pentium 90 processor or faster (P-133+ for 1024 x 768 resolution) - slightly faster K5 PR166
SVGA with 1 MB RAM - welll the Voodoo4 has 32 MB.
fast 2D graphics card (2 MB required for 1024 x 768)
16 MB RAM - 64 MB
Win 95 or Win NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3 - Win98SE, actually Win98 was not released when AoE was released.

So this game is no problem at all.

I did some tests as well, will post results later.

Alright. So just to clarify, I couldn't overclock my chip at all. I was at least hoping for a PR166 OC, but even that isn't doable. Oh well...
So here's what I managed to get for good ol' DOS Quake running demo2:

Fullscreen + Weapons bar

320x200 : 26.4 fps
512x384 : 12.6 fps
640x400 : 10.7 fps

About 3/4 of the screen

320x200 : 28 fps
512x384 : 15.3 fps
640x400 : 13.1 fps

About 1/2 of the screen

320x200 : 33.4 fps
512x384 : 21.4 fps
640x400 : 18.8 fps

A huge jump in FPS when I went around 1/2 as you can see. Makes 512x384 playable 😀.
For GLQuake, the culprit is my Voodoo 3 and MiniGL. Initially, I couldn't get it to work properly and had to use the full OpenGL ICD, which of course doesn't work too well, producing slow results and various graphical glitches. I found MiniGL 1.49 to be the one that worked the best.
Still, at 640x480 I got only 31 FPS. I have no idea how elianda got 48 FPS, I doubt his Voodoo4 helps this much.

Now for Quake 2:
Software 320x200 : 10 fps

Accelerated does little good producing basically the same FPS (around 14.5) at either 320x200 and 640x480 (and even 1024x768 I suspect). Huge CPU bottlenecking there.

Finally, I wanted to say a bit more on Jedi Knight. I always test the demo level, Level 9 - Fuel Station, my favorite level in the game. The K5 gets beaten severely here, I'm pretty sure a Pentium 133 isn't that big of a bottleneck in this game. Resolution doesn't really affect performance, I got the same performance at 320x200 and 1024x768 on my Voodoo3.
It's not awful, I'd say around 25 fps for the most part, however it really dips when there are 2 or more enemies on screen and when it has to render distant objects. So it can vary from as low as 12 FPS to 25, which is the least to say irritating. Pretty sure a P133 does much better in this game.

So, that's all there is to say about the K5. Great and cheap little CPU, a damn shame that AMD couldn't get it to clock any higher than 133MHz ( 116.7 for massive quantities if we're trying to be honest here).
I also have noticed it has 24KB L1 cache, I wonder how much that helps it against the Pentium. And if it makes higher clocks more difficult to achieve.

I,m glad back then,i didn't know anything about fps,plus i wasn't very picky about how a game would run,couse i remember playing quake 2 on my k5,with 40 mb of edo ram and a s3 trio 64v+ with 1 mb,on my 14 inch crt monitor,in software mode and thinking it's runing ok,altough can't rember at what resolution.