If you have a motherboard with a VIA chipset for Socket 370, the first thing you should check is the memory performance.

The 694 chipset with a 133 MHz system bus should deliver up to 1000 MB/s in the Everest/Aida64 RAM READ benchmark.
On a 100 MHz bus, this value should reach around 750 MB/s.
Significantly lower values indicate issues with the BIOS implementation.

P.S. If your motherboard is in good condition and you're lucky, your Celeron will run on a 133 MHz bus, which will significantly improve performance.
A 100 MHz bus is a clear bottleneck for the late C370 platform.

hello!

first of all, thank you so much for taking the time to reply and help me!
I appreciate it! 😀

I checked the memory speed and I think it works as you described.
I attached a screenshot from the results.

The graphics driver is: ForceWare 81.98

I just realized that my system HDD is only ATA33 and it slows down the bigger HDD as they are on the same channel.
So I'll replace it with a faster one. I'm sure this won't cause poor graphical performance, maybe stuttering because of slow loading speed.

What else should I check?

thank you!

I run mafia on a very similar setup (via, gf3, p3 @ ~1200 (160mhz fsb) and that fps seems about right. You may have to lower resolution/ turn some eye candy off to get it smooth-ish

One thing I can definitely recommend is a utility called "via interleave enabler" which enables x (can't remember) way memory interleaving on boards with via chipsets

The results are in for the 3dMark2001 benchmark!

1024x768 32bit color, compressed textures
D3D Pure Hardware T&L
Antialiasing: None

4206 point

Can somebody please confirm that it's normal for this configuration or not?

Thank you!

The memory test results are quite adequate, which means the motherboard BIOS is fine.
The 3TI isn't the most powerful graphics card, so perhaps its performance is the issue.
P.S. I highly recommend trying a 133 MHz Celeron clock speed.
If this works, the processor desires will be resolved.
Celeron Tualatin at 133 MHz FSB differs from Pentium by 2-3 percent.

shevalier wrote on 2025-10-18, 11:48:

The memory test results are quite adequate, which means the motherboard BIOS is fine. The 3TI isn't the most powerful graphics c […]
Show full quote

The memory test results are quite adequate, which means the motherboard BIOS is fine.
The 3TI isn't the most powerful graphics card, so perhaps its performance is the issue.
P.S. I highly recommend trying a 133 MHz Celeron clock speed.
If this works, the processor desires will be resolved.
Celeron Tualatin at 133 MHz FSB differs from Pentium by 2-3 percent.

I can try but can it harm the motherboard or the CPU in any way? or just hangs up in the worst case and after a bios reset everything's fine?
Just asking because there's a Pentium 3 1400-S on its way to me, it'll arrive in a few weeks' time - so I'm not sure it's worth messing around with the Celeron 😀

I mean if no harm can be done, it's a cool experiment for sure 😀

The P3-S is a sort of "silver bullet" that every collector covets.
It's a great processor, but... if the Celeron runs on a 133 MHz bus, the difference with the P3-Swon't be dramatic.
For more powerful socket C370 processors, unfortunately, the bottleneck is the connection between the processor and the chipset.
Motherboards capable of running at 166 MHz or higher system bus speeds(yep, its significal overclocking), with the standard 66 MHz for AGP and 33 MHz for PSI, show fantastic results.

PS With such overclocking from "standard bus" to "standard bus" the system freezes more often than burns out.

I can't seem to change the FSB to 133MHz in the BIOS, so I tried setting the jumpers, but it didn't POST unfortunately, not even after BIOS reset.
I tried the fine tuning in BIOS and I could set 120MHz, that seems to be working properly. Unfortunately I can only set it up to 132MHz.

No luck, wait for the R3-S delivery

tomeldee wrote on 2025-10-18, 14:12:

I can't seem to change the FSB to 133MHz in the BIOS, so I tried setting the jumpers, but it didn't POST unfortunately, not even after BIOS reset.
I tried the fine tuning in BIOS and I could set 120MHz, that seems to be working properly. Unfortunately I can only set it up to 132MHz.

Tomshardware was getting 5353 with a 1.4hgz Athlon and a really early driver 11.01. Many recommend 45.23 but I never get good results with those, I'd go earlier or later like 56.64

How about running a quake 3 timedemo? should be 120+ fps at 1024.

tomeldee wrote on 2025-10-18, 09:27:

The results are in for the 3dMark2001 benchmark! […]
Show full quote

The results are in for the 3dMark2001 benchmark!

1024x768 32bit color, compressed textures
D3D Pure Hardware T&L
Antialiasing: None

4206 point

Can somebody please confirm that it's normal for this configuration or not?

Thank you!

Looks good to me, this is my score on a 775 Celeron D 360 3.46 Ghz, 2 GB DDR2, FX5200 128MB 64BIT, on a VIA P4M800 chipset. using latest driver 81.98.

so i'd say your score looks pretty good, it would be insteresting to see how much of a difference the extra 200mhz of the PIII-S makes to the score, if you benchmark it in 3Dmark99 you can compare the CPU 3dmarks to see how much of a difference there is between the celeron and th PIII-S, this would also help me out with my 1.4 tualatin celeron build. when i find a working board for it. 😀

also as Dothan Burger said a quake 3 timedemo would be good. on my system with everything maxxed im getting 67fps, on default settings it was well over 300fps, considering theres not a lot of difference in our scores you should get similar results.

I thought it would be easy to find my GF3 Ti200 and stick it in my P3 system for a comparative benchmark, but it was more work than I thought. Anyway, the result isn't an apples to apples comparison, but it's pretty close. Tyan S1854 with a Coppermine P3 1000, Win98SE, Via 4.45, and Nvidia 45.23. This is after tweaking the CMOS settings to get the highest score I could. Your system is about where it should be.

For comparison, here is the same system with a Quadro 700 XGL (Ti4400).

If you want to try to squeeze the best performance out of it, you need to test other nVidia drivers. First, you are using very late driver version and those command huge CPU overhead over the earlier releases, hence I don't personally use them and usually use driver version from the era that fits the hardware and the era of games I'm targeting. The slower the system is, the bigger the performance hit will be, but there is not one definite answer. You just need to try them out.

Here is just one example of one user testing different few driver versions and 3DM00:
Geforce 3 Titanium 200 (testing and info, using AOpen model)

I'd start with something like 45.xx and move down to 23.xx or something like that.

You should not also set your expectations too high. In earlier days even high end systems generally couldn't run many new games on high (relatively) resolutions, 32-bit colors, possible AA and settings maxed out. 30-40 FPS was in general very acceptable result and was considered perfectly playable and to achieve this, you often needed to turn AA low or off, drop resolution or sacrifice some visual fidelity.

Use 7.76 driver for your Geforce3, its the oldest or almost the oldest for Geforce3 cards, if they are flying with K6-III, maybe they fit well for P3 also.

Inf file edit needed for 7.76 driver to add Geforce 3 Ti200 there,but after that, have fun.

Dothan Burger wrote on 2025-10-18, 14:37:

tomeldee wrote on 2025-10-18, 14:12:

I can't seem to change the FSB to 133MHz in the BIOS, so I tried setting the jumpers, but it didn't POST unfortunately, not even after BIOS reset.
I tried the fine tuning in BIOS and I could set 120MHz, that seems to be working properly. Unfortunately I can only set it up to 132MHz.

Tomshardware was getting 5353 with a 1.4hgz Athlon and a really early driver 11.01. Many recommend 45.23 but I never get good results with those, I'd go earlier or later like 56.64

How about running a quake 3 timedemo? should be 120+ fps at 1024.

thank you for the advice, I'll try!

Repo Man11 wrote on 2025-10-19, 03:01:

I thought it would be easy to find my GF3 Ti200 and stick it in my P3 system for a comparative benchmark, but it was more work than I thought. Anyway, the result isn't an apples to apples comparison, but it's pretty close. Tyan S1854 with a Coppermine P3 1000, Win98SE, Via 4.45, and Nvidia 45.23. This is after tweaking the CMOS settings to get the highest score I could. Your system is about where it should be.

thank you for taking the time! 😀

marxveix wrote on 2025-10-19, 10:47:

Use 7.76 driver for your Geforce3, its the oldest or almost the oldest for Geforce3 cards, if they are flying with K6-III, maybe they fit well for P3 also.

Inf file edit needed for 7.76 driver to add Geforce 3 Ti200 there,but after that, have fun.

7.76 is the driver I use for example with my Slot A 800MHz GF2 GTS win98 box. It provides absolutely the best performance. I’ve also used it with some Slot 1 builds, TNT2s and such and it is an excellent option for these earlier systems.

There is certainly no harm in testing it with this combo too.

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2025-10-19, 09:53:

If you want to try to squeeze the best performance out of it, you need to test other nVidia drivers. First, you are using very l […]
Show full quote

If you want to try to squeeze the best performance out of it, you need to test other nVidia drivers. First, you are using very late driver version and those command huge CPU overhead over the earlier releases, hence I don't personally use them and usually use driver version from the era that fits the hardware and the era of games I'm targeting. The slower the system is, the bigger the performance hit will be, but there is not one definite answer. You just need to try them out.

Here is just one example of one user testing different few driver versions and 3DM00:
Geforce 3 Titanium 200 (testing and info, using AOpen model)

I'd start with something like 45.xx and move down to 23.xx or something like that.

You should not also set your expectations too high. In earlier days even high end systems generally couldn't run many new games on high (relatively) resolutions, 32-bit colors, possible AA and settings maxed out. 30-40 FPS was in general very acceptable result and was considered perfectly playable and to achieve this, you often needed to turn AA low or off, drop resolution or sacrifice some visual fidelity.

Thank you, I'll try older drivers. And yes.. I realized that I expected too much from this build. It's just that this was the configuration that I never had. In these years I only had a Mendocino Celeron 466 @ 525, with a Voodoo3 PCI 2000 - which was a really fine card btw and if I could travel back in time, I would break my hand for selling it for peanuts... so I guess I just over-mysticised this build 😀

Anyways it's not that bad, and I'm sure when the P3 1400-S arrives, it will make a change.
I also ordered some more RAMs, so I'll have 1GB in total, that's surely better than 256MB, at least for the HDD caused stuttering and loading times.

Yesterday I went back to one of my favourite classics from this era: Call of Duty (the first one from 2003).
I started in the afternoon, and a little after midnight I sat back in my chair and watched the end game credits 😀 (with a few breaks included)
So at least after all this building, reinstalling, driver nightmares - I was able to enjoy it a little finally 😀

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2025-10-19, 10:56:

marxveix wrote on 2025-10-19, 10:47:

Use 7.76 driver for your Geforce3, its the oldest or almost the oldest for Geforce3 cards, if they are flying with K6-III, maybe they fit well for P3 also.

Inf file edit needed for 7.76 driver to add Geforce 3 Ti200 there,but after that, have fun.

7.76 is the driver I use for example with my Slot A 800MHz GF2 GTS win98 box. It provides absolutely the best performance. I’ve also used it with some Slot 1 builds, TNT2s and such and it is an excellent option for these earlier systems.

There is certainly no harm in testing it with this combo too.

thank you guys, I'll try that as well 😀