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Author Topic: Quake II on a 68060 @ 50Mhz?  (Read 9438 times)

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Offline KennyR

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Re: Quake II on a 68060 @ 50Mhz?
« Reply #74 from previous page: June 17, 2003, 02:37:03 AM »
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Why is it Amiga users are the only ones who seem to have these mysterious issues with their PCs?


Because we don't like spending time on them.
 

Offline Hammer

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Re: Quake II on a 68060 @ 50Mhz?
« Reply #75 on: June 17, 2003, 02:45:10 AM »
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Yes, it's a pile of crap. I could build a better PC with my eyes shut. As mdma said, it's a Time computer.

A Time Computer? I'm not familiar with that particular brand or make.  

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Memory under Windows will inevitably become more fragmented. Since the whole memory list must be parsed until it reaches a memory slot large enough on each memory allocation, fragmented memory means more parsing and therefore is mem allocs are much slower and cause a lot of VM paging to go on. This is why people complain that Windows, when left a few weeks online, becomes a lot slower. In fact, after a few days intensive usage Windows should be able to do nothing else but whack the HD.

There are utilities that defrags your memory at periodical basis.

Secondly, our company's development Pentium 4 1.8Ghz (with 850 chipset + ~1Gb Rambus RAM) server** (always online) doesn't have these characteristics e.g.  "In fact, after a few days intensive usage Windows should be able to do nothing else but whack the HD".

**PS Runs on Windows 2000 Advance Server.

For Linux "memory fragmentation" issues refer to
http://www.surriel.com/zone-alloc.html

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Linux+%22memory+fragmentation%22+&meta=

In a real perspective, Linux does have its own share of memory fragmentations.

A solution against memory fragmentations refer to
http://www.rsinc.com/services/techtip.asp?ttid=3346&PV=YES
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Offline KennyR

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Re: Quake II on a 68060 @ 50Mhz?
« Reply #76 on: June 17, 2003, 02:56:45 AM »
Time Computers are a UK company that specialise in making really substandard PCs look cheaper and better than building one from scratch or getting a PC from someone who can. Their customer support is terrible, their hardware is substandard, and I strongly recommend anyone reading this not to choose this company. Their PCs are custom branded but their motherboards are usually cheap, poor brands.
 

Offline Hammer

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Re: Quake II on a 68060 @ 50Mhz?
« Reply #77 on: June 17, 2003, 03:11:36 AM »
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KennyR wrote:
Time Computers are a UK company that specialise in making really substandard PCs look cheaper and better than building one themselves. Their customer support is terrible, their hardware is substandard, and I strongly recommend anyone reading this not to choose this company. Their PCs are custom branded but their motherboards are usually cheap, poor brands.

What kind of motherboard brands are they using (specifically your motherboard type)?  

I notice some of their PCs lines uses a Microstar International a.k.a MSI. The same motherboard manufacture for Dell Computers (some of their product lines).

I know of several cheap motherboard brands e.g. Luckytech, Luckystar, Asrock (ASUS’s arm for cheap HW), Gigabyte, PCpartner, PCchips, Chaintech  and 'etc'.

With nForce I/II based chipsets the mobo brands they can range from the follows vendors;
. ABIT
· Albatron
· AOpen
· ASUS
· BIOSTAR
· Chaintech  
· DFI
· EPoX
· FIC
· Gigabyte
· Jetway
· Leadtek
· MSI
· Shuttle
· Soltek
(mobo list from nforcershq.com)
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Offline KennyR

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Re: Quake II on a 68060 @ 50Mhz?
« Reply #78 on: June 17, 2003, 03:19:32 AM »
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What kind of motherboard brands are they using (specifically your motherboard type)?


I honestly don't know. :oops: It's embarassing, but I don't have a clue. I'd have to boot the machine to look, and it's 3am. But judging by the drivers downloadable from the Time support site, it's most likely Gigabyte, MSI or Intel.
 

Offline Hammer

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Re: Quake II on a 68060 @ 50Mhz?
« Reply #79 on: June 17, 2003, 04:27:18 AM »
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But the performance impact of these things shouldn't really cause XP to be so slow.

They do actually, especially on VIA based chipsets.  
It could be the differences between capturing real time TV capturing without dropping a frame VS dropping alot of frames. This is especially  true on the older VIA chipsets.

Not much of a problem with nForce II since I’m personally still using MS WinXP's UDMA IDE drivers).
 
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UDMA66/100 cabling: Don't know.

You can know your UDMA mode via
"Press Windows key + Pause key" -> click to "Hardware" tab->  click to "Device manager" button -> click right button mouse "Properties" menu (on top of "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers") -> "Advance Settings" tab.

My current nForce II box’s UDMA mode is at 'Ultra DMA Mode 5**'. The MSI 6330 V3.5 box is also operating (remote desktop access) at 'Ultra DMA Mode 5' (this is via  the old VIA 686B southbridge
;-) ).  

** Slower slave UDMA100 HD was fitted on the same IDE channel (due to personal file transfers). It should be at 'Ultra DMA Mode 6'.

What about yours?

Judging from your Athlon (I’m guessing it's a Thunderbird core) 1.3 Ghz’s (without over clock) age and your chipset is VIA, one could guess that your VIA chipset would be in region of KT133x or KT266x. Unless you recently upgraded to VIA KT333x/KT400 class.  VIA KT400A has substantially improved due to Nvidia's nForce II competition.

Does your Athlon box uses DDR SDRAM or normal SDRAM?

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MS Boot'Vis: No.

This is a free MS utility that optimises your XP setup i.e. in regards to boot time and how many NT services should be turned on.  

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Memory timings: Don't know.

Where does one begin? One could write pages on this topic. This is related to your BIOS settings.

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Time probably gave me two 64MB DIMMS, or even worse, four 32MB ones. I'd need to buy at least 128MB DIMM. It's too costly a step for me, considering it's not even my computer. And I have no idea what kind to buy, or whether they'd conflict with my current ones...

But you bought a Pegy?????(I think you did...).   Was your Pegy pre-configured?  Did you assemble this by yourself?
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Offline Karlos

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Re: Quake II on a 68060 @ 50Mhz?
« Reply #80 on: June 17, 2003, 12:26:28 PM »
To be fair, Kenny, your PC system does sound a bit screwed up, considering I actually had WinXP (Pro) running on a 5 year old K6-II 350 with 128Mb (100MHz FSB) at one point.

It wasn't the fastest set up, but waiting a minute for IE6, well, that's taking the p*ss somewhat. Maybe 5-15 seconds, but a minute?

To strangle an 1.3G Athlon back to slower performance than that old PC sould take some seriously bad hardware or software conflicts.

Win2K sp3 was perfectly usable on the machine (after adding a bit more RAM). Booting took a bit longer than I would have liked though ;-)
int p; // A
 

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Re: Quake II on a 68060 @ 50Mhz?
« Reply #81 on: June 17, 2003, 01:11:14 PM »
@Kenny

My missus is a customer services manager at Time Head Office.  PM me and I'll get it sorted for you.

and your right, their Tech Support is sh!t.  They pay the people that do it £10,400 per year and you don't have to know about computers to get a job doing it!

That is the main reason why the Customer Service dept are overworked with complaints, as the tech support blokes are thick.  She's been there 5 years, I honestly don't know why she stays!

The people that build them are even worse, not one single employee in the build centre speaks english apart from the manager!
 

Offline mikeymike

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Re: Quake II on a 68060 @ 50Mhz?
« Reply #82 on: June 17, 2003, 03:47:42 PM »
@ mdma

You have to wonder whether some people go into business to deliver the worst service possible and still make a profit.
 

Offline Aegis

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Re: Quake II on a 68060 @ 50Mhz?
« Reply #83 on: June 17, 2003, 04:27:12 PM »
Time PCs do suck... most of the components are junk. The only branded PCs I'll use are Dell - and whilst the build quality is pretty good even they drive me crazy 'cause Dell uses lots of non-standard design practices - Non ATX motherboards, customised Intel chipsets, simplified BIOS etc.

The only good PC is one you build yourself...  :-)
Catapultem habeo. Nisi pecuniam amnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.
I have a catapult. Give me all the money, or I will fling an enormous rock at your head.
 

Offline KennyR

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Re: Quake II on a 68060 @ 50Mhz?
« Reply #84 on: June 17, 2003, 04:45:13 PM »
Well, I have still no idea of my motherboard brand or revision. The PC's Device Manager doesn't help and I got no maunuals or drivers with the PC. However, most controllers on the board are VIA.

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You can know your UDMA mode via
"Press Windows key + Pause key" -> click to "Hardware" tab-> click to "Device manager" button -> click right button mouse "Properties" menu (on top of "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers") -> "Advance Settings" tab.


Ok, running at Ultra DMA Mode 5. HD access still uses up all CPU time, though. The system seems to work great, until VM kicks in some minutes of use after booting. Then it's goodbye to any form of speed. Even downloading something makes it impossible to do anything else. It's like using non-DMA, to be honest.

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Does your Athlon box uses DDR SDRAM or normal SDRAM?


Almost certainly non-DDR. I can't verify this though.

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(about memory speed settings) This is related to your BIOS settings.


Since I got not motherboard or BIOS manual, I'm forced to leave these settings well alone. There's nothing much I can do, anyway, since most of the memory settings are ghosted and can't be changed.

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But you bought a Pegy?????(I think you did...). Was your Pegy pre-configured? Did you assemble this by yourself?


The Pegasos Open Firmware "BIOS" was pre-configured and optimised by bPlan for the Pegasos-1 and has no obvious hardware settings anyway. It's not like a PC BIOS that has to support hundreds of different configurations. It's just a matter of finding DIMMs and AGP/PCI cards that work, then the machine is fully optimised the moment you turn it on.
 

Offline Casper

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Re: Quake II on a 68060 @ 50Mhz?
« Reply #85 on: June 17, 2003, 05:04:37 PM »
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To be fair, Kenny, your PC system does sound a bit screwed up, considering I actually had WinXP (Pro) running on a 5 year old K6-II 350 with 128Mb (100MHz FSB) at one point.


Yes, I've used Windows XP on a similar setup (K6-II 450, 384Mb) and it was nowhere near the slowness KennyR describes. On that system IE6 loaded in less than 1 second, and that computer was several times slower than an Athlon. Actually, I tried a lot of Windows versions on that machine and XP (with the candy look disabled) was actually the fastest on it, faster than both Win95, ME and 2000, especially when running games.

I've run Win2000 on a 64Mb P133, and that was still faster than what Kenny describes.

Something must have gone horribly wrong with XP on that machine, I'd try a complete reinstall.

WinXP on my 1.8GHz Pentium IV 512Mb rdram is actually more responsive now than my old AGA A1200 with a 060 is, even with the candy stuff turned on (I still prefer AOS though).
 

Offline Casper

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Re: Quake II on a 68060 @ 50Mhz?
« Reply #86 on: June 17, 2003, 05:20:46 PM »
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For example, after booting, with no additional apps, my Win2K is using over 100M of ram according to task manager. What for, for f*cks sake? I have all non essential services turned off and the others set to load when required).
It's unreal. I can watch the CPU usage jump over 50% just typing into this window.


That's one of the great mysteries of Windows :-). And the more RAM you have to more it will use. My theory is that it does a lot of caching to memory of something. I've done a few tests and it seems like you get a lot of it back if you need it (i.e. you run something that's very memory intensive).

Watching the CPU usage in the task manager isn't a very accurate way to determine the load on your computer. Windows does a lot of maintenance stuff (such as defragging memory etc) on low priority when it's idle, so that's probably what you see. If you start using something more CPU intensive it will stop doing these things and devote more CPU time to that.

(my god, I'm starting to look like a windows fan boy :-) )
 

Offline KennyR

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Re: Quake II on a 68060 @ 50Mhz?
« Reply #87 on: June 17, 2003, 05:27:27 PM »
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mdma wrote:

My missus is a customer services manager at Time Head Office. PM me and I'll get it sorted for you.


Pointless now, the machine is long past its 1 year warranty. And what really pisses me off is that the DVD-ROM/CDRW/CD-ROM combo drive broke after a few months since purchase, and they ignored any attempts from us to get it replaced under warranty. We phoned twice on their £1 a minute support hotline, only two have them tell us that it was a driver conflict and to update drivers, even though it needed no drivers! £15 down the drain, and we had to buy a new drive anyway, which was not cheap by any means.

Time Computers are thieves. Don't ever buy anything from them.
 

Offline Hammer

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Re: Quake II on a 68060 @ 50Mhz?
« Reply #88 on: June 20, 2003, 02:33:26 AM »
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Well, I have still no idea of my motherboard brand or revision. The PC's Device Manager doesn't help and I got no maunuals or drivers with the PC. However, most controllers on the board are VIA.

What about SiSandra2003?  

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Ok, running at Ultra DMA Mode 5. HD access still uses up all CPU time, though.

Sounds like a VIA KT class chipset. At least VIA KT133A. IF your motherboard's PCB colour has a pink/reddish in colour, it’s certainly (or a good bet) a MSI built motherboard.

I don’t think Intel will manufacture X86 motherboards for the Athlon CPU series. That's leave us just the Gigabyte brand.

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Almost certainly non-DDR. I can't verify this though.

Can you write down the BIOS text*** after the Video's BIOS initiations? (Press the pause/break key to pause).

**During initial memory checking phase.

For example, one of my old test machine has the following output

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG  , An Energy Star Ally
Copyright (C) 1984-2002, Award Software, Inc

W6330 v3.6 100702 10:00:51

Main Processor : AMD Athlon(tm) 1400 Mhz
Memory Testing :  524288 OK

Primary Master :  Sony CD-RW CRX140E 1.0n
Primary Slave  :  Samsung DVD SD-616F F103
Secondary Master  :  ST360011A
Secondary Slave  : Maxtor 2B020h1 WAH21PB0

Press DEL to setup SETUP

10/07/2002-8363-686B-6A6LMM4AC-00
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This immediately tell us the following.

1."W6330" relates to MSI-6330 (this is true for other MSI based boards e.g. MSI-3xxx). This directly related to MSI's user manual PDF downloads.
2. "v3.6" is the BIOS revision. May also relates to motherboard revision e.g. this board is 6330 V3.  
3. "100702" is date for BIOS's build creation.
4. I have to decode "8363-6A6LM4AC-00" from a utility.

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Since I got not motherboard or BIOS manual, I'm forced to leave these settings well alone. There's nothing much I can do, anyway, since most of the memory settings are ghosted and can't be changed.

Some memory settings may rely from another setting for it to be turned on.  Refer to the above.

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The Pegasos Open Firmware "BIOS" was pre-configured and optimised by bPlan for the Pegasos-1 and has no obvious hardware settings anyway.
.

I thought this board is aimed at the enthusiasts/tinker market...(sigh)...  
 
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It's not like a PC BIOS that has to support hundreds of different configurations.

The reason for case is for catering different users. Everybody has different needs and wants. The amount of tweaking capability is the results from intense X86 motherboard competition e.g. some manufactures use this as a marketing tool.

Quote

It's just a matter of finding DIMMs and AGP/PCI cards that work, then the machine is fully optimised the moment you turn it on.

On ASUS nForce II based motherboard it has several general BIOS profiles** e.g. aggressive, optimal, safe and ‘etc’.

For motherboard user manuals refer to (without knowing your BIOS's boot text).

http://uk.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Support/Manual/Manual_Socket+A.htm

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_list.php?kind=1&CHIP=17&NAME=Archives
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Offline jeffimix

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Re: Quake II on a 68060 @ 50Mhz?
« Reply #89 on: June 20, 2003, 03:16:00 AM »
I got a 1.4 Ghz(P4) Sony vaio, did a clean install of windows Xp to replace ME (DSL software wouldn't install because I had a DVD player... yeah M.e. was that bad) It's got a 32MbR Geforce2Mx, 128 Megs of RAM. Xp seems to run just fine, optimized for prettiness minus the fact I use 'classic' style. I've never done anything too fancy to it either, just the normal killing of background tasks, and things that load at log in. If this is slow, I wanna Peg, or A1 with OS4...
\\"The only benchmarks that matter is my impression of the system while using the apps I use. Everything else is opinion.\\" - FooGoo