rec.autos.simulators

 Hi there,

I have a P166 and a miro SV 20 graphics card. My log:on results are
323 CPU
120 Graphics Card

I want to upgrade my hardware. Do you think I should buy another graphics
card e.g. a matrox or a P200 ???

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Jon Robinson

:> I have a P166 and a miro SV 20 graphics card. My log:on results are
:> 323 CPU
:> 120 Graphics Card
:>
:> I want to upgrade my hardware. Do you think I should buy another graphics
:> card e.g. a matrox or a P200 ???
:>
:You probably want the new graphics card.  For a 166, total system
:performance is mainly a function of the system bus speed and changing the
:CPU clock will give very little performance increase.
:I don't think that you can completely trust GP2's numbers but for
:reference, my
:P166 with a Matrox MGA 2Mb gets
:322 CPU
:463 Video Speed.

I don't know how these calculations work, but my "lowly" (in GP2's
eyes anyway) P133 with 2Mb Matrox and UniVBE manages:

Speed (c.f. DX2-66): 259 (322 * 133/166)
Video speed: 497 !!

Ken
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hoots about my opinions.          Web:  http://www.ride.demon.co.uk

Based on this I would have to agree with your statement. It looks like
once you reach a certain point (P133??) the video card becomes more
important than the CPU speed. I would be interested to see what kind of
video speed is recorded for people with a P120 or P100 with a Matrox
card. I wonder at what point the video speed starts to drop off?

These are just my thoughts, but...

Generally in DOS games, CPU power does NOT affect to video speed.
Because DOS cannot use any acceleration functions used in Windows,
only important thing is a raw copying speed from main memory
to graphics card memory.

GP2 measures that copying speed and if you have fast simms, a PCI-bus
and a good graphics card with fast memory, you will likely get high
results,
no matter what CPU you have.

Now, almost all Pentiums and PPros are made with 60MHz or 66MHz bus
speed
and a PCI-chipset, so it's just normal to get equal video performance
with
P-100 and PPro-200 (both has 66MHz bus).

This is not a Millennium-only feature, all craphics cards will behave
the
same way.

Now, notice one interesting thing: 60MHz bus is slower than 66MHz, and
usually this affect to video performance too. So P-90, 120, 150, 180,
PPro-150, 180 and 6x86-P150+  WILL therefore get a bit lower video
results.

I have a P-100 and Millennium 4MB, which gets 193 CPU and 452 video
speed.
I overclocked it to 120MHz, so that the bus-speed dropped to 60MHz and
I got something 230 CPU speed, but ONLY 420 video speed. Game speed
was exactly same as before, so I jumped my mb back to 100MHz.

Another interesting point is, what would be the video speed for
6x86-P200+, which has 75MHz bus. Propably it would beat all
previous records!

  Tomi

        To add to this discussion, I must say that I had originally a P100 and a
Trident 9440 video board (argh!). I can't recall their indexes, but I
upgraded the CPU to a P150 and the video board to a Diamond Stealth 2001
(Trio 64+), and the video indexes grew up 3x, but I still couldn't tur on
much stuff under SVGA. Then I returned the Diamond, and the video index
obviously went down, but the sensation is almost the same. Then I
overclocked the P150 to 166 Mhz, and the video index went up again. I am
now wondering if I should buy a Matrox to see any difference (in fps, at
least)...

[snip snip]

mumbled:

CPU:    238
Video: 171

BTW I have a S3-Trio64.
Do you think Microprose has some sort of deal with the hardware world?
Because I am now considering upgrading my system. Before GP2 I was
REALLY satisfied (EVEN with Win95; I have 32Mb).

Brian

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   Wisdom is the difference between knowledge and experience....
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   HomePage : http://www.worldonline.nl/~brian
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I have a P100 and a Trio64V+ (2Mb), running s3spdup.

Speed (c.f. DX2-66): 193
Video speed: 472

I had a great improvement on speed changing the motherboard: before I
had an Intel Plato 2 and got something like: CPU:193 , Video: 328; now
I have an Intel motherboard also but with the newest chipset 430VX.

I'm using a P133 with 16RAM and 1meg ATI video card. In VGA mode I can get
all the details and textures and the CPU Occupancy can still manage to not
go over 125. At this rate it is damn fast.

mumbled:

Can you tell me what s3spdup is?

Huhm, I thought I had P90-P100 performance with my overclocked AMD

better (!):

Speed (c.f. DX2-66):  238
Video speed:   171    (Trio64 (2 Mb)).

Go figure !

Brian

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
   Wisdom is the difference between knowledge and experience....
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

   HomePage : http://www.worldonline.nl/~brian
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