Hi all,
Around Christmas, I asked questions regarding CPU and mother board. I
had many replies, which helped me a lot, and requests for the report
of the update. It took a while because I couldn't run ICR2 using
Indyfast using IBM CPU and had to wait to get Intel P150. I have
tried overclocking both Cyrix and Intel.
Components: (I am not including the price, since they seem to
fluctuate too much to be any reference.)
Mother Board - Asus P/I-P55T2P4 rev. 3.1, 512k L2 cache
IBM CPU - 686 P166+ rev. 3.7, 3.3V
Intel CPU - P15016101760AC, Malay DV, BP80502150, SU071/SSS
Graphic Board - Intergraph Reactor 3D
Memory - 32MB 60ns EDO
Asus P/I-P55T2P4 rev. 3.1 supports 75 MHz and 83 MHz bus speed and is
certified by Cyrix for use with P166+. It uses Intel 430HX chipset.
I decided to go with HX chipset and EDORAM as I couldnt afford SDRAM
(Thus no reason to go with VX chipset. I was also told that HX
chipset using EDORAM is faster than VX chipset using SDRAM).
Performance:
ICR2
IBM - I was getting 18 to 24 fps with all details on, 8 cars ahead/2
behind drawn. I had to use Indysafe as Indyfast does not support
IBM/Cyrix CPU. Little improvement by overclocking CPU to run at 150
MHz (75 MHz*2 as P200+ CPU). Game was very playable at 18 fps, but I
decided I wanted more.
Intel Pentium 150 - I have never actually run this CPU at designed
speed of 60 MHz*2.5 When running it at 166 MHz (83 MHz*2), I always
get 30 fps, unless there is tire smoke somewhere in the sight (then it
goes down to 27 fps). At 150 MHz (75 MHz*2), I get 30 fps unless I am
in heavy traffic or in the pit lane with all other cars. Slowest
frame rate I got was 24 fps.
DMATest Results (PCI Latency Timer = 32)
MS-DOS 6.22 Win95 DOS-prompt
Programmed I/O 27.2 MB/sec 25.3 MB/sec
DMA 98.1 MB/sec 96.5 MB/sec
Sorry, no DMATest results for IBM as it doesnt run with IBM CPU.
DMADiag reported 17.7 MB/sec FIFO and 78.1 MB/sec DMA with IBM CPU
running at 133 MHz in MS-DOS 6.22. I suspect that the performance
between IBM and Intel CUP is due to different bus speed, but I am not
an expert.
One thing I noticed was ICR2 is actually drivable and fun. It wasnt
so with my old system, 486DX2/50, which gave me extremely choopy
graphics in VGA mode.
Win95
IBM/Cyrix is the absolute winner. Using WinBench97, IBM CPU running
at 133 MHz (66 MHz*2) beat Intel P150 running at 166 MHz (83 MHz*2) in
every category. Using Wintune95, I found out that floating point
calculation speed of IBM P166+ is very similar to Intel Pentium 133.
It is not as bad as what I heard before (that IBM/Cyrix P166+ floating
point calculation speed is close to P90 or even P75). When I
overclocked IBM CPU to run at 150 MHz, CPU got somewhat warm, and I
had to reduce the memory timing to run Win95 without crashing for more
than several hours.
Thanks for everyone who game me recommendations.
"At the beginning of any project, a high level of e***ment
can be found with a low level of execution." - Trevor Harris
