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Smelly Old News and Underwear

AUNT MARYS Su-27 FLANKER HOMEBASE

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JANES F15

Falcon 4 Benchmarks

AMD K6-2 Benchmarks and experiences.

I bought a 166mhz complete from the Maz at Sound and Computers over 2 years ago...a year ago  added the Realvision Flash 3d Voodoo 1 Card....this combo sucked it up and kicked some serious ass in the fun for dollars category...MAZ builds a BAD ASS puter. He is the man to talk to if you are in need of a Speed Fix. He lives in Port Orchard, Washington so he can be close to Billy Gates.......hehehe.

Then around Feb of this year I picked up a Mtech 581-A motherboard thinking that umm I may need to Overclock the 166.....along with the mobo I picked up 64mb of common 10ns SDRAM. This was all purchased (mobo and ram) for around $250.00 This overclocking the 166 to 187 really helped and I was happy for a bit....I couldn't make my mind up to upgrade to the Intel stuff or not....it was all so damn expensive. Besides with the Intel stuff it seemed like I needed to buy everything again....not gonna happen until something alot more compelling than the P-II comes out. At least not while my wife breaths the same air I do....<VBG> Sooooo the inexpensive K6-2 was the obvious solution since I would be able to just buy a processor and I could keep the motherboard and ram. Neat. So I waited to see if Tom from Toms Hardware would like the processor....he did...I was set.

When the price reached my wife's approval point I ordered it and was set to go. At this point over a 4 month period I had invested $430.00 in my new puter. Was it gonna be a good investment..? Did I actually come away with a system that would serve my purpose of not breathing hard in the sims and games I play...? Well after I ordered the AMD K6-2 and was awaiting delivery, I started benchmarking my puter....in the 187mhz Intel platform....I wanted to see what kinds of real world improvements I got with my money. While it was all well and good for the Intel Faithful to compare it against the P-II, I just wanted to see if I got my money's worth. After all I knew I didn't have the fastest solution...the fastest solution, not withstanding the Intel people is probably some type of SGI....seeing as how I don't really have the balls to suggest a $25,000 machine to fly F-15 or Flanker 2.0 I was left to the reality of getting the machine that would run the apps I have without causing a divorce...hehe. So then how did I do....? Look at the benchmarks below for some concrete examples of what I consider success in a low risk, low investment computer. Then go and read the remainder of my impressions along with specifics on how I set my puter up.

Benchmark Test Used P54 Classic Pentium overclocked 2.5x75=187mhz, in a Mtech Mustang 581-A rev. 006 motherboard. 64mb SDRAM Generic Ram, with 1mb L2 Cache, w/Tseng ET6000, IBM Deskstar 4.3 Gig, Realvision Flash Voodoo 1 Card. Windows 98 Build 1650 w/Direct X 6 Beta . AMD K6-2 300 clocked 4x83=333mhz, in a Mtech Mustang 581-A rev. 006 motherboard. 64mb SDRAM Generic Ram, with 1mb L2 Cache, w/Tseng ET6000, IBM Deskstar 4.3 Gig, Realvision Flash Voodoo 1 Card. Windows 98 Build 1650 w/Direct X 6 Beta 1. NO 3d Now Drivers yet....HELP!!! AMD k6-2 300 clocked 4x83=333mhz, in a Mtech Mustang 581-A Rev. 007 MOBO. 64 Mb generic SDRAM, 1mb L2 Cache w/ Tseng ET6000 2mb, IBM Deskstar 4.3 GIG, Creative LABS VOODOO 2 12mb Card.

I have Win98 Retail and Direct X 6.0 loaded using Glide 2.53, 3.00, with D3D driver Version 2.17 These are 3dfx Reference drivers

 Coming Soon!!!

I plan on purchasing a Voodoo 2 and will update the marks when I have it.

That test is right to the left of what your reading now....yea go ahead move your eyes 2 inches to the left...
3D-Winbench 98 Winmarks note #1 313 539  989  
Quake 2 the Massive1.dm2 demo note #2 19.7 26.8    
Unreal note#3 16.12 512res. 29.61 640res.    
Unreal Timedemo version 2 N/A 21.44average

min 8.86 max 64.98

    
FinalReality note #4 2.07 3.19  3.38  
Incoming by Rage, note #5 18.3 36.9  48.9  
F-15 by Janes Simulations (real important for me) note #6 9.5-10.3 16.8-17.4    
Flying Corps (another big one) note #7 8-9 27-30    
         

Voodoo 1 Variables...all tests were run with these ...

SET SST_SCREENREFRESH=60
SET SST_GRXCLK=60
SET FX_GLIDE_NO_SPLASH=0
SET SST_FASTMEM=1
SET SST_FASTPCIRD=1
SET SST_SWAP_EN_WAIT_ON_VSYNC=0
SET FX_GLIDE_SWAPINTERVAL=0
SET SST_MEMINFO=1
SET SST_MEMINFO_LFB=1
SET SST_MEMINFO_TEX=1

 Important to Note because of the newness of the K6-2 the 3dnow Optimised drivers were not yet availible. More on that after the benchmarks. These numbers should go up.

Notes to consider for the above tests....

1. Winbench was run just to give some idea of where I stand in relation to those who are running the AMD-K6-2 on a 100mhz FSB motherboard. Currently I have no plans of buying a 100mhz Frontside bus capable Motherboard...though the AMD K6-3D+ may change my mind.

2. Quake 2....well as you can see I got some improvement but I have a ways to go. Hopefully the Software drivers for the Voodoo1 will help matters. These will be released on June 30, unless I can get a hold of some of the beta software stuff. Apparently there will not be any Hardware drivers for the Voodoo1 that take advantage of the AMD 3dNow instructions. We will have to depend on the OpenGL extensions...and specific software solutions that AMD will be offering. Bummer they should support the 3 million owners of Voodoo1 cards...(wild shot in the dark on numbers of Voodoo 1 owners....so put your poison pen down). For this test I used the massive1.dm2 at 640x480 resolution, no special benchmark settings...regular game nother words....sound, net, and others.

3. hehehe...yea Unreal rocks. And this is without specific hardware drivers...just the fact that Unreal is optimized to run on the AMD makes it rock. To insure consistent results I took the framerate by starting a new game then dropping the console and starting up the stat fps command. Then I restart the game and pause as soon as I enter the game and my view goes level. Would be terrific to have some type of timedemo available in Unreal....anyways...nearly double the framerate...ooh la la...and the lower 187mhz numbers are with the 512 resolution....NOT the 640x480 resolution of the double AMD numbers...OOOOOH LA LA....The second set of numbers were run after the benchmark fury...this was a neat little mod to allow people to use Unreal as a benchmark....it calculates one run around the opening scene. Gives average and min max numbers...neat.

4. Final Reality is one of my favorite benchmarks, and it tests using Direct X. Im using version 1.01 and the bus transfer numbers are almost more useful to me than the overall numbers. I use this for the bio's tweaking that I do to get that last little bit out of the puter. The test is run no sound.

5. Incoming by Rage software is another of the good Direct X benchmarks....it runs thru its little timedemo routine and spits out an average Frames Per second.  AMD doubled the frames per second....oooh la la.

6. F-15 by Janes....well this is one of the MACK DADDY tests...cause all the wonderful numbers in this or that bench don't mean shit if my flight sims don't run well. Uh.....F-15 NEARLY DOUBLES...oooooh my. I used my "We are not in Kansas mission"  then I paused the sim as soon as I enter the cockpit. This certainly isn't as neat as a timedemo but there is a significant load on the puter....so it still counts. The mission has a buttload of planes up right around the base...with many structures and loads of AAA going off. I needed consistency more than anything....so I paused it. All graphic options are set to FULL ON OH MY LEVELS...ROCKING. Flying this bad boy is SOOOOOO DAMN FUN....SMOOTHNESS....can you say SMOOTHNESS.....I KNOW YOU CAN....<VBG> The chip paid for itself with this sim.....well Ok Unreal is pretty important...hehehe.

7. Flying Corps...this was set again to full on OH MY GOD graphics for both tests...as you can see the MACK DADDY brought the bacon home....AMD kicks some serious booty.

Very important NOTE....if your a Flight Sim Fanatic....notice BOTH flights sims are kicking some SERIOUS ass with the AMD....lets see how important is Quake to you...<VBG>

So there are all the numbers....Now go and read the remainder of my impressions along with specifics on how I set my puter up.

plegrand@earthlink.net