Compaq EN P600 w/i820 chipset upgrade questions

On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 10:55:45 -0500, Eddie Crismond
wrote:

kony wrote:

snip


Well, Geforce 2 is not hardware T&L, Geforce 3 was the first
gen. to do that, so the GF3 should be substantially better
at making most of the slow CPU, but then obviously the video
card isn't so fast these days either. From what I vaguely
recall of that era system/video, a GF3 might be at least 60%
faster at typical games.

Are you sure about that? I thought that the GeForce 2 and the Radeon
7500 both had T&L built in. Does the Geforce 3 have 'hardware T&L' while
the Geforce 2 only has 'T&L'?

My memory of this is a bit fuzzy but perhaps it was that GF2
relied on more host processing for the T&L (host being CPU).
Either way I'd still expect a substantial speed difference,
though whether it matters is hard to say... if a GF2
achieved 9 FPS and the GF3, 14 FPS, it's still unplayable.
Not that I think the framerates would be THAT limited by the
GF3, but I just can't be sure on a CPU so old.



What do you mean by FSB and bandwidth?
A P3, even using Rambus, is still very slow in these
regards, it's not like it's making up any ground in those
areas. While Rambus memory has higher throughput, even
faster memory than yours uses still loses it's much of it's
edge due to higher latency.


By Front Side Bus (FSB) I mean, that some P3's are designed to run on a
100Mhz FSB, while slightly laters P3's run on a 133Mhz FSB. I think this
Compaq has a P3 600/133. I know, Moore's Law has made the 33Mhz
difference irrelevant, since we have effective 400 and 800 Mhz FSBs now.

yes but 133MHz FSB is still incredibly slow for gaming...



When I say bandwidth, I'm talking about memory bandwidth. What has more,
PC800 Rambus, or PC100/133 SDRAM?

Rambus has more bandwidth.


Does the latency of Rambus make its
memory bandwidth compared to PC133 SDRAM irrelavant?

Not irrelevant, but significantly less important.

Is the FSB of this
processor a bottleneck?

Bottleneck to that specific system, no.
To modern gaming in general, yes the 133MHz single-data rate
FSB is too slow.

Can I get by with PC600 RDRAM if the BIOS
supports it?

I don't know, but that it's a Compaq can't help but decrease
the odds... don't know the mem bus clock options for that
chipset either.


I might just get this thing to have basic usablity, and
worry about building a Sims platform later.


That seems a good plan.


That's nice of you but probably not going to help enough for
semi-modern games.

Well, I'm not a gamer, even though I can put a PC together. I have
little gaming experience, or evidence to the contrary with regards to
semi-modern games.

Semi-modern games are about as demanding as it gets for a
PC.

kony wrote:
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 10:55:45 -0500, Eddie Crismond
wrote:


Well, I'm not a gamer, even though I can put a PC together. I have
little gaming experience, or evidence to the contrary with regards to
semi-modern games.


Semi-modern games are about as demanding as it gets for a
PC.

Well, The Sims isn't like Windows XP, where it is one copy per system.
If The Sims! 2 doesn't run that well on the Compaq 600/133 with PC800
RDRAM, she can alway have me build her, or buy, a faster system, and
just reinstall her copy of The Sims! 2 on that. She likes the original
Sims! also. This thing, with some additional memory should be able to
handle the original Sims plus a few expansion packs. If I can procure
some used working PC800 RDRAM for the Compaq, later, I could build her a
P4 i850 system with some components from the Compaq. The P4/i850 system
won't be the top of the line, but she doesn't need a googleplex of FLOPS.

Thanks for the tips
Eddie