Is the PIII any good?

Helv

Well, is it worthwhile? Forget about clocking a celron cos i couldnt be @rsed frankly. I mean what about the improved web performance? Is this true or is it just a shìtty 1% improvement?

Kali

its not that good at all..
think P2 with a new name and about thirty new assembly instructions that'll never be used (think MMX) now the K7 thats gonna rule.. what with Q3 usin some of its inbuilt 3d graphics routines.. mmmmm

wait till the Merced comes out
now that should be the sh!t

---

So this is my life ... yay!
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Hecate

i heard the merced was scrapped

Koopa

the p3 core is actually slower than the p2 core, but this is more than made up for by the increased clock speeds, and the SIMD instructions (yeah we've heard this marketing before with mmx)
but, without SIMD enhancement, for something like quake1, or even q2, a p2-450 will be faster(slightly) than a p3-450.. something like 1% or 2%.
To put this in perspective, the original pentium chip core was faster than the p2 core.
i still say get a celeron

regi

Hmmm Merced? It'll rock, but it will only emulate x86 (afaik). And of course, you'll have to shell out around 2-3k for it...

The PIII seems to be a slightly redesigned PII with the SIMD instruction set, with a higher clock speed. Its a little like the K6 to K6-2 upgrade. Its simply not worth the money at the moment. If you've got money to burn for a Q3 machine at the moment, get a double PII-400 system, as Q3 will have multiple processor support

dan

Helv

Nope Sam, well both Dell and Gateway are selling PIII at PII prices, both with the exact same specs. Dunno why, it seems quite dumb actually when you think about it.

Helv

Ehhh, I'm not really into burning money really, but I mean since its the same price as the PII it probably is worthwhile buying

Koopa

q3 will use the second processor as the FPU, so it might be worth looking at AMD processors..
you will have to use winnt, or linux, cos win95/98 only has single processor support.
I still think 2 processor systems are pointless for games, cos the performance if you are only running one major app (eg.a game) wont be much faster than the max. performance of one of the 2 processors, 2(or above) processor systems are for server-running-type ppl, and considering you pay more for them, they suck for games.


ps: if the p2 costs the same as the p3, you are being ripped off, as intel has brought down p2 prices.

[This message has been edited by Koopa (edited 19-03-99).]

WhiteWashMan

i recently bought a dell pII 400 and the reason that its the same price as the pIII is that the PIII DOESNT come with dvd, 17"monitor, 13 gig h/v 128mg ram.
afaik its a standard 15", 64mg ram, 8.4 gig h/d. i know theres one or 2 extras. but i dont care coz im getting a new creative labs live sound card for just 30 quid. and i dont mean the cheapy budget one either. and its brand new. can get voodoo2s for 63 quid as well. is it worth gettin one or wait for v3? and what price wil it be does anyone know?

one other thing that caught me today. i loaded up startsiege (not tribes, the mech one) and it did a diagnostic on me puter. came up fine with dell pII 400. under that thou it came up with processor currently running at 333mhz. im like... WTF! anyone know how to change speeds on a dell? ive tried changing the jumpers to give access to the maintenance screen which 'should' allow you to change speeds, but theres nothing in there! i dont want to have to phone dell and go oi! fix me machine coz i know i'll be there for about 5 days on the phone. besides, i kinda like to fix these things meself so i can learn about them
if any of yis have an answer to my queries, i'll send ya a ice-pop!
whitewash

Koopa

most bioses will display the cpu clock speed at bootup

whats probably happened is that your motherboard is running at 83mhz instead of 100mhz, with a p2-400 chip..
you should read the motherboard manual, and change the jumper settings or whatever to make sure the motherboard is running at 100mhz.

SickBoy

Nah Koopa Dell cannot run at 83MHz only the default 66 or 100. WWM I am only guessing here but sounds like u have an XPS R400 ? Well if this is the case to change the cpu speed u need to open the chassis and move the jumper at the bottom right of the motherboard (at the opposite side of the last ISA slot) and power on the system. It should bring you into the diagnostic mode and then u will be able to change the CPU speed in a little menu thingie. I have noticed in some games that do system checks and in benchmarking apps that the dell systems come up short of the actual clock speeds for some reason. I have a 450 that comes up at 448 but thats not as big a gap as u'rs. One other thing u should do is get the A11 bios for u'r system (ftp://ftp1.us.dell.com/bios/xpsr_a11.exe) That will automatically detect the CPU thats installed and u should have no problem with jumpers

SB...