Disappointing CPU upgrade :/

Balfa

Today some new bits for my computer arrived from www.microdirect.co.uk.
They include an Abit KT7A RAID, Duron 850, and (according to the ad) "256MB PC133 RAM ( major brand)".

The original components in my machine were:
AMD K6III 450
Gigabyte GA5AX
128MB PC100 RAM

i still use the same vid card and hard drive:
3dfx Voodoo3 3000 AGP
Seagate 40GB 5,400 ATA66.

I decided to benchmark a before-and-after thing, to see how well spent my money was, so i used glquake (yeah it's old, but it's quick and easy ), with the following command line:
glquake +gl_flashblend 0 +timedemo demo1 -width *
where star was each resolution.

here are the before (1st row) and afters:
640 800 1024 1280
124.3 112.7 86.8 62.1
173.4 126.3 87.0 60.1

It's clearly a lot quicker at low res, but it's actually SLOWER at 1280x1024... this is really disappointing, because that's the res i'd be playing at.

Does anyone have any idea why this would be? and if it could be fixed?

Kali

Easy.. at a higher res you become limited not by your cpu but by your graphics card.
Look at the improvement at low res, thats down to the cpu.

A processor upgrade alone would not make any dramatic impact on that original score of 62, and in your case it dropped slightly.

Sadly the only way your going to (radically) change score that is by replacing your graphics card.

In the meantime the slight drop may be down to default agp settings for your motherboard.

May I ask what game your playing at 1280? I'd guess that would need at least a 19" monitor to be usable in an fps game (which you probably have anyway)

Balfa

as mentioned, GLQuake is the game i'd play at 1280 (on a 17" belinea monitor). With the new CPU i can move comfortably from 800x600 to 1024x768 in CS, too.

what i'm mainly interested in reply-wise, though, are suggestions like the AGP settings, that might be causing that loss of speed at high res.
thanks

chernobyl

many factors leading to small improvements man.
First may be you board.
I assumr since you had original RAM @ 100MHZ in there the FSB is 100MHZ...so that 133 ram is wasted.
Harddisk @ only 5400 and also with a large size of 40gb another slow point.
and most crucial your graphics chip is not a geforce of some incarnation.
CPU alone does not do too much..just check out a 1.2GHZ athlon hammering a Pentium4 1.5GHz in THW Guide.

Gerry

hmm, if you look purely at your before frame rates, as kali said, it is purely limited by your graphics card, at 1280 * 1024. You should have splashed out on a new graphics card as well.

A geforce helps loads in glquake. As a reference, here is my benchmark ( approximately )

p3 600 @ 1004 mhz
geforce 2 gts
glquake timedemo demo1 400fps

I'm not joking here...

Lenny

dam, that processor is o/c a fair bit
what cooling system you use Gerry?

Balfa

well, the only reason i got them is because my dad's computer is gone wallop, and because he doesn't need very high specs, he got me this stuff and took my old stuff

i'm waiting for geforce3 to drop in price, and i'll get me one of them

btw, does anyone know what the optimal speed settings in the bios of an Abit KT7A are?

_CreeD_

If your ram'll take the strain enable -
4k Page Mode
Interleaving / & Set this to 4 on the advanced screen (not near my machine so you'll have to root around for these setting locations yerself)

Set all memory settings in advanced to Turbo or fast (sometimes fast is better than Turbo)
Make sure you set all CAS and Ras-Cas timings to 2.

The V3 doesn't use AGP execute modes afaik so increasing the aparture in the BIOS shouldn't really have an effect - when you upgrade set it to ~half your ram size.
Do not enable sidebanding or fast-writes on anything less than a Geforce2 (no-1 supported them but not very well).

Unlock your CPU (Instructions are at Anandtech.com), besides overclocking it you can change it so that you get 866 (133mhzx6.5) instead of 850(100x8.5) - this will increase your memory bandwidth signicantly (At the mo. you're PC133 ram is most likely just running at 100Mhz).

Gerry

Yes, also you should be able to run it at 933 without much hassle. In the meantime, before you unlock the multiplier, set the memory speed in the bios to host clk + pci clk. This will run the memory at 133, while keeping the fsb at 100. I can't remember exactly where this is in the kt7a bios, its either in Softmenu III or in Advanced chipset options.
Of course all these tweaks will only boost your fps in low resolutions with that voodoo3.