• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.
  • The forums have been upgraded with support for dark mode. By default it will follow the setting on your system/browser. You may override it by scrolling to the end of the page and clicking the gears icon.

TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

Latest free score. A Panasonic NV-MV16EP VCR, with cords and remote. Plays tapes with the clearest picture, has an quite nice (albeit quite barren for my taste) OSD, and also has a Jet Rewind feature.
 

Attachments

  • 20210811_214350.jpg
    20210811_214350.jpg
    2.3 MB · Views: 91
A question for you Serious Retro guys. My PC world starts at about 2002. I've never used DOS or played DOS games. (yes, I am ashamed) :shadedshu:
These are dated from 1981 to 1992...did you play any of these games?

Without even looking close, I'm gonna claim about half or more of the AD&D list (love Azure Bonds), Jewel of Darkness, Guild of thieves....Star Command, Wizard's Crown......Cyber Empires, and that Sierra on the top shelf, next stack in Red looks familiar...
 
Without even looking close, I'm gonna claim about half or more of the AD&D list (love Azure Bonds), Jewel of Darkness, Guild of thieves....Star Command, Wizard's Crown......Cyber Empires, and that Sierra on the top shelf, next stack in Red looks familiar...
Quest For Glory III :respect:
 
Play it again, Sam?
I've installed nineteen games on my two "Win7min" systems with integrated graphics to see if they could handle them. The titles span nine years, eight APIs and fifteen different game engines. I was able to use the built-in benchmark for Quake, Quake II, SiN, MDK 2, Serious Sam and Unreal. For the rest I simply compared the framerates at the very beginning of a new game, when you first gain control of the player character. While those numbers do not reflect actual gameplay, they could provide a general idea of how each title performs. I tested at the lowest resolution and detail settings to get true to life results. They should be considered a "best-case" scenario for the hardware.

On paper, the Radeon Xpress 200 is about 30% slower than the GeForce 6100, though both IGPs released in the same year. Their specifications are nearly identical, apart from the faster core clock on the GF6100 and one more Vertex Shader on the RX200. Both IGPs are using 128 MB of shared DDR1 memory at 400 MHz. As previously, the RX200 is paired with the slowest 64-bit Intel desktop CPU, and the GF6100 with the slowest offering from AMD.

Let's look at theoretical figures first:
vs.jpg

Would real software mirror these differences? Let the games begin!
ogl.jpg

What a beating! The Intel rig stands no chance against the AMD system in OpenGL. Nvidia's integrated solution proved 1.5 to 2.5x faster.

What about Direct3D?
d3d.jpg

Payback time! The RX200 is able to match and even outperform the GF6100 in some titles. But let's keep in mind that those older games utilized the fixed-function rendering pipeline of DX6/7, and leaned heavily on CPU power. The Celeron's stronger floating-point unit paves the way to ATI's victory here. Once we get to the DX9 era, the RX200 performs much worse than its rival.

On the whole, the Radeon Xpress 200 is the clear winner in our competition for the weakest DX9 GPU :clap:

Although the GeForce 6100 doesn't look much better in specs, it was able to eclipse ATI's IGP by a wide margin. Even the huge clock speed benefit provided by the Celeron D 326 didn't make a difference most of the time. On the other hand, games tend to favor low memory latency and the AMD system profits from the CPU's integrated memory controller. Nvidia's IGP seems to have capitalized on the much lower RAM access time afforded by the Sempron 2500+ (92 vs 166 ns on the Intel platform).
 
Last edited:
PATA/SATA converter

LOL, I think I still have about a half a dozen of them converters. Never did have a single one of them go bad and I'm sure they probably still work just fine. :p
 
Latest free score. A Panasonic NV-MV16EP VCR, with cords and remote. Plays tapes with the clearest picture, has an quite nice (albeit quite barren for my taste) OSD, and also has a Jet Rewind feature.
Each time I see features like "Jet Rewind", "Turbo Drive", "Flash Rewind" or similar, I get chills knowing what's going on the inside of these things. Fact is, VHS inventors (JVC) never intended the tape to travel THAT fast, which was one of the reasons why pretty much all of the earlier VHS machines had slower mechanisms. These older units would also unload tape from the tape drum before doing so, and then would have to thread the tape back, around the head drum in order to play.

However, this takes time, and people were getting impatient (read spoiled) ... SO, certain companies decided to save a lot of time by rewinding the tape while keeping the tape looped around the head drum. And even though this approach wasn't ideal, it didn't cause any stress or damage, until they've increased the rewind speed to absurd level. Nowdays, we have a whole new "flash" standard, where the 180-minute tape gets wound back in 60 seconds OR less. And THAT is causing a lot of stress on the tape, especially if it's older cassette, used many times before.

And don't get me even started on the physical damage, I've seen situations where the VHS machine tore the tape from the spools, because the sensors failed to detect the tape position & the whole thing slammed to a halt, breaking pretty much all the gears in the process. Sony unit by the way, not Funai or something similar.
 
3DMARK01SE

Intel Pentium III-S 1.4Ghz
Asus V8200 Deluxe 200/460 Mhz

3DMARK01SE, Intel P3 1.4Ghz, Geforce 3.JPG
 
I was about to ask about benchmarks and you beat me to it :) Could you run some CPU tests on the fastest Tualatin?
I would gladly ! Can you tell me some benches for testing ?
 
I would gladly ! Can you tell me some benches for testing ?
You could try some of the benchmarks I used. 3DMarks have a CPU test, AIDA and PerformanceTest 9 will run on XP, CPU-Z has a 32-bit exe. I also bench with FlopsCPU.
 
Here we go !

I tried PT9 but it would not run so I used PT8.
 

Attachments

  • 3DMARK03 Intel PIII-S CPU Test.JPG
    3DMARK03 Intel PIII-S CPU Test.JPG
    178 KB · Views: 101
  • CPU-Z Bench Intel PIII-S.JPG
    CPU-Z Bench Intel PIII-S.JPG
    177.6 KB · Views: 96
  • Passmark 1.JPG
    Passmark 1.JPG
    204.5 KB · Views: 97
  • Passmark 2.JPG
    Passmark 2.JPG
    204.9 KB · Views: 96
  • Passmark 3.JPG
    Passmark 3.JPG
    202.7 KB · Views: 98
  • SuperPI.JPG
    SuperPI.JPG
    195 KB · Views: 109
This fastest Pentium III is only 17% behind my Celeron D 326 in 3DMark03. Considering a three year architectural gap and the +1.13 GHz clock on the Prescott, this is an awesome score!
I'll run the other benchmarks & will get back.
 
This Gainward Geforce 3 has really stood the test of time and has moved house with me more than half a dozen times since I first bought it 20 years ago.
Pretty sure I bought it from Overclockers UK.
gainward-gf3-p4.jpg
 
This Gainward Geforce 3 has really stood the test of time and has moved house with me more than half a dozen times since I first bought it 20 years ago.
Pretty sure I bought it from Overclockers UK.
View attachment 212375
Love the card ! How about a 3dmark01 run ?
 
@F-Zero
I ran these bechmarks in 64-bit Win7, but I used the 32-bit exe:
1.jpg2.jpg3.jpg4.jpg5.jpg6.jpgcpuz_32.jpgpi.jpg

Posted from the actual rig :)
 
Thanks @QuietBob ! I'm really impressed on how the Pentium 3 holds his own being 3 years older how you said. But I got some good news. I got my final piece for my P3 pc.

Antec PlusView 1000 AMG

I hope you like it as it was really a crazy time collecting everything.
1.jpg
2.jpg
3.jpg
4.jpg
5.jpg
 
Each time I see features like "Jet Rewind", "Turbo Drive", "Flash Rewind" or similar, I get chills knowing what's going on the inside of these things. Fact is, VHS inventors (JVC) never intended the tape to travel THAT fast, which was one of the reasons why pretty much all of the earlier VHS machines had slower mechanisms. These older units would also unload tape from the tape drum before doing so, and then would have to thread the tape back, around the head drum in order to play.

However, this takes time, and people were getting impatient (read spoiled) ... SO, certain companies decided to save a lot of time by rewinding the tape while keeping the tape looped around the head drum. And even though this approach wasn't ideal, it didn't cause any stress or damage, until they've increased the rewind speed to absurd level. Nowdays, we have a whole new "flash" standard, where the 180-minute tape gets wound back in 60 seconds OR less. And THAT is causing a lot of stress on the tape, especially if it's older cassette, used many times before.

And don't get me even started on the physical damage, I've seen situations where the VHS machine tore the tape from the spools, because the sensors failed to detect the tape position & the whole thing slammed to a halt, breaking pretty much all the gears in the process. Sony unit by the way, not Funai or something similar.
I've had crappier machines kill tapes (in my case IRRADIO (Goldstar OEM'd clone) and a Funai) but breaking gears on a Sony really is a first. Thankfully this Panasonic is as good as the previous Grundig I had (I bet that one used either Panasonic or some high quality Philips gear inside as the quality was way too good for a cheap machine.) and since I don't use the Jet Rewind feature (I don't even need it lol) I have high hopes it will be just fine. I will have to crack my i5-3470 machine open and figure out how to record audio from its PCI-E Winfast PxDVR3200H Tv Tuner, and set up a RF cable to be able to record AV (since the only things available on that Panny is RF In/Out and a AV SCART output)
 
F-Zero, I have the beige, non-windowed, non-side vent version of your Antec case. I have an i5 4670 CPU & RX 480 8GB GPU in it. I bought several 80mm PWM fans for it & added USB 2.0 & 3,0 to the front 3.5" bays. It is a cool case for a retro, but also very useful for a more modern system too.
 
Love that Antec SOHO tower!!! I have that same one without the side window.
I've had a couple of systems installed in it, but it's currently sitting empty at the moment.................Dang, makes me want to put a system together in it again....... :p
 
Back
Top