TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Greenslade]

Nope! Looks good. That board was made after the capacitor plague time-frame.

For that board, don't worry about the IOShield. It is not required for PC operations. It's mostly a cosmetic thing. I'd go for it! Slap a Core2Quad in it and you'll have a great foundation for a retro XP system!

What period were the bad caps plague time frame.as a matter of intrest?

Sweet! Which C2Q do you have? Or where you going to shop for one?

I don,t have one but the Q9400 is £10 on eBay that would be the same price in Cex if they had it in stock.

 

[mxthunder]

Dang! nice thread! showing off my retro fleet - they change a bit from time to time, but this is the lineup for the most part

 

[lexluthermiester]

What period were the bad caps plague time frame.as a matter of intrest?

It was from 1999ish to 2005ish. It's not actually known when exactly it all started, but that's the general period it happened.

I don,t have one but the Q9400 is £10 on eBay that would be the same price in Cex if they had it in stock.

The Q9400 is fairly solid. And for only 10 quid? Very nice!

 

[68Olds]

Dang! nice thread! showing off my retro fleet - they change a bit from time to time, but this is the lineup for the most part

That's a nice collection.

 

[Courier 6]

Dang! nice thread! showing off my retro fleet - they change a bit from time to time, but this is the lineup for the most part

ah, I see a Voodood 3 3000 there
I have a Pentium III 500 and a 550, two asus P3BF mobos

 

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]

Are the Pentium II easy to overclock? To 450 or 500MHz?

I have a 400MHz version

 

[mxthunder]

some Voodoo3 love

 

[Greenslade]

Sweet! Which C2Q do you have? Or where you going to shop for one?

I thought i would look on Ali Express ,that site is so confusing with so many different prices and some giving free shippingI compared the Q9450 to Q9550 on quite a few sites and apparently there is very little difference between the two.I was going to get the Q9550 for £13.50.But after finding out there is very little differences between the two i got the Q9450 for £8,50 that included £2.50 for shipping the Q9550 was free shipping.And they say it is guaranteed for a year.I just hope it is working as it should.

It was from 1999ish to 2005ish. It's not actually known when exactly it all started, but that's the general period it happened.

The Q9400 is fairly solid. And for only 10 quid? Very nice!

The Q9450 is even better at £8.50 The seller has just sent the Board off.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Are the Pentium II easy to overclock? To 450 or 500MHz?

I have a 400MHz version

Depends on the board you're on. Need bclk and voltage adjustment.

I got 525 on stock voltage and stock cooling on a dual board.

 

[68Olds]

PCI: 44.4 MHz Am I reading that right? Holy Cow!

Glory to Master Kohga!

 

[Ruru]

As I have two C2D E8400's, I'll give the second one to my friend

Dang! nice thread! showing off my retro fleet - they change a bit from time to time, but this is the lineup for the most partView attachment 332644

Love that 3rd to the right case. Would be a hella nice one for a sleeper build

PCI: 44.4 MHz Am I reading that right? Holy Cow!

Glory to Master Kohga!

That ain't anything, check CPU Galaxy's AMD 486 video with 66MHz PCI

 

[Courier 6]

some Voodoo3 loveView attachment 332643

I still have my voodo 3 3000 and 2000, the green box too, the purple one didn´t survive

 

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]

Dang! nice thread! showing off my retro fleet - they change a bit from time to time, but this is the lineup for the most partView attachment 332644

Nice ones!

My fleet :

 

[lexluthermiester]

Are the Pentium II easy to overclock? To 450 or 500MHz?

I have a 400MHz version

As @Mr.Scott said, it depends on the board and the CPU. Silicon lottery was a big factor back then. I would try a 103mhz or 104mhz FSB and see if that works. If so, you might be able to do more with it.

The Q9450 is even better at £8.50

Very nice!

 

[mxthunder]

As I have two C2D E8400's, I'll give the second one to my friend

Love that 3rd to the right case. Would be a hella nice one for a sleeper build

Thanks. I used that for my main P4 build. I was too reluctant to use the dell 4600 as my main XP machine, wanted a home build one, so I set one up in that case.

Nice ones!

My fleet :

That is a lot! I need to spread out my collection timeline a bit. I want a 486 and either a 286 or a 386 compaq deskpro.

 

[QuietBob]

So, what does it take to enjoy YouTube in 1080p on a retro PC these days? Depending on CPU power, a GPU with full hardware AVC/H.264 or VP9 decode is practically a must. A browser plug-in may also be necessary to force AVC streams.

In my previous attempt I was able to view 480p videos utilizing the current VP9 codec on a twenty year old Socket 754 system with the weakest 64-bit 1c/1t Sempron 2500+. That was only possible with a GT1030, a budget 2017 card with VP9 support that is still being sold as new.

Now I decided to test a more modern AM3 platform. I wasn't able to secure the slowest single core Sempron 130 for it, but got an Athlon II X2 based on the same Regor architecture, with the same amount of cache. Since my motherboard allows me to disable cores, I could test both single and dual core performance.

Apparently, this 2009 architecture has enough oomph to stream YT in 1080p60 when coupled with DDR3-1600 dual channel memory and a suitable GPU. In fact, I underclocked the Athlon from the stock 2.7 GHz to 1.4 GHz to find the lower limit of acceptable viewing performance. And by acceptable, I mean less than 5% dropped frames:

I was able to watch 1080p60 videos using the AVC codec with the above settings. The same was true of VP9 in 720p60

VP9 in 1080p60, however, required a lot more processing power, even with the GPU accelerating the stream. I had to overclock the Athlon to 3.0 GHz for this:

And what about single core performance? Unfortunately, even with the maximum overclock of 3.8 GHz on my test CPU, one core would not suffice for 1080p60, regardless of the codec being used. Though 1080p30 was still possible with AVC.

I'm gonna try an oc'd FX chip next to see whether one thread can get me to 1080p60 on the same platform

 

[mtosev]

Bought this.

 

[Greenslade]

As @Mr.Scott said, it depends on the board and the CPU. Silicon lottery was a big factor back then. I would try a 103mhz or 104mhz FSB and see if that works. If so, you might be able to do more with it.


Very nice!

I just tested this board and heard a pop and a burning smellLucky enough it was just the board not the PSU.I will practise my soldering on that board on the caps.I see three bulging caps on the other board 1880,do you see any others on the way out Lex.
The board with the bulging Caps came with the Lian lee case LGR is using in this video along with a PSU for only £1 The PSU was working.The seller was going to dump the PC I just got there in time.That was about a year ago not got much since that time.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I just tested this board and heard a pop and a burning smellLucky enough it was just the board not the PSU.I will practise my soldering on that board on the caps.I see three bulging caps on the other board 1880,do you see any others on the way out Lex.

Oh yeah man, those caps need replacing!

 

[Mr.Scott]

So, what does it take to enjoy YouTube in 1080p on a retro PC these days? Depending on CPU power, a GPU with full hardware AVC/H.264 or VP9 decode is practically a must. A browser plug-in may also be necessary to force AVC streams.

In my previous attempt I was able to view 480p videos utilizing the current VP9 codec on a twenty year old Socket 754 system with the weakest 64-bit 1c/1t Sempron 2500+. That was only possible with a GT1030, a budget 2017 card with VP9 support that is still being sold as new.

Now I decided to test a more modern AM3 platform. I wasn't able to secure the slowest single core Sempron 130 for it, but got an Athlon II X2 based on the same Regor architecture, with the same amount of cache. Since my motherboard allows me to disable cores, I could test both single and dual core performance.

Apparently, this 2009 architecture has enough oomph to stream YT in 1080p60 when coupled with DDR3-1600 dual channel memory and a suitable GPU. In fact, I underclocked the Athlon from the stock 2.7 GHz to 1.4 GHz to find the lower limit of acceptable viewing performance. And by acceptable, I mean less than 5% dropped frames:

View attachment 333051

I was able to watch 1080p60 videos using the AVC codec with the above settings. The same was true of VP9 in 720p60

View attachment 333053


VP9 in 1080p60, however, required a lot more processing power, even with the GPU accelerating the stream. I had to overclock the Athlon to 3.0 GHz for this:

View attachment 333055

And what about single core performance? Unfortunately, even with the maximum overclock of 3.8 GHz on my test CPU, one core would not suffice for 1080p60, regardless of the codec being used. Though 1080p30 was still possible with AVC.

I'm gonna try an oc'd FX chip next to see whether one thread can get me to 1080p60 on the same platform

FX has worse single thread performance than the Athlon you're on now.
Need to go with a cheap Intel chip to get better.

 

[QuietBob]

FX has worse single thread performance than the Athlon you're on now.
Need to go with a cheap Intel chip to get better.

I know the FX line has low IPC, but I'd still expect an oc'd Piledriver to do better than a Regor.
For instance, this Athlon II X2 215 has an ST score of 184 in CPU-Z at 3.8 GHz, or about 48 points per 1 GHz.
But my FX-8300 does about 270 at 4.5 GHz, which is around 60 pts/GHz. So the FX would theoretically have nearly 50% better ST performance overall. Given they're on the same platform, maybe the difference will translate into better YT experience as well?

Naturally, even a first gen Core would do better than the FX in ST.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Give it a rip. You got me interested.

 

[MaxiPro800]

My dual CPU miiiiight be receiving some cooling upgrades, assuming I won't have clearance issues.

For that matter, a rather corroded 694D I had found at a recycler comes in quite handy for heatsink tests, as well as two dead Coppermine chips. (neither will POST.)

 

[QuietBob]

Aaand we've got it!
YouTube 1080p60 on a single thread of a 2012 CPU. The FX-8300 underclocked to 3.0 GHz was enough to provide a passable experience with the depreciated AVC codec:



It took 3.5 GHz to achieve the same result using the current VP9 codec:

In addition, Vishera is capable of flawless 1440p60 VP9 streaming when configured with 2m/4t at 3.0 GHz

Now let's see whether a 2009 Phenom II can match it with four real cores...

 

[Mr.Scott]

I learned something new today. Thank you