TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Deleted member 185158]

UT3 should be very easy to run, hell it even runs on dual core K8 chips decently. Admitedly with PhysX off, but I thought that it should be rendered well on very overkill GPU compared to that game's requirements. PhysX wouldn't work well on AMD hardware, as AMD basically has to emulate or translate code, so there's a big performance penalty. Even then, Mafia 2, which uses PhysX, dropped to 20-11 fps at time with RX 580, but without PhysX it worked at engine locked 60 fps all the time.

I mean Cell Factor was completely designed from the ground up for and with dedicated physx. So its just running well physx maps or not.

With PPU, there's a 3rd driver added that most games just where not optimized for. The maps with physx just seem quickly slapped together and then implemented into game play later, like in the UT3 example.

Still need to test a large handful of games also. One is on that box, Tom Clancys ghost recon. So I'm not yet to jump on conclusions with reasons to why, what where when and how .... yet.

Thank you for the convo!! I am going to pay attention closely to determine which games where written from the ground up that utilizes physx VS games that had maps created, then later implemented like UT3, which you had a separate DL for the physx Mod Pack.

Oh, here's the PPU2 (the green board) actually installed in the 12400F. The card is a gtx 989.

 

[The red spirit]

I mean Cell Factor was completely designed from the ground up for and with dedicated physx. So its just running well physx maps or not.

With PPU, there's a 3rd driver added that most games just where not optimized for. The maps with physx just seem quickly slapped together and then implemented into game play later, like in the UT3 example.

Still need to test a large handful of games also. One is on that box, Tom Clancys ghost recon. So I'm not yet to jump on conclusions with reasons to why, what where when and how .... yet.

Thank you for the convo!! I am going to pay attention closely to determine which games where written from the ground up that utilizes physx VS games that had maps created, then later implemented like UT3, which you had a separate DL for the physx Mod Pack.

If money isn't tight, you can get another GPU just for PhysX rendering and it doesn't have to be same model as yours, but around same performance to see gains. I think LTT tested that in past. And it doesn't need SLI either.

 

[stinger608]

Does anybody here have experience with 2009~2013 systems and Windows 10?
I wonder if Windows 10 would somehow affect the performance of X48/X58/X79 systems (and period correct video cards) compared to Windows 7

I have Win10 on my X58 X5675 rig and nothing to complain there. Runs perfectly fine

And, like @Lenne stated, Windows 10 seems to run and a lot of the "older" systems pretty fair.

I have Windows 10 installed on an ole Alienware X58 system that has a quad core and it runs smooth as silk.

Seems to pretty much keep up with many of the mid range newer hardware without any issues.

 

[The red spirit]

And, like @Lenne stated, Windows 10 seems to run and a lot of the "older" systems pretty fair.

I have Windows 10 installed on an ole Alienware X58 system that has a quad core and it runs smooth as silk.

Seems to pretty much keep up with many of the mid range newer hardware without any issues.

Not sure if someone mentioned, but W10 has Spectre and Meltdown patches, meanwhile Windows 7 or older don't. Also W10 does have more background tasks running and it got rid of CPU only desktop composition capabilities.

 

[Deleted member 185158]

If money isn't tight, you can get another GPU just for PhysX rendering and it doesn't have to be same model as yours, but around same performance to see gains. I think LTT tested that in past. And it doesn't need SLI either.

I'm trying to do a specific detailed write up for TPU forums geared only on Ageia physx hardware, drivers and game play examples.

That's why I'm running the card. And it's an engineering sample. So there's a bunch of test modes and such... I was hoping to write about as well. But the lack of information about the switches and developer software is so thin, I might as well do the writing specifically for the original PPU (1) instead where most people can actually get one and play with it.

 

[The red spirit]

I'm trying to do a specific detailed write up for TPU forums geared only on Ageia physx hardware, drivers and game play examples.

That's why I'm running the card. And it's an engineering sample. So there's a bunch of test modes and such... I was hoping to write about as well. But the lack of information about the switches and developer software is so thin, I might as well do the writing specifically for the original PPU (1) instead where most people can actually get one and play with it.

Oh, I wasn't aware of that. As far as I know the latest PhysX cards were roughtly as fast as 9800GTX in physics rendering performance, perhaps that may explain why using that card with GTX 980 results in lagging.

 

[Deleted member 185158]

Oh, I wasn't aware of that. As far as I know the latest PhysX cards were roughtly as fast as 9800GTX in physics rendering performance, perhaps that may explain why using that card with GTX 980 results in lagging.

980 plays all the games fine, minus the physx maps obviously. So, I don't think it's that.

Also, the ONLY Nvidia physx drivers I've tried is the 8.09.xx that I mentioned earlier.

Besides that, am using specifically the AGEIA drivers, so we don't confuse the hardware.

Physx drivers 9.0x.xx and above will not run a physx ppu without some file mumbo jumbo I have no intent to dive into.

So using an NVidia gpu for physx will not be part of the article.

 

[3x0]

980 plays all the games fine, minus the physx maps obviously. So, I don't think it's that.

He meant the GTX980 will wait for the (slower) PPU to finish physx calculations to render the scene causing FPS drops. Try logging your GPU usage during those FPS drops, might provide insight what's happening.

 

[Deleted member 185158]

He meant the GTX980 will wait for the (slower) PPU to finish physx calculations to render the scene causing FPS drops. Try logging your GPU usage during those FPS drops, might provide insight what's happening.

The physx "mod pack" for UT3, I've tested with runs the physx map at over 300 frames per second at the start of the map.

This frame rate slowly declines. The physx count sway doesn't seem to effect this issue.

So within a few minutes, say like 5, the fps will have deteriorated to still playable above 30fps, however the decline continues to single digits in a matter of more time, 10 minutes.

So with newer hardware, it's super smooth and playable. I've found it's a slow degradation of frame rate, which if there was a bottle neck, it would be from the start of the map. Well I'm way over that expectation.

I want to say that havoc physics in some of these games running off the cpu may have some conflict with the dedicated physx, but of course it's only investigation at this time.

Not that a lot of this really matters, not many people cared for Ageia back then for exactly the reason of this discussion.

So far, from opinion, game developers where not and still ARE not up to the challenge of more code to deal with and all the issues that come with it.

Nvidia physx is now open source. This basically signified the death of any hardware run physx for the foreseeable future.

 

[izy]

Found an old computer in my storage, didnt had time to check the components but i took some pictures.

Edit: as i remember the computer works but the GPU shows many artifacts and not long after booting and going into OS it crashes, was a nice computer back in the day.

 

[Greenslade]

You'll need to change the clock from 12 hour to 24 hour too. I see a PM in your picture, so it is currently set to 12 hour.

Press & hold to shutdown is normal. You don't have an operating system to handle a normal shutdown.
So F2 doesn't take you into the BIOS? You got there somehow, because that screen picture is in the BIOS.

Yes you are right , but not from the point where it says about the Floppy drive failure.
I have ordered some CMOS batteries. Hopefully, I can get it to work.

 

[framebuffer]

And, like @Lenne stated, Windows 10 seems to run and a lot of the "older" systems pretty fair.

I have Windows 10 installed on an ole Alienware X58 system that has a quad core and it runs smooth as silk.

Seems to pretty much keep up with many of the mid range newer hardware without any issues.

Not sure if someone mentioned, but W10 has Spectre and Meltdown patches, meanwhile Windows 7 or older don't. Also W10 does have more background tasks running and it got rid of CPU only desktop composition capabilities.

Uhm OK, so it works fine but could be slower due to more background ops and security patches
This was pretty much my concern, but if the performance hit is limited, benefits could be greater in any case

Will do some tests, it's the only way to be sure

 

[The red spirit]

Uhm OK, so it works fine but could be slower due to more background ops and security patches
This was pretty much my concern, but if the performance hit is limited, benefits could be greater in any case

Will do some tests, it's the only way to be sure

Also newer Windows versions are more I/O heavy. My Windows 7 install on secondary computer is often more responsive with hard drive than main computer with Windows 10 and SSD.

 

[hat]

It's brutal on CPUs. My Athlon X4 870K often drops to 30 fps or lower. I have watched i7 920 gameplays and it drops to 40 fps. That Core 2 Quad taht you have is probably the slowest CPU that may run it passably. Core 2 Duos don't run it well. And fps is unstable, due to complexity of physics during destruction. Despite all that, it's not nearly as intensive for GPU.

Interesting. I don't remember having performance issues with Guerrilla, and I'm sure I've played it with a Q6600, though it was probably at 3.6GHz. I'm sure I've played it with older AMD systems too... probably a dual core Phenom somethingorother.

 

[The red spirit]

Interesting. I don't remember having performance issues with Guerrilla, and I'm sure I've played it with a Q6600, though it was probably at 3.6GHz. I'm sure I've played it with older AMD systems too... probably a dual core Phenom somethingorother.

Dude, overclocked Q6600 is way faster than Athlon X4 870K. That Athlon is only slightly faster than stock Q6600. And basically Sandy i7 is all you need for good experience.

 

[framebuffer]

Also newer Windows versions are more I/O heavy. My Windows 7 install on secondary computer is often more responsive with hard drive than main computer with Windows 10 and SSD.

I guess this is somehow directly related to the increased background activity, but in my specific case it's not an issue since I'm using only SSDs on those systems

Btw I just noticed that Microsoft is declaring very similar system requirements for 7 an 10

1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor*
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

What does it mean if Windows isn't supported? - Microsoft Support

Learn what it means if you have an older version of Windows that's no longer supported.

support.microsoft.com

Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor or SoC
RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit
Hard disk space: 16 GB for 32-bit OS or 20 GB for 64-bit OS
Graphics card: DirectX 9 or later with WDDM 1.0 driver
Display: 800 x 600

Windows 10 system requirements - Microsoft Support

Windows 10 system requirements

support.microsoft.com

 

[The red spirit]

I guess this is somehow directly related to the increased background activity, but in my specific case it's not an issue since I'm using only SSDs on those systems

You can just see it in task manager. Windows 10 has more threads and handles in background.

Edit:
More info: https://superuser.com/questions/1065826/handles-vs-threads-vs-processes

 

[MaxiPro800]

I couldn't get this lucky even if I tried. Another Geforce 4 Ti4200 (OEM?) 128MB and an Audigy 1394 SB0090.

 

[hat]

Dude, overclocked Q6600 is way faster than Athlon X4 870K. That Athlon is only slightly faster than stock Q6600. And basically Sandy i7 is all you need for good experience.

I never owned an 870k. I'm thinking I might have played it on a Phenom 7750 BE, Phenom II 550, and/or Athlon II x4 630. All were overclocked. Either way, I never noticed a significant difference between any of those chips. Moving on to quad cores, like the i7 920 I had for a while, only enabled me to do more at once. The only upgrades that ever significantly impacted performance for me was when I did a whole system upgrade from a Pentium 4 system with an Nvidia 6800XT graphics card and 1GB DDR 400 to an Athlon64 x2 system with 2GB DDR2 and an ATI x1800somethingorother.... and later when I replaced that ATI card with a low end 8500GT (the ATI card was artifacting pretty bad sadly), things slowed down a lot. Later, an 8600GTS made things bearable, and finally a 9800GT made things good again. After that, nothing I did really mattered much.

 

[The red spirit]

I never owned an 870k.

All you have to know is that it's weak and single threaded performance is between stock Core 2 Quad and stock first gen Core i series.

I'm thinking I might have played it on a Phenom 7750 BE, Phenom II 550, and/or Athlon II x4 630. All were overclocked. Either way, I never noticed a significant difference between any of those chips. Moving on to quad cores, like the i7 920 I had for a while, only enabled me to do more at once.

That's very bizarre, because some games perfectly utilized 4 cores and literally doubled performance. Good example is Racedriver Grid, launched in 2009. If you use dual core, performance is cut in half. Basically the same applies to Red Faction Guerilla. IMO dual cores were basically obsolete the day quads launched and only our tolerance of less than ideal fps, kept the myth that "dual core is fine" alive. And in games like Racedriver Grid, those two extra cores are a difference between playable and unplayable. It's pretty crazy, but fps gets to 30 with dually and to 60 with quad. In red faction dual core dips fps bellow 20.

The only upgrades that ever significantly impacted performance for me was when I did a whole system upgrade from a Pentium 4 system with an Nvidia 6800XT graphics card and 1GB DDR 400 to an Athlon64 x2 system with 2GB DDR2 and an ATI x1800somethingorother.... and later when I replaced that ATI card with a low end 8500GT (the ATI card was artifacting pretty bad sadly), things slowed down a lot. Later, an 8600GTS made things bearable, and finally a 9800GT made things good again. After that, nothing I did really mattered much.

Now that's more believable. I did experiment myself and I upgraded FX 5200 to ATi X800 Pro. It was surprisingly boring upgrade as both cards were able to run the same games, but one did 30 fps at low-medium and 800x600 often, meanwhile another did 60 fps at high-ultra and 1024x768 or even higher resolution. That sounds like a lot, but it really did nothing meaningful to me as gamer. And then I got ATi X800 XT PE and that thing got a bit more fps, but otherwise brought nothing. I wonder if we will feel the same decade later about RTX 3060 and RTX 3090.

 

[Greenslade]

Cool system

. Another one of my fav Retro guys

 

[Deleted member 185158]

3800+ x2 used in hwbot team cup 22'.
DryIce and LN2 for this final score.

1.52pts CB R11.5

3800+ x2 at 3130mhz
DDR XMS Xpert at 208mhz 2-2-2-2 1t 2.9v
DFI LanParty UT SLI-DR NF4

 

[Robert B]

MATTYAS feat. KRISTINA S.(Xristina Salti) - SECRET LOVE

FRESH LOOT!!! Hmmmm ... I'm addicted to HW but I guess that you already know it by now.

1. MSI K7T PRO - SK.A KT133 with a mystery Ceramic Sk.A CPU It has massive 3900uf caps that are like skyscrapers.
2. ABIT BX-20 with a P2-400 CPU. It looks like it is an OEM board made by Abit. I found various BIOS files but no manual. Well,.... OEM, stripped down version or not, an 440BX is still an awesome board
3. ASUS P/I-P55TP4N Socket 7 - a very nice board
4. Mitsumi CD-ROM DRIVE 16bit I/F CARD 74-1881A, controller for old CD-ROM units. 2 pcs.
5. NOS Enermax Coolergiant 535W - absolutely minty fresh with a golden case. This would fit nicely into a Slot A Golden Orb kind of build.
6. Misc VLB, ISA Controllers
7. Trident 9440 VLB Video card made by SPEA
8. Cardex/Gainward Tseng ET4000 with funky SIPP like memory. Probably an industrial card. PN: 9307-20
9. PCI Trident TGUI9440-1 bought for the VRAM chips.
10. ZT52FA250HSS - ZOTAC ZT52FA250HSS ZOTAC GeForce FX 5200 128bit 256MB AGP
11. Gainward 8 MB Intel i740 ICUVGA-GW804
12. ATI Rage 128 AGP
13. P3 550
14. Zalman S775 cooler.
15. Two BIOS chips in search of their missing mother(board). I'm sure that the 286 motherboard is already minced meat ... RIP
16. Intel 486-DX2 66MHz 5V SX911
17. Intel Pentium 133MHz SY022
18. Intel Core 2 QUAD Q9400 SLB6B
19. Intel Core 2 DUO E8600 SLB9L
20. ASUS 8800 GT TOP EN8800GT-TOP/G/HTDP/512M
21. Misc stuff.

My DDR/DDR2 RAMBUS stash is growing nicely.

 

[Audioave10]

MATTYAS feat. KRISTINA S.(Xristina Salti) - SECRET LOVE

FRESH LOOT!!! Hmmmm ... I'm addicted to HW but I guess that you already know it by now.

1. MSI K7T PRO - SK.A KT133 with a mystery Ceramic Sk.A CPU It has massive 3900uf caps that are like skyscrapers.
2. ABIT BX-20 with a P2-400 CPU. It looks like it is an OEM board made by Abit. I found various BIOS files but no manual. Well,.... OEM, stripped down version or not, an 440BX is still an awesome board
3. ASUS P/I-P55TP4N Socket 7 - a very nice board
4. Mitsumi CD-ROM DRIVE 16bit I/F CARD 74-1881A, controller for old CD-ROM units. 2 pcs.
5. NOS Enermax Coolergiant 535W - absolutely minty fresh with a golden case. This would fit nicely into a Slot A Golden Orb kind of build.
6. Misc VLB, ISA Controllers
7. Trident 9440 VLB Video card made by SPEA
8. Cardex/Gainward Tseng ET4000 with funky SIPP like memory. Probably an industrial card. PN: 9307-20
9. PCI Trident TGUI9440-1 bought for the VRAM chips.
10. ZT52FA250HSS - ZOTAC ZT52FA250HSS ZOTAC GeForce FX 5200 128bit 256MB AGP
11. Gainward 8 MB Intel i740 ICUVGA-GW804
12. ATI Rage 128 AGP
13. P3 550
14. Zalman S775 cooler.
15. Two BIOS chips in search of their missing mother(board). I'm sure that the 286 motherboard is already minced meat ... RIP
16. Intel 486-DX2 66MHz 5V SX911
17. Intel Pentium 133MHz SY022
18. Intel Core 2 QUAD Q9400 SLB6B
19. Intel Core 2 DUO E8600 SLB9L
20. ASUS 8800 GT TOP EN8800GT-TOP/G/HTDP/512M
21. Misc stuff.

My DDR/DDR2 RAMBUS stash is growing nicely.

I think you have a Toy Store there now!

 

[Robert B]

A Toy Store indeed! I have even room to spare atm.

While I have quite a few parts in stock I also know that this is a race against time. I am quite sure that in a few years I'll see them only in pictures so I try to save anything that comes up on my radar.

Many will be sold to other enthusiasts some will be kept. While I may fit the description of a hoarder I do not consider myself as a regular one. All the parts are nicely packed and tested. Some are restored to a very high standard. I can move my stuff at a moments notice. All my parts are kept in a separate location. At my home I have only one PC. My main one and that's it. You see, I like to think that there is a method to my madness. Big money can be made from these parts even if it takes a lot of work, time and dedication. This activity fits me like a glove. No matter the component and no matter the value, a sale is a sale.

I never thought that I'll travel down the retro collector path. In my opinion everything is cyclic and this is the reason why I have moved my area of interest from the 1980-2000 interval all the way up to the 2010. For example 775 boards are also entering my collection on the hunch that at a moment in time some other people will want them. Some models are even 15 years old. Time flies. (Damn it).

The thing with nostalgia is that you never know when or how bad it will hit you. In my case it started after my father passed away in 2015. I went through all the stages: buying expensive stuff from other sellers, buying and repairing stuff from the flea market, making connections and buying from them and now I want to start unloading the stuff I have gathered. In fact, I already have sold quite a few parts on a local auction site. In 4 months I have even return customers. The business is slow but in this game you need patience otherwise you will achieve very little.

At the very least if my plan doesn't pan out as I want, I can say that I had a blast with them! The pile of stuff that needs repairs is growing but I am not flinching.

More later.