P300MMX?

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gen_angry
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P300MMX?

Post by gen_angry »

Hello,

I am setting up a Windows 98SE machine for that era of games, one thing I've noticed around this board is that people post about running a Pentium 300 MMX. The highest selection that I seem to have is a Pentium 233 MMX, is there a special BIOS revision that has this CPU or something?

edit: I see, "Mobile Pentium 300 MMX". Do these run well as the desktop chips?
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omarsis81
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by omarsis81 »

Yes, you can use the Mobile Pentium MMX 300. It works good, but I guess it was put there for testing purposes only, because (to my knowledge) those notebook processors only came in a cartridge format and couldn't fit in a regular socket 7 motherboard.
Actually, I'm surprised to see the BIOS recognizes as Tillamook when booting!

Having said that, I doubt you can utilize that Pentium 300 at its 100% potential, as it requires a very powerful host CPU.
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leilei
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by leilei »

Depending on what you run of course. Emulating PMMX300 for Quake should be 100% fine.

Many period PMMX laptops skimp on the cache, BIOS optimization possibilities (with overly simplified, sometimes graphic bioses), or a decent video chipset (Neomagic, Chips & Tech are a few of the common bad ones) so often the faster CPU is bottlenecked and serves more as a compensation.
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gen_angry
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by gen_angry »

I have a 6700K, so I gave it a try:

Image

Tried 3D Max 99 benchmark, it just became a glitchy mess but still ran at 100%.

Thank you for the responses. I know with a lot of modern mobile CPUs; they perform much less then their desktop equivalent but did not know that it was not always the case back then.
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SarahWalker
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by SarahWalker »

How fast do you have that 6700K clocked? Those results look pretty meaty.
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gen_angry
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by gen_angry »

SarahWalker wrote:How fast do you have that 6700K clocked? Those results look pretty meaty.
Stock, so 4.0/4.2 turbo.

I can run any other program on request if anyone would like to see how it runs.
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omarsis81
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by omarsis81 »

I have a 4790K clocked @ 4.5 and I can't have the Pentium 300 at always 100% :(
Maybe because you have DDR4 memory and me DDR3?

Sarah: can you please help me to understand the PCem's Stats?

we have: CPU speed: xxx MIPS
Recompile speed: xxx MIPS
Real speed: xxx MIPS

what would be the difference between those?

From Wikipedia I read that a Pentium 75 works at around 126 MIPS, so doing some math
a Pentium 300 should work at around 504 MIPS, but from the numbers in the screenshot, this is very far from being so.
Granted, the CPU may not be working at its peak in Quake 3, but anyway...

Ideally should the real speed be at par with the recompile speed?
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gen_angry
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by gen_angry »

omarsis81 wrote:Granted, the CPU may not be working at its peak in Quake 3, but anyway...
What would be a solid "max cpu" benchmark for win98se? I'll give it a try, I'm curious about this too.

Quake 3 was the first thing that I thought of that could stress a machine of that era.
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SarahWalker
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by SarahWalker »

I have a 4790K clocked @ 4.5 and I can't have the Pentium 300 at always 100% :(
Maybe because you have DDR4 memory and me DDR3?
Your CPU is Haswell, gen_angry's is Skylake. There's likely to be a lot of improvements between those CPUs!

If you want to feel jealous, note that that screenshot is showing only 70% CPU utilisation. Theoretically that system could run Quake III past 400 MHz.

If you want to feel _better_, note that I 'only' have an i5-3550, and struggle to get to 200 MHz in Q3A.
omarsis81 wrote:Sarah: can you please help me to understand the PCem's Stats?

we have: CPU speed: xxx MIPS
With the recompiler on this is the number of instructions that are interpreted (usually as a result of self modifying code). With the recompiler off this is the number of instructions that are executed.
Recompile speed: xxx MIPS
This is the number of recompiled instructions that are executed. Ideally this should be virtually all instructions.
Real speed: xxx MIPS
This is the number of recompiled instructions that could be executed if the CPU thread was running at 100% utilisation. You could take this as 'this is what my system is capable of running if I set the emulated CPU correctly'.
From Wikipedia I read that a Pentium 75 works at around 126 MIPS
That's marketing numbers. Real numbers are always lower. A very rough rule of thumb is that a Pentium in real world circumstances executes 'about' 1 instruction per cycle. This is before any slowdown due to graphics card data transfer - in the Quake III screenshot there will be a huge amount of data going between the CPU and Voodoo, which will cause a lot of stalling on the CPU, hence the drop to about 150 MIPs.
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SarahWalker
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by SarahWalker »

gen_angry wrote:
omarsis81 wrote:Granted, the CPU may not be working at its peak in Quake 3, but anyway...
What would be a solid "max cpu" benchmark for win98se? I'll give it a try, I'm curious about this too.
In terms of things that run badly on PCem, it would be interesting to see where you get with any of these:

System Shock 2
Red Alert 2
Deus Ex
Turok 1 & 2
ZSNES (at least older versions, I tried v0.800 as 'period appropriate')

I'm sure I'll think of some others.
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gen_angry
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by gen_angry »

Red Alert 2 - high detail, me + 7 CPU players.
640x480 - http://i.imgur.com/lSaxvln.jpg
1024x768 - http://i.imgur.com/GtwiFoT.jpg (framerate was choppy, so GPU bottleneck I believe)

Turok 1 and 2 both crash in Win98 by VIDEO_3DFX.dll, will have to hunt down a different copy later.

ZSNES 0.800c - can only use 320x240 ModeX, none of the VESA 2.0 modes work.
Super Mario World - http://i.imgur.com/KThiClm.jpg
Donkey Kong Country - http://i.imgur.com/nCXiexX.jpg

On these, there's no video stats on the bottom section. I assume that means that the game is not using the Voodoo?
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SarahWalker
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by SarahWalker »

Yes, they're all software rendering.

RA2 is getting choppy at 1024x768 because of the amount of data going over the PCI bus - if you look at 'Video throughput', it's getting 33 MB/sec. PCem emulates waitstates on video memory accesses, so this causes a drop in CPU performance. 'Effective clockspeed' tracks this for 2D accesses (Voodoo isn't tracked here yet), you can see at 1024x768 that it's dropped to 134 MHz - over half the CPU time lost to the PCI bus.

For ZSNES, you'll need UNIVBE / SciTech Display Doctor to enable the VESA 2.0 modes.
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gen_angry
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by gen_angry »

And here's some Voodoo stuff:

Deus Ex Demo 800x600 - http://i.imgur.com/RIUBEIX.jpg smooth'ish gameplay, minor stutters.

Turok 1 "Voodoo 2 DirectX 7 Driver" @ 800x600, using "3dfx Voodoo Graphics Default" - http://i.imgur.com/AGUDTg1.jpg
intro + menu is a bit laggy but gameplay itself feels smooth.

Turok 1 "3dfx Custom Driver" @ 640x480 (highest it will let me select) - http://i.imgur.com/mGVplG3.jpg everything smooth.

Turok 2 3dfx Voodoo2, Enabled Mipmapping, Trilinear Filtering, High Detail - http://i.imgur.com/hmmBUBw.jpg everything smooth.

System Shock 2 I'm having difficulty getting to start (bad cracks or doesn't support Win98), so I've given up on it for now.
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leilei
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by leilei »

Turok 1 is slow? :S That was one of the lighter games i've tested since years ago, light enough to do some really really fast video on. also turok would be framecapped ingame

Though as for slow recompiler suggestions, Puyo Puyo 2 is up there and that's a 2D only game that struggles on my computer at the lower Pentiums. It's slower in that than Deus Ex for me :)

Shock 2 should work except for the ATAPI emulation keeping the Safedisc check back so you'll have to crack for the fancier CD checks.

For ZSNES if you're using an S3 card you can fetch and use S3vbe20.zip as well, but keep in mind these VESA2 modes are slow on real Pentiums too. It's actually quite faster to use an older SNES9X windows build from ~2000 in 3dfx Glide mode :)
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gen_angry
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by gen_angry »

leilei wrote:Though as for slow recompiler suggestions, Puyo Puyo 2 is up there and that's a 2D only game that struggles on my computer at the lower Pentiums. It's slower in that than Deus Ex for me :)
http://i.imgur.com/oksla8n.jpg

heh. I can't read Japanese so I haven't a clue what to do with the menu/buttons. I tried to screen it at the 'lowest point', it goes between 78-92% throughout the demo loop. During the actual gameplay part of the demo, it runs between 86-90%
Orchidsworn
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by Orchidsworn »

I am hoping that the first Ryzen refresh will give me around that 6700's performance in this emulator I think 300Mhz would be plenty for a while and maybe my next computer could do a 450 P2 or K6-2. ... maybe a little more as the emulator improves as well can't wait. Even if that is exactly what I am doing.
A. Naim
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by A. Naim »

Edit: And then I posted my entire reply, re-read your post, and realized you said "Ryzen refresh". My, that's some tasty raw egg on my face. :) Keeping post for posterity and info. :)
Orchidsworn wrote:I am hoping that the first Ryzen refresh will give me around that 6700's performance in this emulator I think 300Mhz would be plenty for a while and maybe my next computer could do a 450 P2 or K6-2. ... maybe a little more as the emulator improves as well can't wait. Even if that is exactly what I am doing.
Ryzen has more cores, but a generally-lower clockspeed. Not by much, but PCem doesn't benefit (and doesn't use) more than 3 cores (1 CPU + 2 Voodoo) anyway.

Plus, current reports put Ryzen's overclockability at "not that good". Generally, overclock gets an 1800X to 3.9 to 4.1 GHz - And 4.1 seems to be very hit-or-miss.

That may change with updates, but currently, Ryzen isn't something to buy for single-thread performance.

OTOH, 8 cores will future-proof you for quite some time, with DirectX12 and Vulkan being made for multi-threaded rendering, barring some sudden jump in GHz due to new materials other than silicon - For material reasons, silicon can't manage more than maybe a little over 5 GHz on even the best cooling.

As for Kaby Lake, some reviewers have managed to overclock it to 5 GHz on water-cooling. But that's 4-core.

Quick rule of thumb for CPUs: More cores = Worse GHz. However, Ryzen's lack of overclockability on release is...somewhat surprising, and something I hope gets fixed. The launch was somewhat shaky on drivers, so I'm hoping that's coming with future updates.

For a 6700K comparison, I've got mine overclocked to 4.2 GHz base and 4.4 GHz boost on a non-stock air cooler just using the motherboard's overclocking wizard.

And yeah, for complete honesty, I was hyped about Ryzen, myself. Still am, to an extent. 8-cores at half the price of Intel is great. Not quite what I was hoping for, but still great. And it does put AMD back in the running on mainstream and prosumer computers.

But, if you're worried about Ryzen for general gaming, Ryzen does not "suck" at general gaming. It's got an average of 10% less FPS, based on the reviews I've seen. And an average of around 10% more in multi-threaded workloads than Intel's comparable prosumer CPU.
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omarsis81
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by omarsis81 »

A. Naim wrote:Ryzen has more cores, but a generally-lower clockspeed. Not by much, but PCem doesn't benefit (and doesn't use) more than 3 cores (1 CPU + 2 Voodoo) anyway.
I believe PCem uses up to 4 threads
See here download/file.php?id=569
MAYBE 1 for CPU, 2 threads for each TMU, and the remaining for blitter and other Voodoo stuff, but I'm just guessing

A. Naim wrote:That may change with updates, but currently, Ryzen isn't something to buy for single-thread performance.
Exactly what I said on the first post here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=634
Currently, Ryzen is OK for gaming (I guess better if all 8 cores are used for that certain game) but not so great for PCeming
szadycbr
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by szadycbr »

Omarsis, dont ever BeLIEve , always check to know. PCem uses up to 3 threads in total , the picture from task manager shows nothing more that one of your system programs might use 4th thread . we covered that in here viewtopic.php?f=3&t=613 and check by yourself, do any test with voodoo2 and turn of and on 4th thread if you got 4 in total , u will se absolute no difference in performance as it is not used, when you turn of 3rd thread then there will be drop while running anything on voodoo. in task manager you have CPU coligation to set exact ammount of threads to be used by aplication. chek , dont beLIEve and see always how many percent is on CPU utilization, on all cores, using 4 threads up to 100% means 4 thrads used ,3 threads up to 75, 2 up to 50 , 1 up to 25, same in 4th core cpu with multihreading 8 threads up to 100% but if only 1 thread running then up to 12,5% will be utilized , with voodoo on 8 threads only up to 37.5% will be utilized cos only 3 will be used. do the tests while running sandra99 FPS test on voodoo, then you will see. all that Percentage isnt accurate in win task manager so it often might be slightly higher and ex. on 3 threads with 4 threads total, performance might show up to 76-77% instead of 75 but dont think for a second that it proves 4th thread being used by PCem in 1-2%.
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omarsis81
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by omarsis81 »

szadycbr wrote:we covered that in here viewtopic.php?f=3&t=613 and check by yourself
All right, 3 threads it is then! I forgot about that thread (no pun intended)
Orchidsworn
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by Orchidsworn »

A. Naim wrote:Edit: And then I posted my entire reply, re-read your post, and realized you said "Ryzen refresh". My, that's some tasty raw egg on my face. :) Keeping post for posterity and info. :)
Orchidsworn wrote:I am hoping that the first Ryzen refresh will give me around that 6700's performance in this emulator I think 300Mhz would be plenty for a while and maybe my next computer could do a 450 P2 or K6-2. ... maybe a little more as the emulator improves as well can't wait. Even if that is exactly what I am doing.
Ryzen has more cores, but a generally-lower clockspeed. Not by much, but PCem doesn't benefit (and doesn't use) more than 3 cores (1 CPU + 2 Voodoo) anyway.

Plus, current reports put Ryzen's overclockability at "not that good". Generally, overclock gets an 1800X to 3.9 to 4.1 GHz - And 4.1 seems to be very hit-or-miss.

That may change with updates, but currently, Ryzen isn't something to buy for single-thread performance.

OTOH, 8 cores will future-proof you for quite some time, with DirectX12 and Vulkan being made for multi-threaded rendering, barring some sudden jump in GHz due to new materials other than silicon - For material reasons, silicon can't manage more than maybe a little over 5 GHz on even the best cooling.

As for Kaby Lake, some reviewers have managed to overclock it to 5 GHz on water-cooling. But that's 4-core.




And I am looking at at least one Refresh of Ryzen I think a lot will change by that point and a 300 MHZ jump or so in clocks I don't think is entirely off the table.

Quick rule of thumb for CPUs: More cores = Worse GHz. However, Ryzen's lack of overclockability on release is...somewhat surprising, and something I hope gets fixed. The launch was somewhat shaky on drivers, so I'm hoping that's coming with future updates.

For a 6700K comparison, I've got mine overclocked to 4.2 GHz base and 4.4 GHz boost on a non-stock air cooler just using the motherboard's overclocking wizard.

And yeah, for complete honesty, I was hyped about Ryzen, myself. Still am, to an extent. 8-cores at half the price of Intel is great. Not quite what I was hoping for, but still great. And it does put AMD back in the running on mainstream and prosumer computers.

But, if you're worried about Ryzen for general gaming, Ryzen does not "suck" at general gaming. It's got an average of 10% less FPS, based on the reviews I've seen. And an average of around 10% more in multi-threaded workloads than Intel's comparable prosumer CPU.
A. Naim
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Re: P300MMX?

Post by A. Naim »

You might want to fix your quotes. :)

I think +300MHz and good overclocking improvements are entirely reasonable for the Ryzen refresh, agreed.

Motherboard updates (software and hardware) should also help current Ryzen hit its peak; RAM support is spotty. Windows 10 also needs updated multi-threading drivers, as Ryzen multi-threading is different in a few ways to Intel.

And, as I found out watching a Youtube tech channel, Ryzen also has cache miss issues, which may be something that can be fixed with *microcode, and almost certainly in a refresh.

So, check in three months, and Ryzen should have some good improvements, I think.

* tl;dr - The CPU runs code; microcode runs the CPU.
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