My XP2000+ Stetler Render Speed Results

[Jerry Jones]

Riddle solved!

I was using the wrong .dvp test file.

__________________________________


1. DV test: 6:11

2. MPEG test: 7:01

Faster results were posted by others, but the times among the top five are very close:

http://www.hyperactivemusic.com/MS%20Pro%206.0.htm

My board:

1. Elite Group K7S5A with SiS 735 chipset

2. Corsair PC2100 DDR memory

3. Windows 2000 Service Pack 2

I will say it certainly "feels" faster... I opened Ulead Cool 3D and everything rendered so quickly it was funny!

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Dr Mordrid]

Almost sounds like the memory controller/bus is peaking out, something like the VIA chips had a problem with since the MVP3.

Fortunately VIA fixed it in their new Athlon chipsets. Maybe SiS has some work to do.

Extreme Tech had this to say about the K7S5A;

"Performance isn't quite as stellar as early reports indicated. Performance in most of our benchmarks--both applications and synthetic--trailed the other systems in this roundup. "

Most of the comparisons I've seen show the SiS somewhat slower than the new VIA KT266A chipsets (since the memory controller was fixed).

Dr. Mordrid

[Jerry Jones]

I solved the riddle.

I initially used your original .dvp test file by mistake.

Since discovering my mistake I have switched to the newest .dvp project file and my times now make a lot more sense and are among the fastest on the board.

Jerry

[Jerry Jones]

Problem solved. I was using Doc's original .dvp test file instead of the latest version.

Now that I've switched my test times are among the fastest.

Jerry Jones

[Elie]

Hi Jerrold,

I bought a dual AMD 1800+ as you already know, and I just love the AMD 760 chipset. Actually it was the only reason why I bought AMD to begin with.
I never trusted VIA or even SIS, as far as I'm concerened they are clones, and I find the best solution is to go with a manufacturer that produces it's own chipsets, AMD 760 for dual Athlon and Intel 850 for the P4's.

I do strongly suggest if it's possible, test your system with an AMD 760 motherboard and see the difference.

My RT2500 has been extremely stable with my setup and eventually will upgrade the AMD 1800's to a pair of 2000+ when they come down in price


Also please note that your setup WILL benefit from a dual AMD system because they adapted the Alpha dual bus technology which is extremely faster than Intels, so if you are rendering things alot, then I would say go for it!

[Dr Mordrid]

I've been giving thought to doing a dual XP system myself in a month or so.

The boards I'm looking at are the Tyan Tiger MP or Thunder or perhaps the Asus A7M266D. Whatever it is it'll be getting at least a gig of ram.

Why?

1. need the 64 bit PCI slots for something I can't discuss

2. my RT-2000 does support MP

3. have other s/w coming in that can use it as well.

Elie; did you buy 1800+ MP's or did you go for just plain 1800+'s? I've heard that most plain ones will work if matched from the same lot.

Dr. Mordrid

[Elie]

Hi Doc,

Just so you know, the newer boards like the Asus and the Tyan Tiger MPX will not detect the AMD XP's as MP's like the older Tyan Tiger S2460 (which is the one I bought).

AMD realised they're mistake and forces the companies to properly detect each chip to make people buy MP's if they want dual CPU systems.

The MP are ruffly $100 more and don' tknow if it would be worth it or not.

If they do go down in price, I will buy dual 2000 MP's instead, but for now I'm extremely happy with my dual 1800 XP's

[Dr Mordrid]

I guess the Tiger MPX and Asus are out then

Any word on if the Thunder detects XP's or is it blind like the older Tiger?

Dr. Mordrid

[KuroNeko]

Funny, all tests I read about Asus and MSI boards say they run XP and even Morgan Duron duals. Never heard of this news that AMD would force manufacturers' hand either

AMD does state they give no warranty whatsoever on dual operation with any other Athlon than the MP.

Neko

[Dr Mordrid]

The ASUS K7M266D, MSI K7X and Tiger MPX have been my first choices.

This is because their 64 bit PCI slots run at the full 66mhz while those on all the Tyan Thunder and Tiger MP only run at 33mhz.

Full speed 64 bit PCI running at 66mhz would help in testing that new 64 bit PCI board I'm getting in a huge way.

I'm not 100% sure on this, but from my readings it looks like the newer (and apparently Duron/XP disabled) boards use the AMD 760 MPX chipset (762 NB/768 SB).

The boards that use the older 760 MP chipset (762 NB/766 SB) are apparently the ones that can use the cheaper chips.

So....apparently the difference is that the use of the 768 SB disables them but also enables the 66mhz 64 bit PCI bus.

Tyan Thunder: 760MP w/33 mhz PCI/64
Tiger MP: 760MP w/33 mhz PCI/64

Tyan Tiger MPX: 760 MPX w/66 mhz PCI/64
Asus A7M266D: 760 MPX w/66 mhz PCI/64
MSI K7D: 762 MPX w/66 mhz PCI/64

Still researching.....

Dr. Mordrid

[sergiovalentino]

Hey Doc,
keep your eyes open if you are planning to buy an Asus.
I'm going to RMA mine after 24 hours!!!!
Yes, at first time bios detected the two XP 1800+ as MP, and everything is ok until first boot after Win XP installation.
Just in time to see the dual graph working in task manager and suddenly machine reboot itself.
From this moment bios have seen just only the second cpu and after a night without lithium battery system no more post and no more boot keeping cpu's funs and mb's led on!!!
Made some searches and discover many users in the same situation also with real Athlon MP.

ciao

[Jerry Jones]

I've finally solved the riddle of the puzzling test results!

Not surprisingly, it was my mistake.

I had forgotten that Terry had created more than one test file.

My slower than expected scores were due to the fact I was using an earlier version of the Terry Stetler test .DVP file.

It was a .DVP file that I had burned to a CD (into a folder labeled Stetler test file) several weeks ago when Terry first came up with this idea.

This afternoon, I was in Cool 3D and it just felt so much *faster* than it did when I was using the Thunderbird 1.4gHz chip.

So I wondered if maybe I should download the file on Mark's site just to rule out the possibility I was using the old file.

After doing so I immediately recognized it as the newer version.

This time I have run the correct test (twice) and the results make so much more sense:

1. DV file creation time: 6:11
2. MPEG file creation time: 7:01

Still not the fastest results on the board - no doubt due to the difference between the SiS 735 and KT266a chipset speeds.

http://www.hyperactivemusic.com/MS%20Pro%206.0.htm

But my MPEG creation time is the 2nd fastest on the board.

And... considerably faster than my Thunderbird 1.4 was on the same board.

Sorry for the confusion. :-)

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

I have this surplus AMD Athlon 1.4gHz processor so I'm going to build a cheap system around it and have multiple computer platforms here at home.

This time I'm going to buy the Elite Group K7AMA motherboard based on the ALi MAGiK chipset.

Jerry Jones

[KuroNeko]

Multiple systems is definitely the way to go. I have four, hooked up through a simple Cybex KVM switch, saves lots of space and multiple keyboards, mice and monitors.

These switches can be controlled via the keyboard so you can tuck them away out of sight. They run from PS/2 power, so no need for a powerbrick. Neat!

Why not go for an Elitegroup 266a board? Not that much more expensive I believe?

Iwill has a very good AliMagik board, as does Asus. They use the latest revision of the chip, the older revisions were really slow, so make sure your ECS board has the newest chip version. The Ali chip is really nice in that it has 8 interrupt lines, no more conflicts!

Neko

[Dr Mordrid]

sergiovalentino;

Have you gone here and installed the latest drivers and BIOS yet?;

http://download.asus.com.tw/mb_dl_menu.asp?l1=1&l2=10&l3=14&mid=1

Dr. Mordrid