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**The Freak** · 19 September 1999, 05:36

Forgot to mention that I'm using directx 7 (4.07.00.0242), which worked fine with my overclocked TNT. However, I've also used directx 6.1a. No difference at all!

**Nuno** · 19 September 1999, 05:59

Slow? SLOW? My vannilla oc to 150/200 gives me about 3800 at 800x600x16, wich I think it´s rather a common mark for the celeron 450. So if you´re getting 4000 you´re already getting more than most of the people.

At 800x600x16 the benchmark is completely cpu bound, specially in a cpu without SSE. TNT, TNT2, Voodoo 3, all will give around 3800 3d marks in a celeron 450. But the good news it that at 1024x768x32 it will still give 3800. Try that with the old TNT.

**The Freak** · 19 September 1999, 06:53

Oh, sh*t! I feel like an a***ole!

I read somewhere that I'd get around 5000 3dmarks at that resolution! What was I thinking? Ofcourse it is cpu limited!

I believe this is a case of too much fun with a matrox graphics card! It can really mess a poor guy up! Anyway now that I cleared this misunderstanding up I must say that I'm EXTREMELY pleased with my MAX.

So my next move will be to trade my old faithful for a P3-450. I'll get at least 4700 3dmarks with that.

**Nuno** · 19 September 1999, 07:06

Hey, Freak I´ll give you an advice: Don´t go for a P3 450 unless you are willing to overclock it. It won´t make much diffrence from the celery. The big increase given by a PIII in 3dmark is due to the excelent SSE implementation that benchmark has. Not many (if any at all) present and near future games will show the performance increase you´ll see with 3dmark. Maybe 10-20%, and that´s not a very good reason to upgrade a cpu.

Of course, if you planning to get it to 600 Mhz forget what I have said and go for it

Personally, I´m waiting until next year for the new celeron SSE (same core as coppermine) to be released.

**The Freak** · 19 September 1999, 07:21

Of course I'd overclock that P3! In fact I've already tried out one about 2 weeks ago, and I got it up to 504 with no problem. However my board is REALLY old and it doesn't have a 124MHz FSB setting. So my only other choise is to shoot straight to the top (600MHz). I had a retail P3 in my hands and since it wasn't mine I couldn't mess with it (remove the retail heatsink and fan and replace it with something better) so I couldn't stabilize it at 600MHz (it did trivial windows stuff just fine though).

**Joel** · 19 September 1999, 09:23

If you are going to have to replace your motherboard when you upgrade you may want to consider looking at the AMD Athlon. The following link shows the Athlon 600 beating the PIII 600. www.gamepc.com/reviews/hardware_review.asp?review=athlon600&page=1.

Joel

**The Freak** · 19 September 1999, 10:36

Nah... I know what an Athlon can do, but it's too expensive for me. I can exchange both my board and cpu and only pay the difference (I figure around 140 USD for a P3 and a more recent BX board - like the EliteGroup P6BXT-A+). If I go for an Athlon, I'll have to order from the internet (so I can't exchange my old stuff) 'cause there won't be an Athlon cpu and board coming here where I live for a long, long time. An Athlon board+cpu combo will set me back more than 500 USD!!! I don't have that kind of cash!

**Maniac** · 20 September 1999, 11:07

I'm with you Nuno, keep the the trusty ole celery until the new ones come out with SSE and 256k on die cache!

**IceStorm** · 20 September 1999, 11:24

If you go PIII-450, get a Soyo 6BA+ rev III motherboard to go with it.

I've been running mine at 540 for over a month now. No problems WHATSOEVER. I've a retail 450 (got it two weeks after it was released), with the retail heatsink/fan. My case has a fan behind the CPU and in the front - air goes from front to back.

The G400 MAX and my old G200 worked fine with an 80Mhz AGP bus.

------------------
Primary System: PIII-540 (450@4.5x120), Soyo 6BA+ III, 256MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, G400 MAX in multi-monitor mode. V2 SLI rig. Two Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u monitors, 3Com 3C905, SoundBlaster Live!, Altec Lansing AC5 spkrs, 2nd Parallel Port, WD AC41800 18GB HD, WD AC310100 10GB HD, Toshiba SD-M1212 6x DVD-ROM, HP 8100i CD-RW, Epson Stylus Pro, Sharp JX-9400 LJ-II compatible, OptiUPS PowerES 650, MS SideWinder Precision Pro USB joystick, Logitech 3-button mouse, Mitsumi keyboard, Win98 SE, Belkin OmniCube 4-port KVM

Secondary System: PII-266, Asus P2B BIOS 1008, 128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, Millennium II, 3Com 3C590, ADSL Modem 640kbit down/90kbit up, 3Com 3C509, Mylex BT-930 SCSI card, Seagate 2GB Hawk, NEC 6x CD-ROM, Linux distro S.u.S.E. 6.1 (IP Masquerade works!)

Tertiary System: DFI G568IPC Intel 430HX chipset, P200MMX, 96MB of non-parity RAM, Millennium II, Intel Pro/100+ client NIC, SoundBlaster 16 MCD, Fujitsu 3.5GB HD, WD 1.2GB HD, Creative Dxr3 DVD decoder card, Hitachi GD-2500 6x DVD-ROM, Win98 SE

All specs subject to change.

**The Freak** · 20 September 1999, 12:02

Maniac: I've owned celeron cpus (first a 266@412 and then the 300A@450) for more than 14 months! I'm bored, I need a new toy :-)

IceStorm: Soyo's were very popular here in Greece a while back, and I know first hand that they are really bad quality boards (I had a couple 486 Soyo boards die on me and I've seen quite a few more dead Soyo's from friends and colleagues).

The 6BA+III has a good reputation (from net reviews) but I'm very reluctant to invest in a Soyo board. The EliteGroup I currently have has never given me any grief - and I have tortured it many times!

GD · 21 September 1999, 07:52

Geia su simbatrioth :-)

(Don't worry I just said hi in greek :-) )

Well your scores are pretty high. I get 3800 3Dmarks with a pentium 450MHz. What about that Asus P3B motherboard? I have no idea what its overclockability is but Asus boards are usualy very good in both o/cability and performance...

**The Freak** · 21 September 1999, 09:32

The P3B costs about twice as much as the Elitegroup P6BXT-A+. It is too much to pay for a bx board.

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