So, I've done some more upgrading. This time, I have fallen for a CPU upgrade - and obviously it's an AMD ;-). Why go for the 1,4 Ghz model when the 1,6 is out ? Well, strategically I am not yet interested in the 1,6 Ghz model yet - and financially I'm waiting for its price to go down. The 1600 has quite a good bang for the buck, and I can allow myself to wait a bit before plunking another bag of gold down.
So, Sharok has undergone another grueling process of upgrade. Since I was upgrading, I thought I might as well go the whole nine yards? Therefore, I changed motherboard (EliteGroups K7S5A) and took 512Mb of PC2100 DDR SDRAM along with the CPU.
While I'm on the subject of hardware, I'd like to say something about the MSI mainboard I had for my T-Bird. Before DirectX 8 had shown its nose, I had no complaints and the board worked fine. Unfortunately, as soon as I purchased Operation Flashpoint, things went sour : MSI and VIA do not work all that well together on that board, and that saddens me. Of course, e-mails to support from Codemasters and VIA alike were studiously ignored. The end result ? I am discouraging people I know from buying MSI for now, since their boards have such sloppy support. I know, it's not fair, but read the detailed account here. Anyway, Sharok is now upgraded to this :
| Elements | Sharok |
| CPU | AMD XP 1600+ (1,4Ghz) |
| Bus speed | 266Mhz DDR |
| Video Card | GeForce 3 (64Mb) |
| RAM | 512Mb PC2100 |
Once Windows 98SE reinstalled (I always format my C: when doing a motherboard upgrade), I installed the mainboard AGP, UDMA and other drivers, then the graphics drivers from PixelView, then the Detonator XP pack from NVidia. Then, I installed Quake III in demo setup, with the regular set of demos plus a few I got hold of since last time. Finally, I installed 3DMark 2001.
The settings for 3DMark were as follows :
| Element | Setting | Element | Setting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resolution | 1024x768 | Color Depth | 32 bit color |
| Texture Format | Compressed | Z-Buffer Depth | 24 bit |
| Frame Buffer | Double | Rendering Pipeline | D3D Hardware T&L |
| FSAA | Not Enabled | CPU Speed | 1394 Mhz |
For Quake III, I used High detail, max texture and filter on bilinear. Video is at 32-bit setting.
| Demo file | FPS at 1024x768 | FPS at 1280x1024 | FPS at 1600x1200 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Real3 | 93.4 | 88.0 | 70.2 |
| Silver1 | 137.7 | 112.6 | 83.9 |
| Tier1_1 | 191.9 | 150.8 | 109.9 |
| Tier1_2 | 195.1 | 155.3 | 113.5 |
| Tier1_3 | 161.9 | 149.3 | 119.3 |
| Tier1_4 | 174.1 | 149.4 | 111.2 |
| Tier3_1 | 171.4 | 151.0 | 116.8 |
| Tier3_3 | 150.6 | 131.5 | 98.2 |
| Tier3_4 | 170.1 | 147.3 | 108.1 |
| AVERAGE | 160.7 | 137.2 | 103.4 |
As you can see here, from my previous benchmarking sessions the improvement in 1024 is remarkable : from 129.2 to 160.7 is a flat-out 24% increase ! Scores for 1280 are not comparable, since I did not do that last time, and, somewhat surprinsingly, scores for 1600 have not changed (111.5 against 103.4 is actually 7% less than before => I've got some OC to do !).
I guess that means I'm hitting the graphic card limits in 1600. At Tom's Hardware Guide, they have clocked a 1600+ at 191fps, but that was under XP and at 16 bit color. I'll have to do some more checking.