3d performance question.

[moocat]

I have two computers; #1 is a P3 933 (7x133), AGP V5@180mhz, 256mb ram
#2 is a cel2 800 (8x100), PCI V5@180mhz, 128mb ram

Both are Win98SE w/dx8. Both cards are configed the same and are using the same drivers. 3d performance is noticeably worse on system #2. Assume all else being equal, what is the biggest contributor to the poor (relatively) performance of the celeron2 system? Or is it equal contributions from the slower fsb, pci instead of agp, half the L2 cache, and less ram? I guess I'm a little suprised by the performance disparity. I expected some, but not as much as I'm seeing.

 

[Scratches]

I'd say all of the above. I hear PCI vs. AGP doesn't make a huge difference, but a Celeron 2-- especially clocked lower than a P3-- will show a big difference. Doubling your RAM (up to 256MB; I hear going higher doesn't help for games and most applications) is also big, though 128MB isn't so bad.

Do you have more applications running in the background on the Celeron machine? Use a task manager (something along the lines of Wintop) and see what software gunk may be clagging up your poor box.

Also, have you been maintaining everything? Are all drives defragged? Does your swap disk drive (C: by default) have lots of extra room (you should make sure you have at least 2-2.5x your RAM size available on the HD for swap; I actually set my swap to a constant size so Windows won't pause to resize it)? Have you used Norton SpeedDisk to defrag the swap (Windows defrag won't do that unless you move the swap to another drive, defrag the original drive, then move the swap back)?

Hope something here helps.

 

[Howard]

The cache of the Celeron II is crippled in some way, but I can't remember how offhand.

 

[Mixxen]

The P3 has an enhanced cache, which is 8 way associative. The C2 on the other hand has a 4 way associative cache and will result in less performance. The PCI voodoos do not take much of a performance hit when comparing to AGP voodoos since the cards do not take much advantage of AGP stuff. The AGP cards are basically PCI card that fit into the AGP slot .

At higher resolutions where the voodoo becomes the bottleneck, you shouldn't see much difference in performance between the P3 and C2.

 

[moocat]

Thanks all.

 

[Rand]

Well PCI vs. AGP won't make too large of an affect with the V5 and 128MB RAM should be enough for gaming, but the processor on the second system is clearly inferior.
The celeron would be the cause of a arther significant performance loss compared to the 933MHz P3.

 

[moocat]

I see the biggest difference running Nascar 4. It has a complex physics engine and AI. It also uses alot of lighting effects which with a V5 are likely more of a drain on cpu resources. I guess it's time for an upgrade.