AMD Athlon XP and Intel <2.8GHz Users On the Call!

[akshayt]

Hi

I recently saw toms benchies regarding mid range GPUs on obsolete CPUs and the results seemed to good to be true. So I woudl like to know from those who have decent cards like 6800GT/Ultra 7800GS 1950Pro etc along with Athlon XP (preferably 2400 and up) or Intel SSE2 2.8GHz or below without HT as to how well games are running on their system and on what settings.

Games like Carbon, Oblivion, FarCry, Age of Empires III, Fear etc.

 

[Stumps]

My AXP's run all of my games perfectly fine...better than what your rig could do anyway.

Most games like Q4, Prey, FEAR, NFSMW and NFSC and many others run fine at 1024x768 with most details set to medium or high(depending on the game).

 

[akshayt]

Stumps could you please tell me the name of the card, CPU and exactly what settings in which game.

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: akshayt
Stumps could you please tell me the name of the card, CPU and exactly what settings in which game.

have a look in my sig...I'm sure you should be able to find one of my AXP's that I listed.

although I do need to add my 2800+ AXP...it runs a 9700pro and it copes with most games as well at similar settings as the 6800 in my 3000+

 

[akshayt]

how much do you get in FEAR and CSS Stress test, and especially how much under 40FPS?

 

[rip]

Athlon XP better than Athlon 64 ????????

 

[Stumps]

It's been awhile since I last tested them but the 3000+ usually gets 55% under 40fps at 1024x768 medium/low setting, the 2800+ is around 60% at 1024x768 low settings, but FPS below 25 was only around 10% for both systems...FEAR is a pr!ck of a game and stresses older hardware pretty bad...

the good thing about AXP's is that performance depends more on the video card than the CPU....there is very little difference between a OC'd 3000+ and a 2400+ or 2500+, less than 5% when using the same video card.

My father has a AXP 2700+ with 1gb ddr333 and a 9700 pro, it performs almost identical to my 2800+, my younger sister uses a 2.4ghz P4 with a softmodded 9500@9500pro 64mb, it can run games like FEAR and Q4 at 800x600 with most settings set to low or medium....both rigs handle games like NFSMW and NFC at 1024x768 with medium detail no problem at all...although the P4 is a bit lacking in CPU grunt, I'll fix that for her one of these days.

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: rip
Athlon XP better than Athlon 64 ????????

not in a million years.

 

[akshayt]

But tomshardware show that AMD Athlon XP 2500 should be capable of playing games maxed out with 7600GT/1950Pro at 12x10

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: akshayt
But tomshardware show that AMD Athlon XP 2500 should be capable of playing games maxed out with 7600GT/1950Pro at 12x10

They can with a 7800GS, I haven't thoughly tested my 7800GS in my AXP's but while the frame rates don't really increase over a 6800, it does make the frame more constant, I wouldn't really try to play FEAR or similar games at 1280x1024...you get much better results at good ole 1024x768 and the IQ isn't much worse.

when testing my AXP's with the cards that I have in them, they spent a high percentage of the time below 40fps....but above 30fps so It makes no difference in how the games run anyway....30fps is considered to be smooth...you do realise that the human eye can't see any more than 25fps right? so anything past that is perceved as smooth.

Yes my rigs don't get super frame rates....but they don't get super low frame rate either IIRC my 3000+ lowest was 24 fps with 3% below 25 fps....sweet fvck all in the way of stuttering.

I have played FEAR on both rigs and they are pretty good, very playable, even the old 9700 PRO runs it pretty good for such an old card, although turn shadows and lighting to minimum does bring frame rates up considerably with little impact on IQ (so it's not as dark and creepy...so what?)

If you believe the crap that Toms hardware puts out then you are dumber than most of us thought.

I'll tell you what I'll do for you, Akshayt, when I get a bit of spare time in the next couple of days I'll post some results for FEAR for you using my 3000+ and a 6800, 6800GT and 7800GS and you can compare them if you want, I'll even underclock my AXP to give you the results for a 2500+ and 2800+ Barton if you want.

I won't bother with Q4, NFSC or other games...they all get beyond 60FPS when using timedemo's so their results are beyond good any way.

 

[nyker96]

noooo ... not the attack of AXPs .... I thought they are wiped out!!

 

[Donuts]

2500 barton oc to 3200 speed stock voltage, 1950 pro agp. games run smooth )

 

[Stumps]

Ok here are the first set of results for FEAR Retail 1.0, the same setting were used for each video card which were 1024x768,all setting were set to medium detail except shadows which were set to minimum, Filtering was set to trilinear.

the test system is as follows

AMD Athlon XP 3000+ 2167mhz (13x166) Barton
Gigabyte GA-7N400 PRO rev 1.0 Nforce 2 Ultra
Seitec 1GB DDR333 6-2-2-2 (2x 512mb) in Dual channel mode
2x Western Digital WD1200JB RAID 0 240gb
Windows XP Professional SP2
Nvidia Forceware 84.21
Nforce 2 5.10

Gigabye GV-N68128DH 6800 128mb

Min 34
Avg 60
Max 122

0% below 25
17% below 40
83% above 40

Asus V9999GT 6800GT 128mb

Min 34
Avg 73
Max 161

0% below 25
4% below 40
96% above 40

BFGTech 7800GS OC 7800GS 256mb

Min 36
Avg 81
Max 184

0% below 25
8% below 40
92% above 40

One has to remember though, the results here don't really apply to actaul game play...often with FEAR and especially Extraction Point, the settings need to be reduced Slightly to get nice consistant game play.

The first thing I noticed was much better performance of the 6800 series cards from last time I tested them which was a few months ago...the difference being the use of the 84.21 driver instead of the later 91 and 93 series drivers which is why I got different figures from my earlier post.

All test were run 5 times and the average scores were posted.

I will post the results of the lower CPU speeds later on but I doubt that they will change much.

As a side note I should add, that it wasn't just my AXP's that had sh!t performance with the 91 and 93 series drivers, my P4's and my A64 all had lower performance with those drivers, which is why I'm using the older 84.21 on all my rigs with Nvidia cards in them.

 

[akshayt]

thanks a lot man, can you also do the test at 1024x768 MAX Shadows Low Lightening Medium, no AA, full AF

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: akshayt
thanks a lot man, can you also do the test at 1024x768 MAX Shadows Low Lightening Medium, no AA, full AF

No, not worth it, way to hard on an AXP system....FPS would pretty much spend all of it's time below 25fps...

I'll pretty much just use the same setting as Toms hardware...much easier to get a comparision that way, even if my setups are a bit faster.

 

[Stumps]

For AXP rigs with VIA KT333/400 chipsets the scores would drop around 3-5% due to the slower single channel memory bus...I should probably test this with my 2800+/KT400 rig but it's just to much hassle, but 3-5% should be realistic.

 

[Stumps]

At the end of the week I'll be able to provide some benchmarks for the X1950Pro 512mb as well

 

[SparkyJJO]

My brother has an Athlon XP 2500+, 1GB RAM, and a radeon 9800 pro 128MB. Far Cry ran almost perfectly with near max graphics, only a couple things were let a down to high from highest, and AA was turned off.

 

[Rottie]

I played FarCry with Athlon XP 2400+ (2.0Ghz) with ATI Radeon X850 card with medium setting...it runs great until CPU died (still under the warranty but XP cpu is no longer sells).

 

[Stumps]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO
My brother has an Athlon XP 2500+, 1GB RAM, and a radeon 9800 pro 128MB. Far Cry ran almost perfectly with near max graphics, only a couple things were let a down to high from highest, and AA was turned off.

I was able to do the same on my 3000+ and 9700pro combo....it ran super smooth and looked awesome.

 

[cubeless]

Originally posted by: Stumps

Originally posted by: akshayt
Stumps could you please tell me the name of the card, CPU and exactly what settings in which game.

have a look in my sig...I'm sure you should be able to find one of my AXP's that I listed.

although I do need to add my 2800+ AXP...it runs a 9700pro and it copes with most games as well at similar settings as the 6800 in my 3000+

eh? i just had to retire my hacked 9500 (runs faster than a 9700pro) axp box 'cuz it just couldn't hang with my 6800nu 16pipe box for kids gaming on lan at house... playing warhammer, etc... it was the weakest of my 5 systems...

at least that's what the little monsters told me... could have been a ploy to get me to upgrade the boxes...