Help with AMD History

[GTaudiophile]

My friend got a new MSI GeForce2-Pro to replace his TNT2. He's finding that his QuakeIII Timedemo/3DMark2001 scores are on average 38% lower than near-identical systems. His FSB is 100Mhz, though, not 133Mhz. If his mobo (Elitegroup Computer Sys VT8363 KT133) supports 133Mhz FSB, and his RAM is PC133, does this mean that his CPU (an Athlon 750) only supports a 100Mhz FSB? When did AMD CPUs switch to supporting 133Mhz FSB? Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Guilty]

The VIA KT133, despite its name, does not support a 133MHz FSB. The KT133A does.

 

[GTaudiophile]

So does the 33Mhz difference in FSB speed account for the 38% difference in Q3 Timedemo FPS?

 

[GTaudiophile]

Can the memory bus run at 133Mhz while the FSB for the CPU runs at 100Mhz? I thought they were one in the same...

 

[Guilty]

It shouldnt be 38% just from that, but what are the other comparable specs? BIOS settings also come into effect, and note that ECS isnt a tweakers board, so who knows if they even support 4way interleaving natively (helps memory bandwidth). Q3 certainly benefits from FSB bandwidth, this is partially why the Pentium4 also does well in it.

On a different note, the "GeForce2 Pro" you got him, is it a true Pro or a new pumped up GTS? The true Pro was 200/200 core/mem. The pumped up GTS is 200/183 core/mem. It's hard to find a true pro anymore, 5ns is a true pro, 5.5 is a pumped GTS.

 

[GTaudiophile]

It's and MSI StarForce 831, GeForce2 Pro, with 5.5ns DDR RAM.