Poor K7s5a performance (slower than Celeron)?

[railer]

My celly 1080 (900 @120 fsb) is faster than my new Duron 1 Ghz on my ECS K7s5a. When I OC the Duron to 1120, they pull about even. What's the deal? This is in 3dmark and Q3. My celly rig is an old Abit BE-6, w/ 256 MB RAM. Both have Radeon LE's OC'd to 185 mhz. I was thinking that the Duron was going to be about 25% faster than the celly, based on all the reviews that I had seen, but that's not the case. I've got the memory CAS values set about the same, etc. Guess if I don't come up with anything I'll have to spring for that Athlon XP.... Feel free to post any suggestions if anyone has any...thanks. I posted this in the CPU forum too...

 

[Buz2b]

Just curious, what OS and drivers did you load? The K7S5A can be pretty finicky about drivers/settings. Also, what BIOS are you running and at what settings? I'm pretty sure these are the areas where you will find your answer.

 

[DieHardware]

<< This is in 3dmark and Q3 >>

I think this is more videocard than CPU dependant.

 

[Peter]

That's because on the Celeron system, you overclocked the AGP and PCI by 20 percent, which is something that does
matter in graphics related benchmarks.

Then, SiS chipset mainboards gain some speed from using latest AGP drivers - pay www.sis.com a visit.

regards, Peter

 

[PullMyFinger]

You don't specifically mention how much faster your Celeron seems, but I agree, you'r comparing an Intel system running at 120 MHz FSB to an AMD system running at 100-112 MHz FSB. Try a comparison of both machines running at stock speeds and see if there still is a big difference. Also, your video card will have a great "levelling" effect on both machines as it is providing the vast majority of the 3d graphics processing and the benchmarks you are using rely heavily on 3d processing power. I would try a different benchmark which separately stresses the processor and memory subsystems, try SiSoft Sandra mem and cpu tests.

 

[PullMyFinger]

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, Buzz I managed to get Win2k on my new machine (K7S5A). I wasn't sure if you saw my response in the "piece of crap" thread. Apparently, the power management and plug n play settings were enabled, by disabling these I was able to finish the install with no problems. Just an update.

 

[AA0]

new celerons perform quite good, much like the new .13 die p3s. The p3s are close to Tbird performance at the same clock, and raising the bus will give you a big advantage. Upgrading to a 133bus cpu will really show the difference, I don't see how you can complain when using value cpus

 

[oldfart]

<< My celly 1080 (900 @120 fsb) >>


C900 is the .18u 128K cache Coppermine, not the Tualatin.

 

[AA0]

oops for some reason I was thinking it went faster then 1.1, making it a .13 chip.

 

[railer]

I clocked the Duron back to default ( 1 ghz) and moved the celly to 110 mhz FSB. (990 mhz). Re-benched. They are nearly identical in 3dmark 2001, the Duron has a slight edge in Q3. I downloaded Sisoft SANDRA and was suprised to see that the CPU benchmarks came out so close. I had assumed that it was some type of video or memory conflict somewhere on the ECS board, but maybe not. Both are running Win ME. I'm thinking that there's not really that much difference between these two chips. If anybody else is running something similair let me know and we can compare scores. I'm off to scour MadOnion to see how this chip/v card performs for everybody else. Thanks to all who responded.
I did end up getting the latest (1.09 I think) SIS AGP drivers. The BIOS is whatever came stock with the board, I have no instability so I wasn't going to flash it....unless it might help? It's not like I'm that dissapointed. It seems like a pretty quick machine from the seat of my pants, just thought it would bench out a little faster is all.