What is the bottleneck of my system?

[aznmist]

My Computer:
Soyo 6VBA-133 [Via chipset]
566 Celeron @ 808 (95 FSB) [Golden Orb]
160M PC100 @ 95
Fujitusu 13Gig ATA66 4--- RPM

Hercules Geforce MX [Blue Orb]
SBlive Mp3+
Generic Network Card x 2
SCSI Card
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Items to know about:
-I have updated all driver[mobo, vid card, directx8]
-All tests run in win 98
-My 3dMark 2000 scores are always between 3100-3200
-My mobo only supports up to 2x agp [hercules mx can go up to 4x]
-Overclocking the MX by ram and core does not raise performance
-Memory bandwith score in sissoft sandra is less than 366 Celeron with 128M PC100 Ram!
-HD test in sisoft sandra was less that ATA33!

Please help me. I have spent a lot of money in this system and do not want to spend anymore. The performance is terrible!

Thanks in advanced..

 

[AndyHui]

Overclock the GPU on your video card or overclock the RAM on your video card? You will get a significant increase if you overclock the RAM on the video card, since it is bandwidth limited.

 

[Renob]

agp 4x does not add much to your score.. I would say it the cell and mx combo..

 

[Packet]

It wouldn't hurt to have your bus at 100mhz instead of 95 either. While it might not make a huge difference, it wouldn't hurt either.

 

[aznmist]

I have overlcoked both the core adn the ram by 10mghz and no diffrence at all! My system starts to become unstable at 100 FSB..

 

[Tetsuo316]

everything is always a bottleneck - even ddr ram can theoretically be a bottleneck if the latency is too high. in your case the bigger bottlenecks are the celeron and the low fsb. i don't think it's the mx because as every time a tech website has benchmarked the geforce2 gts on a celeron, there isn't that big of a performance increase when compared to a tnt2 or something. that mx is fine. on thing you should know though is that dmark is sh*t for benchmarking. it's really picky and spouts out weird numbers that don't really provide a real measurement. run the timedemo of quake 3 or something. that gives pretty standard results.

 

[aznmist]

Thanks guys! Hmm..why is the celeron the bottle neck? It runs at the same fsb as the P3 but with it's cache halved..if so..what cpu should i upgrade to?

 

[Packet]

Coppermine would be an easy upgrade (no new motherboard needed).
You could go for a 800E and see how high you could overclock it, that wouldn't be to expensive either.

 

[aznmist]

But isn't my Celeron using the Coppermine core already?

 

[Tetsuo316]

it's using the .18 micron technology if that's what you mean. the celeron 2 performs like sh*t when compared to the p3 for a reason. intel castrates it so that people will spend the extra money. you will definitely see a difference between your celeron 800 and a p3 900 or so.

 

[RedWolf]

I would say it is a combination of things. First, your video card is holding you back a bit. Not much, though. I was getting 3800 with a GeForce 2 GTS and a Cel 400 @ 500/83. I have a friend with an MX and a Cell 566 @ 850 and he's getting about 4500. Your scores seem a bit low for your setup. I'd get the latest detonator drivers and update the mobo bios. Additionally, with that mobo you should be able to set the ram to run at the motherboard+fsb speed. If you have PC 133 ram you should be set. Overall, you should be getting a 3dmark between 4000 and 5000 with your system. You should also look at Q3 as it is a bit better benchmark (real world).

 

[jaydee]

It is DEFINENTLY the front side bus. An approximate way to look for a bottleneck is to look at the speed of the components. 95 MHZ FSB, 160 MHZ RAM, 800 MHZ cpu (should always be significantly higher), 800 MHZ cache speed (again should be significantly higher) and 175 MHZ gpu 166 MHZ ram on the video card. Its that obvious.

 

[RoadRuner]

Geez my celeron 533 @ 800 with a geforce DDR overclocked on an old BX board was running 5000 scores with 3dmark2000.

You dont by happen to have a crappy VIA chipset mobo?

 

[aznmist]

I do have a VIA chipset.. I just ran a sissoft sandra memory benchmark and it shows that i am even slwoer than a celeron 366 with 128 megs of ram! I have also notices that my hd score was low too! I have a ata66 4200 RPM... why is my comp so crappy?

 

[RoadRuner]

are you sure you have the latest drivers from viahardware.com? And you are NOT running the memory at -33 mhz!!

 

[aznmist]

I do have the latest drivers! and what do you mean by -33?

 

[kind-of-blue]

Most recent Via chipsets allow a memory divider that runs the memory at a different frequency than the FSB. This allows you to use PC100 memory on a 133 FSB or PC133 mem and a 100 FSB.

So if your memory is 'underclocked' it may result in a difference in performance.

Have you ever thought of "user error" being the cause of the bottleneck? After a few "long neck bottles" I sometimes have difficulty operating anything other than my couch.