dormcat wrote on 2024-09-12, 11:21:

That's really odd: Age of Empires II: The Conquerors had rather low minimum system requirements back in August 2000: 166MHz CPU, 32MB RAM, 2MB VRAM, 200MB free HDD space.

The attachment Conquerors_back.jpg is no longer available

Dungeon Keeper 2 system requirements
The FPS value is in the upper right corner

I played EoM from 2002 on P3 1GHz system. It ran fine.
Not sure why 3y older game would require better system.

nd22 wrote on 2024-09-12, 12:53:

No hardware and no software conflicts. The game requires a STRONG CPU. Ram or GPU don't matter in this game. Tested on many pro […]
Show full quote

No hardware and no software conflicts.
The game requires a STRONG CPU. Ram or GPU don't matter in this game. Tested on many processors that I have:
The minimum AMD CPU to play this game at max settings is Athlon XP 2500 Barton and the minimum Intel CPU is Pentium 4 northwood 2400.
We had a topic about AoE2 on the forum about 3 years ago regarding performance and what do you need to play the game.

This thread? age of empires 2 bad performance on pentium iii
But there were users with much lower specs yet running it smoothly.

I could think of two reasons:

1. CPU couldn't handle the large amount of units near the end of a match, especially if there were many factions on a large map.

2. There's other program(s) in the background pulling legs. Like I said on page 3: I've got Q3 Arena on two systems, a Sempron 3100+ (1.8GHz) + 512MB RAM + Radeon 9600 Pro w/ 256MB VRAM + 60GB HDD + Win98SE, and a much beefier C2D E7400 (2.8GHz) + 4GB RAM + Radeon HD 5670 w/ 1GB VRAM + 120GB SSD + WinXP SP3. The latter is way faster in loading and has no problem even if smoke-trailing rockets flying all over the screen, but due to being online with antivirus installed, framerate can drop to ~5 fps at worst scenarios when antivirus updating definitions. The Sempron build is completely offline (no network or antivirus); while loading is slower and stutters at complex battlefields, its performance is much more constant.

In that case I'll fetch the game from my parents' (take a while though) and try it on my various retro builds (up to seven).

always thought the Pentium 3 was the best processor of its time. I had an idea that in the year of release (and a year after the release) of Pentium3, every game ran smoothly on Pentium3 700-800mhz at maximum settings.

You ruined my P3 legend 😜

GreenBook wrote on 2024-09-13, 04:21:

always thought the Pentium 3 was the best processor of its time. I had an idea that in the year of release (and a year after the release) of Pentium3, every game ran smoothly on Pentium3 700-800mhz at maximum settings.

You ruined my P3 legend 😜

Pentium 3 is a good CPU, especially the Tualatin version. The Pentium III 1400S - a legendary CPU - is better than Willamette running at 2000 MHz! Only Palomino 2000+ can beat it. However there is the common myth that games released in a certain year could be played on the hardware available in that year - I am talking about high end - silky smooth at max settings. This is FALSE for most games.
A little story: back in 2004 I was able to buy for the first time what I considered to be the first high end platform after reading countless articles on the net and based on the recommendations that my best friend gave me : Athlon 64 2800, Abit KV8 pro, leadtek geforce 6600gt. Until than I had only Durons and K6-2.
I was so happy that I ran across town to get home as fast as possible after grabbing a big bottle of Cola in order to stay up whole night! I assembled the whole system and installed XP and a few games . Late that evening I fired up Half life 2, put everything on max and ... slideshow!! I thought: well , this is not optimized, let's see Doom 3. Cranked up everything to the max and, of course, slideshow in the main menu ,without even loading a level! Needless to say, I tried Farcry and some other games and of course performance was terrible at high details, I could count the frames!
You can not imagine how disappointed I was! It was like failing the exam to enter faculty! Next day, after work, I went straight to the shop my friend had - back than there were lots of small computer shops in my country - and told him him outright he deceived me when he said the configuration he made for me was OK. He laughed for 5 minutes while I was furious! He said: let's go to my place and try the games on my system. I can't remember exactly what he had but the video card was a geforce 6800gt, a really expensive card that I could not afford! Of course all the games ran horrible, better than on the system I had but still like crap.
I still remember what he said: you really believe what Tom's or Anand tells you about that CPU and that card that offers smooth playability? It's all BS. You can't run anything at max even if you put down lots of cash. You bought an average system, you will get average performance, even if you buy an expensive system you get better performance but forget about max details!
Until 2011 when I ordered my last system - Sandy Bridge - that statement remained true.

dormcat wrote on 2024-09-12, 14:50:

This thread? age of empires 2 bad performance on pentium iii But there were users with much lower specs yet running it smoothly. […]
Show full quote

nd22 wrote on 2024-09-12, 12:53:

No hardware and no software conflicts. The game requires a STRONG CPU. Ram or GPU don't matter in this game. Tested on many pro […]
Show full quote

No hardware and no software conflicts.
The game requires a STRONG CPU. Ram or GPU don't matter in this game. Tested on many processors that I have:
The minimum AMD CPU to play this game at max settings is Athlon XP 2500 Barton and the minimum Intel CPU is Pentium 4 northwood 2400.
We had a topic about AoE2 on the forum about 3 years ago regarding performance and what do you need to play the game.

This thread? age of empires 2 bad performance on pentium iii
But there were users with much lower specs yet running it smoothly.

I could think of two reasons:

1. CPU couldn't handle the large amount of units near the end of a match, especially if there were many factions on a large map.

2. There's other program(s) in the background pulling legs. Like I said on page 3: I've got Q3 Arena on two systems, a Sempron 3100+ (1.8GHz) + 512MB RAM + Radeon 9600 Pro w/ 256MB VRAM + 60GB HDD + Win98SE, and a much beefier C2D E7400 (2.8GHz) + 4GB RAM + Radeon HD 5670 w/ 1GB VRAM + 120GB SSD + WinXP SP3. The latter is way faster in loading and has no problem even if smoke-trailing rockets flying all over the screen, but due to being online with antivirus installed, framerate can drop to ~5 fps at worst scenarios when antivirus updating definitions. The Sempron build is completely offline (no network or antivirus); while loading is slower and stutters at complex battlefields, its performance is much more constant.

In that case I'll fetch the game from my parents' (take a while though) and try it on my various retro builds (up to seven).

1. All my retro systems are disconnected from the network.
2. I played and still play AoE2 original version, not the remastered or whatever is it called now, since the game launched in 1999; last time I played 2 weeks ago, on Saturday, with the settings below.
2. Windows XP SP3 installed on every single system that I tested AoE2 on. Game is not dependent on the frequency alone: Athlon XP 2400 running at 2000 MHz can not actually play the game smooth while Barton 2500 can!
3. try the settings below on any Pentium 3; better still try them first on 1400S
4. report back 😀

nd22 wrote on 2024-09-13, 07:35:

1. All my retro systems are disconnected from the network. 2. I played and still play AoE2 original version, not the remastered […]
Show full quote

dormcat wrote on 2024-09-12, 14:50:

This thread? age of empires 2 bad performance on pentium iii But there were users with much lower specs yet running it smoothly. […]
Show full quote

nd22 wrote on 2024-09-12, 12:53:

No hardware and no software conflicts. The game requires a STRONG CPU. Ram or GPU don't matter in this game. Tested on many pro […]
Show full quote

No hardware and no software conflicts.
The game requires a STRONG CPU. Ram or GPU don't matter in this game. Tested on many processors that I have:
The minimum AMD CPU to play this game at max settings is Athlon XP 2500 Barton and the minimum Intel CPU is Pentium 4 northwood 2400.
We had a topic about AoE2 on the forum about 3 years ago regarding performance and what do you need to play the game.

This thread? age of empires 2 bad performance on pentium iii
But there were users with much lower specs yet running it smoothly.

I could think of two reasons:

1. CPU couldn't handle the large amount of units near the end of a match, especially if there were many factions on a large map.

2. There's other program(s) in the background pulling legs. Like I said on page 3: I've got Q3 Arena on two systems, a Sempron 3100+ (1.8GHz) + 512MB RAM + Radeon 9600 Pro w/ 256MB VRAM + 60GB HDD + Win98SE, and a much beefier C2D E7400 (2.8GHz) + 4GB RAM + Radeon HD 5670 w/ 1GB VRAM + 120GB SSD + WinXP SP3. The latter is way faster in loading and has no problem even if smoke-trailing rockets flying all over the screen, but due to being online with antivirus installed, framerate can drop to ~5 fps at worst scenarios when antivirus updating definitions. The Sempron build is completely offline (no network or antivirus); while loading is slower and stutters at complex battlefields, its performance is much more constant.

In that case I'll fetch the game from my parents' (take a while though) and try it on my various retro builds (up to seven).

1. All my retro systems are disconnected from the network.
2. I played and still play AoE2 original version, not the remastered or whatever is it called now, since the game launched in 1999; last time I played 2 weeks ago, on Saturday, with the settings below.
2. Windows XP SP3 installed on every single system that I tested AoE2 on. Game is not dependent on the frequency alone: Athlon XP 2400 running at 2000 MHz can not actually play the game smooth while Barton 2500 can!
3. try the settings below on any Pentium 3; better still try them first on 1400S
4. report back 😀

Barton has 512kb cache as does the Tualatin S, games that rely on CPU cache are likely to have a better time on these CPUs over the more budget offerings.

This is absolutely correct! Barton has an enormous advantage in games that love cache - this was not apparent at the time and many reviews found some higher clocked T-bred's to be faster than Barton.

I decided to buy a Pentium 3 Coppermine series processor because my friend had one in 2001. Tualatin is a newer version of the P3, too new for me 😜

I don't understand the difference between Coppermine and Coppermine T.

My friend had a Pentium3 800mhz or Pentium3 866mhz processor.
And I want to buy one of them. What motherboard should I buy? Can you recommend a specific model to me?

And which processor was more efficient: P3 800mhz or Athlon 1ghz or Celeron 1200mhz?
A long time ago, my friends argued with each other and a friend who had a P3 800mhz claimed that his processor was more efficient than Athlon 1ghz and Celeron 1.2ghz.

GreenBook wrote on 2024-09-13, 15:55:

I don't understand the difference between Coppermine and Coppermine T.

Coppermine-T could be used on motherboards designed for either Tualatin or non-T Coppermine of the same clock speed.

GreenBook wrote on 2024-09-13, 15:55:

And I want to buy one of them. What motherboard should I buy? Can you recommend a specific model to me?

I'd start with chipsets first, motherboards make and model later. The three major chipsets supporting Coppermine were Intel 440BX, Intel 815 series, and VIA Apollo Pro133 series. They all have different pros and cons.

440BX
+ Excellent stability, compatibility, and overclockability
+ Full ISA bus support (usually 2+ slots)
- Only supports up to 512MB RAM
- Only supports AGP 2x
- Only supports 2 USB ports
- Only supports UDMA 33
- 100MHz FSB can be overclocked but doing so might interfere with AGP

815
+ Good stability and compatibility
+ Supports 133MHz FSB
+ Supports AGP 4x
+ Supports 4 USB ports
+ Supports UDMA 66/100
- Only supports up to 512MB RAM
- No ISA bus support

Apollo Pro133
+ Supports up to 2GB RAM
+ Supports 133MHz FSB
+ Supports AGP 4x
+ Supports 4 USB ports
+ Supports UDMA 66/100
+ Supports ISA (usually 1-2 slots)
- Slower and less stable than Intel counterparts

GreenBook wrote on 2024-09-13, 15:55:

A long time ago, my friends argued with each other and a friend who had a P3 800mhz claimed that his processor was more efficient than Athlon 1ghz and Celeron 1.2ghz.

Based on Tualatin-256 architecture, Celeron 1.2GHz uses only slightly more energy than P3-800 but is much faster. Athlon 1GHz (assuming it a Thunderbird as K75 was rare and expensive) demands almost twice as much power.

nd22 wrote on 2024-09-13, 07:04:

Pentium 3 is a good CPU, especially the Tualatin version. The Pentium III 1400S - a legendary CPU - is better than Willamette ru […]
Show full quote

GreenBook wrote on 2024-09-13, 04:21:

always thought the Pentium 3 was the best processor of its time. I had an idea that in the year of release (and a year after the release) of Pentium3, every game ran smoothly on Pentium3 700-800mhz at maximum settings.

You ruined my P3 legend 😜

Pentium 3 is a good CPU, especially the Tualatin version. The Pentium III 1400S - a legendary CPU - is better than Willamette running at 2000 MHz! Only Palomino 2000+ can beat it. However there is the common myth that games released in a certain year could be played on the hardware available in that year - I am talking about high end - silky smooth at max settings. This is FALSE for most games.
A little story: back in 2004 I was able to buy for the first time what I considered to be the first high end platform after reading countless articles on the net and based on the recommendations that my best friend gave me : Athlon 64 2800, Abit KV8 pro, leadtek geforce 6600gt. Until than I had only Durons and K6-2.
I was so happy that I ran across town to get home as fast as possible after grabbing a big bottle of Cola in order to stay up whole night! I assembled the whole system and installed XP and a few games . Late that evening I fired up Half life 2, put everything on max and ... slideshow!! I thought: well , this is not optimized, let's see Doom 3. Cranked up everything to the max and, of course, slideshow in the main menu ,without even loading a level! Needless to say, I tried Farcry and some other games and of course performance was terrible at high details, I could count the frames!
You can not imagine how disappointed I was! It was like failing the exam to enter faculty! Next day, after work, I went straight to the shop my friend had - back than there were lots of small computer shops in my country - and told him him outright he deceived me when he said the configuration he made for me was OK. He laughed for 5 minutes while I was furious! He said: let's go to my place and try the games on my system. I can't remember exactly what he had but the video card was a geforce 6800gt, a really expensive card that I could not afford! Of course all the games ran horrible, better than on the system I had but still like crap.
I still remember what he said: you really believe what Tom's or Anand tells you about that CPU and that card that offers smooth playability? It's all BS. You can't run anything at max even if you put down lots of cash. You bought an average system, you will get average performance, even if you buy an expensive system you get better performance but forget about max details!
Until 2011 when I ordered my last system - Sandy Bridge - that statement remained true.

I decided to build a 939 system a little over a year ago because I had ended up with some 939 CPUs and I stumbled upon a deal on a NOS Asus 939 AGP board. Unfortunately, the 4400+ plus I had did not deliver the way I thought it would, and to my surprise the Asus A8V-X had no voltage options, so while I could increase the frontside bus I didn't get far with no voltage increase for the CPU or memory. Then I picked up a Gigabyte K8U 939 for cheap, recapped it, and though it had overclocking options, I still wasn't able to get the performance I wanted. I then upgraded to an Opteron 180, and I still needed more! Once I overclocked it to 2.7 GHz I was finally satisfied (and that's as far as I could take it as the AGP bus is out of spec and Radeon cards have always been sensitive to that). Though even now the HD 3850 is still held back a bit by the CPU. And Half-Life 2 still cannot be run at max settings; put the HD3850 in a C2D AGP system, then maybe.

dormcat wrote on 2024-09-13, 18:14:

440BX + Excellent stability, compatibility, and overclockability + Full ISA bus support (usually 2+ slots) - Only supports up to […]
Show full quote

440BX
+ Excellent stability, compatibility, and overclockability
+ Full ISA bus support (usually 2+ slots)
- Only supports up to 512MB RAM
- Only supports AGP 2x
- Only supports 2 USB ports
- Only supports UDMA 33
- 100MHz FSB can be overclocked but doing so might interfere with AGP

440BX supports more than 512MB of RAM; the Intel boards used by the Dells of the world had three slots and could support 768MB. I have seen Taiwanese boards with 4 slots, not sure if they can go up to 1GB.

dormcat wrote on 2024-09-13, 18:14:

Coppermine-T could be used on motherboards designed for either Tualatin or non-T Coppermine of the same clock speed. […]
Show full quote

GreenBook wrote on 2024-09-13, 15:55:

I don't understand the difference between Coppermine and Coppermine T.

Coppermine-T could be used on motherboards designed for either Tualatin or non-T Coppermine of the same clock speed.

GreenBook wrote on 2024-09-13, 15:55:

And I want to buy one of them. What motherboard should I buy? Can you recommend a specific model to me?

I'd start with chipsets first, motherboards make and model later. The three major chipsets supporting Coppermine were Intel 440BX, Intel 815 series, and VIA Apollo Pro133 series. They all have different pros and cons.

440BX
+ Excellent stability, compatibility, and overclockability
+ Full ISA bus support (usually 2+ slots)
- Only supports up to 512MB RAM
- Only supports AGP 2x
- Only supports 2 USB ports
- Only supports UDMA 33
- 100MHz FSB can be overclocked but doing so might interfere with AGP

815
+ Good stability and compatibility
+ Supports 133MHz FSB
+ Supports AGP 4x
+ Supports 4 USB ports
+ Supports UDMA 66/100
- Only supports up to 512MB RAM
- No ISA bus support

Apollo Pro133
+ Supports up to 2GB RAM
+ Supports 133MHz FSB
+ Supports AGP 4x
+ Supports 4 USB ports
+ Supports UDMA 66/100
+ Supports ISA (usually 1-2 slots)
- Slower and less stable than Intel counterparts

GreenBook wrote on 2024-09-13, 15:55:

A long time ago, my friends argued with each other and a friend who had a P3 800mhz claimed that his processor was more efficient than Athlon 1ghz and Celeron 1.2ghz.

Based on Tualatin-256 architecture, Celeron 1.2GHz uses only slightly more energy than P3-800 but is much faster. Athlon 1GHz (assuming it a Thunderbird as K75 was rare and expensive) demands almost twice as much power.

440BX supports 133FSB on later boards like the Abit BX133 Raid and ASUS P3B F, Intel never officially supported it but 3rd party fabs did. (even the ASUS P2B-DS supports it with Slotket CPUs)

VivienM wrote on 2024-09-13, 20:50:

dormcat wrote on 2024-09-13, 18:14:

440BX + Excellent stability, compatibility, and overclockability + Full ISA bus support (usually 2+ slots) - Only supports up to […]
Show full quote

440BX
+ Excellent stability, compatibility, and overclockability
+ Full ISA bus support (usually 2+ slots)
- Only supports up to 512MB RAM
- Only supports AGP 2x
- Only supports 2 USB ports
- Only supports UDMA 33
- 100MHz FSB can be overclocked but doing so might interfere with AGP

440BX supports more than 512MB of RAM; the Intel boards used by the Dells of the world had three slots and could support 768MB. I have seen Taiwanese boards with 4 slots, not sure if they can go up to 1GB.

Yup but it needs to be low density dual rank sticks of no more than 256Mb each. I have a ASUS P3B F board with 4 slots but 440BX doesn't support 1gb sooo no idea why it needed 4 slots.

So no even with 4 DIMM slots the chipset cannot work with 1gb.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-09-13, 22:05:

VivienM wrote on 2024-09-13, 20:50:

440BX supports more than 512MB of RAM; the Intel boards used by the Dells of the world had three slots and could support 768MB. I have seen Taiwanese boards with 4 slots, not sure if they can go up to 1GB.

Yup but it needs to be low density dual rank sticks of no more than 256Mb each. I have a ASUS P3B F board with 4 slots but 440BX doesn't support 1gb sooo no idea why it needed 4 slots.

So no even with 4 DIMM slots the chipset cannot work with 1gb.

Asus might just have been trying to be nice and give you more flexibility for upgrading RAM? The 440BX was launched at a time when RAM was much more expensive; I don't think they would have predicted the 256 meg DIMMs for CAD$50 or whatever it was in 2001. Probably figured you might have up to 4x32 or 4x64...

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-09-13, 22:02:

440BX supports 133FSB on later boards like the Abit BX133 Raid and ASUS P3B F, Intel never officially supported it but 3rd party fabs did. (even the ASUS P2B-DS supports it with Slotket CPUs)

That's why I wrote "100MHz FSB can be overclocked but doing so might interfere with AGP": while PCI bus can stay at 33 MHz regardless of 66/100/133 MHz of FSB, the AGP on 440BX can only be either equal to FSB or at 2/3 of FSB, so an 133 MHz FSB would raise the AGP bus to 88 MHz. Not every AGP card likes it.

If 440BX could run AGP at half of 133 MHz FSB then 810/815 chipsets would have no selling points. 😜

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-09-13, 22:05:

I have a ASUS P3B F board with 4 slots but 440BX doesn't support 1gb sooo no idea why it needed 4 slots.

So no even with 4 DIMM slots the chipset cannot work with 1gb.

False
440BX - BIOS shows 756MB and CPU-Z shows 1 GB: Which is right?

The BX supports 1gb of registered ram at 66 or 100mhz

rmay635703 wrote on 2024-09-14, 00:55:

False
440BX - BIOS shows 756MB and CPU-Z shows 1 GB: Which is right?

The BX supports 1gb of registered ram at 66 or 100mhz

Yes, but you need registered RAM and motherboard support. The entire TRW database has only 28 motherboards using 440BX chipset that come with RDIMM support (most of them are different revisions of Asus P2B family) so the choice would be extremely limited as RDIMM were not meant for consumer-grade motherboards. Boards like P2B-N or HP NetServer LH 3 can't even use standard ATX chassis or PSU.

Bx has no problem running 768mb of regular ram - not registered - on my Abit bx-133 raid.
I strongly suspect it can run 1gb of standard ram on bx6 2.0. As soon as have some time I am going to get the board out of storage and test it.

dormcat wrote on 2024-09-14, 01:36:

rmay635703 wrote on 2024-09-14, 00:55:

False
440BX - BIOS shows 756MB and CPU-Z shows 1 GB: Which is right?

The BX supports 1gb of registered ram at 66 or 100mhz

Yes, but you need registered RAM and motherboard support. The entire TRW database has only 28 motherboards using 440BX chipset that come with RDIMM support (most of them are different revisions of Asus P2B family) so the choice would be extremely limited as RDIMM were not meant for consumer-grade motherboards. Boards like P2B-N or HP NetServer LH 3 can't even use standard ATX chassis or PSU.

I vaguely recall that the BX also supports 1gb 3.3volt EDO dimms, on boards that are unstable above 512mb that is another rather expensive option that removes any bios or compatibility issue.