Copper-Ray - My i440BX SMP Project

  • Hallo all,

    Actually, I wanted to introduce you to the result of my project for a long time. But work and relocation stress thwarted my plans. But now I'm ready so that I can present you the first results. The basis is an ASUS P2B-DS with the (almost) fastest Pentium III Coppermine CPUs at 100 MHz FSB. The hardest part was finding suitable coolers. Below, I also show a photo with the coolers that I originally wanted to take. Visually everything looked great but there was clearly too little space between the fan of the first CPU and the slot board of the second one. Only about 4 mm, that was not optimal for the air flow. As it happens, by chance, I found some of CoolJag (full copper), who were a bit flatter. And I changed the fans from 13 mm to 10 mm. The graphic card is a QuadroFX 3000. To find a working Geforce 5950 Ultra is realy hard and when i saw one, the price was astronomic. So it is the fastest card from NVIDIA, which supports natively AGP 2x @ 3.3V. I know, the Geforce 6800 can be moded, i know. But one goal was that everything would be stable and reliable without wild modifications. And of course I put everything, as with my P4 i850 project, in a MAXDATA case.

    Copper-Ray

    The components:

    - 2x Intel Pentium III coppermine 1,0 GHz, 100 MHz FSB, 256 KB Cache

    - 2X ASUS S370-DL Rev. 1.02

    - 2x Cooljag JAC 102C with FAN 60x60x10 ~3200 RPM

    - ASUS P2B-DS Rev. 1.06 D02

    - 1024 MB RAM - 4x Micron 256 MB, 133 MHz, CL3 working @ 100 MHz, CL2

    - NVIDIA QuadroFX 3000

    - HDD MAXTOR 20 GB, 5400 RPM, 2 MB Cache

    - 3COM 3C905C-TX-M 100 MBit

    - Genius Soundmaker Value 5.1 with CMI8738

    - ODD LG CD/RW-ROM

    - PSU Delta Elektronics DPS-300MB A

    - MAXDATA Favorit 1000I Case

    The board how it arrived:

    For a better heat dissipation of the Northbridge I changed the passive heat sink. I think it looks pretty decent as before and also has a larger specific surface.

    The naked Northbridge. As thermal paste I used a common paste with silver content.

    The result:

    The two heart pieces:

    This is how the original variant of the used CPU cooler looked.

    The height difference. Minimal but existing! :) Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos in the removed state . But below you can see how the whole thing looks in the case.

    Here are a few impressions of the Slot 1 adapter with CPU and cooler.

    Of course, I also tested the power supply for optical errors before installing it. Everything was alright!

    Like the last time, I've been digging around the back of the case. So I can lay the power cables in the back.

    Fixing points for the front panel cable.

    Widening of the holes of the fan grille by 0.5 mm :-), what an effort!

    This must be off so that the HDD cage does not hang in the window!

    And that's how it looks now.

    And here is the gem! Does anyone play GW2? Then you know what I mean with: "shinies" ^^

    Thank you for watching!

    Special thanks to Gold Leader! You're grandiose and always an inspiration for new hardware ideas.

    glidegallery <-- meine Voodoo Gallery [Domain 壊れてる]

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von MadYoshi (6. Juli 2018 um 17:14)

  • Mich würde ja der Anwendungsfall eines solchen Systems interessieren.

    Permanent aufgebaut:
    A7V133, Athlon 1,4GHz, 512MB, GeForce3 Ti200 128MB, SB Live! X-Gamer
    Für die LAN:
    TUSL2-C, PIII-S 1,4GHz, 512MB, GeForce2 GTS 32MB, 2x Monster II 12M, SB Live!
    TUSL2-C, PIII-S 1,4GHz, 512MB, GeForce2 GTS 32MB, 2x Monster II 12M, SB Live!
    CUSL2-C, PIII 933MHz, 512MB, G400 Max 32MB AGP, 2x 3D Blaster Voodoo² 12MB, SB Live!
    CUSL2-C, PIII 933MHz, 512MB, G400 Max 32MB AGP, 2x Monster II 8MB, SB Live!

  • Mich würde ja der Anwendungsfall eines solchen Systems interessieren.

    There is no specific application in 2018 for this system, mabay in the year 2001. In this time i had an AMD K6-2 with 350 MHz. A ASUS P2B-DS with two PIII 1 GHz processors was unreachable for me. To day it is "only" a hobby. I enjoy to build up systems like this one. So, let's enjoy :)

    Falls du das Optimum an Kühlung für den Northbridge möchtest, empfehle ich Enzotech https://geizhals.de/enzotech-cnb-s…74.html?hloc=de

    Den habe ich bei mir auch verbaut und passt Wunderbar unter dem Slot1 Adapter mit Tualatin und Zalman Kühler... ansich würde ich die ganzen Chips einen Kühler verpassen auch den Spawas, kann definitiv nicht schaden.

    I also had an eye on this cooler. But the cost / benefit effect was just too far apart for me. All other components with heat sink to equip, I see something critical. Yes, a heat sink always improves the heat output. But due to the slot adapters and the relatively large cooler, everything around the slot area is very tight. There could be problems with air circulation.

    Nicely done including the wires. I like the old Maxdata Towers very much. One thing is definitely missing:

    3dfx Hardware :topmodel:

    How could that happen?! xD

    You get, what you want! Next weekend ;)

    glidegallery <-- meine Voodoo Gallery [Domain 壊れてる]

  • In the last few days I set up the system and played around a bit. The results from 3DMark2001SE and Quake III have unfortunately disappointed me a bit. Here I had just expected more. But I probably went wrong with false expectations.

    My settings for Quake III were:

    - 1024/768 - 32Bit - Lightmap - Detail on max - High - Trilinear

    I have tested with /r_smp = 0 and 1.

    The curious thing was that under smp = 0 I had on average 116 FPS and under smp = 1 it was only 107 FPS. :gadget:

    3DMark2001SE:

    I can hardly evaluate the result. What do you think? Do you have benchmark results from systems that are comparable?

    SISoft Sandra 2001:

    I am particularly confused by the results of AIDA64 and Everest. With AIDA64 I have over 250 MB more in the reading benchmark than with Everest. The write benchmark is almost identical for both programs. Can you imagine why? What do you think are the realitic memory bandwidths of a 440BX chipset? Because among the examples are entries of 440BX benchmark results, which are many times higher. Especially under the write benchmark results.

    AIDA64:

    Everest:

    -----------------------------------------------
    Personally, I am satisfied. The machine is running.

    glidegallery <-- meine Voodoo Gallery [Domain 壊れてる]

  • Pretty neat machine! :thumbup::)

    The low framerates with SMP enabled can have various reasons.

    No SMP support by the gpu drivers, both CPUs require more memory bandwidth and make it bottleneck, no support or problems with GeForce FX GPUs, WinXP being too new for this etc...

    Maybe only the GeForce drivers from that era had the code segments which made it work properly. Could be anything :/

    Something you can try is to create a batch file with the following line:

    start /realtime quake3.exe +r_smp 1 and run it in your Q3 directory. From what I remember that should force Q3 into smp mode when running on NT based OS.

    Just had to google this to confirm. Not sure if it works though. However I can give it a try on my dual p3 machine as well.

    Voodoo-Kiste (seit 3dfx BayernLAN 2007):
    TUSL2-C, P3-S 1400, 512MB SDR, Voodoo 5 5500 AGP, 9,1GB IBM SCSI (OS), 40GB HDD (Games), Adaptec 2940-U2W SCSI
    Dualatin: GA-6VTXD, 2x P3-S 1400, 1GB SDR, 2x 60GB, Hercules Radeon 8500 128MB

    Work (CG): MSI TRX40 Creator, AMD TR 3970X, 128GB RAM, Titan RTX 24GB, Win10Pro

    Zock & Office: MSI X58 Pro-E, Xeon X5680 4,2GHz, 24GB RAM, RX590 8GB, KDE Neon

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von eLuSiVe (12. Juli 2018 um 09:43)

  • Like Gold Leader [Link], I once again wanted to reactivate my Voodoo3 3500. To give the great Voodoo3 3500 an opportunity to show off what she's capable of, I've handed today a Compaq Voodoo3 3500 to my Copper-Ray.

    Compaq Voodoo3 3500:

    Compaq Voodoo3 3500 installed in my Copper-Ray:

    Let there be light:

    A round UT99:

    glidegallery <-- meine Voodoo Gallery [Domain 壊れてる]

  • What do you think are the realitic memory bandwidths of a 440BX chipset?

    I think round about 750 MB/s should be possible.

    Results from my Intel 440BX system [Link] :

    Everest 5.50.2100 -> Write = 789 MB/s; Read = 790 MB/s.

    Speedsys Memory Bandwidth -> 749.40 MB/s.

  • Thanks for your comparison values. With Everest 5.50.2100 I also come to similar values. That calms me, that everything is set correctly. I find it strange that every benchmark says otherwise. But my x264 result also reassures me that my machine is running properly.

    Everest 5.50.2100 Read: 765MB/s

    Everest 5.50.2100 Write: 767MB/s

  • I was going to say that the different Everest versions produce different results. You can't always count on that.

    But you're right, the bandwidth of MadYoshis system are very well. Everything is fine. ;)

    Die Pixel beschleunigt, die Kanten gefixt, lang leben die Karten von 3dfx! :spitze:

  • Today i wanted to play a round Star Trek Elite Force with my Copper-Ray PIII build. But not with the V3, i used the Quadro 3000 as from the previous setup.

    To my surprise the SMP Modus (r_smp 1) worked pretty good. I have nearly 100% CPU usage (between 80 und 100). With r_smp 0, the game will use only one CPU and the CPU usage is around 50% in the Task Manager.

    Tomorrow i want to make some Benchmarks between SMP enable und disable. But current i found a timedemo only for EF Version 1.1, my Version is 1.2 and the demo won't work. Have somebody a solutation, without an downgrade?

    glidegallery <-- meine Voodoo Gallery [Domain 壊れてる]

  • You have an awesome setup! Like your Yellow/orange lights. It looks fancy.

    Sometimes i use a FX3000 in a BX System too. But you can also use a early Radeon 9800 pro, it will work. ;)

    The FX is the last Nvidia Card that supports 3.3V. But some Geforce 6200/6600 will do 3.3V. Okay a normal 6600 wont be faster as your Quadro. But some can modded to 6600GT Level.

    Btw. StarTrek looks superb. Even today. :thumbup:

  • Loved that game, even I am more of a Star Wars fan, Star Trek Elite Force was a lot of fun, Star Wars Republic Commando is quite similar actually :)
    Also cool to see an other Voodoo3 3500 user here :)

  • Als ich mir das System aufgebaut hatte, habe ich nie daran gedacht, dass ich dieses Update einmal durchführen würden oder auch könnte. Es war für mich schwer genug zwei 1,0 GHz Coppermine mit 100 MHz FSB zu bekommen und das Modell mit 1,1 GHz ist noch um ein vielfaches seltener. Doch durch zwei glückliche Zufälle, dieses und letztes Jahr, befinden sich jetzt zwei Stück in meinem Besitz.

    Pentium III SL5QW - Coppermine - 1100/256/100/1,75V:

    Das Update, alte CPU runter, neue CPU drauf:

    Die 1000er Modelle hatte ich zuvor schon mit 1,70V statt 1,75V betrieben. Ich erhoffe mir davon eine etwas geringere Wärmeentwicklung. Beim 1100er war ich mir ungewiss, ob dieser auch mit 1,70V stabil läuft, doch ich hatte Glück, alles läuft perfekt.

    Eigentlich fällt dieses Update unter das Motto "nice to have", doch einen kleinen Performance Schubser habe ich mir dann doch erhofft. Sind ja 10% mehr Takt. Zum Vergleich dient der 3DMark2001SE. Mit den 1000er Modellen kam ich auf 6618 Punkte. Im ersten Anlauf mit den 1100er Modellen kam ich dann aber bloß auf 6791.

    :/ HÄÄ Was ist da los, dass kann doch nicht sein. Das ist ja doof. So hatte ich mir das nicht gedacht. :?:

    Vergleichswert Pentium III 1,0GHz

    Erster Durchlauf Pentium III 1,1GHz

    Unter Hilfe von Google先生 und reichlich viel Zeit, die ich damit verbracht habe, im Bios Einstellungen hin und her zu schubsen, kam am Ende doch ein Ergebnis raus, das mich zufriedenstellt.

    Die finalen Bios Einstellungen unter Chipset Features, die anderen Einstellungen in den anderen Untermenüs sind weniger ausschlaggebend:

    Finales Ergebnis 3DMark2001SE QuadroFX 3000 @ GeforceFX 5900

    Finales Ergebnis 3DMark2001SE QuadroFX 3000 @ GeforceFX 5900Ultra

    Mit Sandra habe ich noch kurz die allg. Performance getestet, alles bestens:!:

    Trotz der Vollbestückung sieht die Speicherperformance gut aus, gefällt mir :)

    Jetzt ist wirklich das Ende erreicht, was ich dieser Plattform zumuten kann.

    glidegallery <-- meine Voodoo Gallery [Domain 壊れてる]