Yes, it's now my turn to ask for advice on a major system up

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I. HATE. YOU. the best upgrade i'm getting in the near future is a new geforce 2 and 256 more mg of ram.
 
On 2001-12-24 00:57, Darkness wrote:
you can play ff9 at different resolutions? your joking....
Click to expand...

I'm not joking.  (Thank God for 3dFX!)  ePSXe has the potential to use a 3d acclerator card to go to resolutions higher than 800X600.  Lemme see.... the max resolution my card supports for ePSXe is 1600 X 1200.

So, in theory, I could.....hey, put the knife down! :erm:

PurpleSmurf:  I forgot to mention that its also got a 400Mhz Front side bus.........
 
Yes, the above post was by me.  

Guess I forgot to log in since I'm so excited about my new system!

Well, I guess my friends at school don't having bragging rights anymore.....
 
ok now your the devil my current system only has a 133mhz front side bus. :( . how much did you pay for it?
 
Goku...what GPU plugin are you using? Pete's OpenGL 1.55 is the best in my opinion. Makes everything look so nice. And the best way to emulate PS1(and N64 for that matter) is 640x480 in 32bit color with the best FSAA your card can use. The 2D objects look best that way.
 
I'm using pete's D3D renderer; version 1.55 I think.  It uses the DX7.0 interface.  It runs pretty well.

32bit color & FSAA?  Well, I'm still using my 3dFX Voodoo3 2000 PCI.  You named the two features it DOESN'T have.  It's not that bad though, being stuck with 16bit color.  Don't get me wrong, the card can go to 32bit color for windows, its just the 3d graphics buffer was not designed for 32-bit texture quality, and therefore does not support the 32-bit color option for hardware acceleration.

Now, you know the part where Zidane, Vivi and Freya are making their way toward Burmecia?  I think the place is called "Gizamaluk's Grotto."  Anyway, I was fighting the boss, and I noticed that one of his attacks created a graphic glitch.  It looked like the plugin didn't know how to draw it.  Other than that, and some missing colors on the background sky during battle scenes, the plugin works well.

-edit-

Oh yeah, I forgot to answer PurpleSmurf's question.  I paid approximately $425 + tax for the upgrade.  Remember, it was only a bare-bones upgrade (CPU, RAM, PSU & case; and motherboard.)

Speaking of motherboards, the sound chipset the mobo came with has HARDWARE DLS!  (enter hallelulah chorus).  FINALLY!!!!!!

*plugs in XG card to get hardware XG with FF7*

Ah, fiddlesticks!  It wants to use only one of the two.  I tried to install them one at a time, but windows simply removes the mobo sound chip drivers and replaces them with the XG card's drivers; thus disabling the hardware DLS the mobo sound chip has.

Is there any way I can get both the XG card and the mobo sound chip to run concurrently in windows?
[edited] 239 2001-12-25 03:26
 
wow only 450? i might have to star saving so i can have nice new system bus like that :)
 
Hehe, yeah, I'm well aware of everything V3 can and can't do :)

Somewhat strange though, as I've only used V3's in friends systems and such, never owned one. I have a V5 though(beautiful FSAA).

Yes, Geforce2's FSAA is an iffy thing...I hate the method they use...works horribly with direct framebuffer writes and many other effects. I prefer Geforce3's 2xRGMS method when forcing 64 tap anisotropic filtering.
 
Check this out:

I tested how well FF8PC's high-resolution movies ran.  Strangely enoughly, there's still gaps in the sound :-?.  Not as bad as with the old system, but you can tell it's not streaming the sound properly.

This leads me to believe that my cd-rom drive can't keep up with the rest of the system.  Let's see....its a Toshiba 24x, with the DMA option enabled.

The sustained transfer rate for a 24x drive w DMA is what, 2megs per second?  That would explain why I'm getting gaps in the sound stream......

Oh well, it's not gonna matter much.  The cd-drive on the computer that my sister uses from time to time is failing, so my dad had originally planned to replace that with a 50x drive.  After hearing that my current drive isn't keeping with the rest of my system, he told me he's gonna replace my drive with the 50x, and use the 24x drive to replace the failing one on my sister's computer.

This keep's gettin' better and better! 8)
 
I'll try it without the DMA later.  Gotta go to grandma's now, so I can't try it out now.
 
On 2001-12-24 14:17, PurpleSmurf wrote:
ok now your the devil my current system only has a 133mhz front side bus. :( . how much did you pay for it?
Click to expand...

Well actually, The P4 uses a 100mhz FSB.....they just say 400FSB because of the Rambus (the speed rating of rambus is said to be 4 times faster than normal Sdram). Unless he's got that DDR SDram board....then he has a 200mhz FSB. (DDR basicly stands for Double Rated....2 times the speed of normal Ram)

Current Athlon chips are really running at 133FSB, then they times it by 2 because of the DDR, so it's listed as a 266mhz FSB. If they ever made an Athlon that could run with Rambus you would see a number of 532mhz FSB. I doubt that will ever happen though. I imagine Intel would go to the lawyers, if they did.

It's just a numbers game. there is only about a 10% increase between DDR and normal SDram. So that means that there is about a 10% increase between 133FSB and 266FSB. And the difference seems to get more exaggerated, the higher you go.

But from an overclockers point of view....a 133mhz board overclocks a lot better than a 100mhz board. ;)


Do you guys remember when Athlon first came out? They where saying that their FSB was at 200mhz......what  they didn't tell you was that they meant it was 200mhz with DDR Ram. I imagine that they thought that when the DDR was finally put out on the streets (Back then DDR was experimental) that all you would have to do is plug it in your current Athlon motherboard and it would work.....guess they were wrong, huh.

You see....Intel isn't the only one guility of playing the numbers game. Those older Athlon systems really had a 100mhz FSB (SDram), and AMD was claiming it as a 200mhz FSB.(DDR SDram)
[edited] 65 2001-12-27 03:24

[edited] 65 2001-12-27 03:27
 
Oh well.  It's still fast enough to get the feeling of "Weeeeeeeeeee!" (say that from a little kids perspective.  I'm not talking like some sicko here.)  from the frame rate alone.

Anyway,  I just found the coolest thing to use for FF9 on ePSXe.  It's Eternal's SPU version 1.1.  If you've got a really fast comp, click on the reverb checkbox until it's both greyed and checkmarked.  You've just enabled some high quality reverb by doing that.

How good is it?  It sounds like someone piped the PSX sound output through EAX!  It might be a little louder than usual, though.

-edit-

I just got that 52x cd-rom drive I was talking about earliear installed on my comp!

Anyway, I have another question.  On the box, there's a list of cd formats it can read.  One item in particular it lists is "CD-ROM/XA"

Is this refering to the XA audio format that PSX games use?
[edited] 239 2001-12-27 20:44
 
On 2001-12-26 22:03, Threesixty wrote:

Do you guys remember when Athlon first came out? They where saying that their FSB was at 200mhz......what  they didn't tell you was that they meant it was 200mhz with DDR Ram. I imagine that they thought that when the DDR was finally put out on the streets (Back then DDR was experimental) that all you would have to do is plug it in your current Athlon motherboard and it would work.....guess they were wrong, huh.

You see....Intel isn't the only one guility of playing the numbers game. Those older Athlon systems really had a 100mhz FSB (SDram), and AMD was claiming it as a 200mhz FSB.(DDR SDram)
Click to expand...

The 200MHz figure is correct. Sort of... AMD licensed the Alpha EV6 data bus technology for use in the Athlon. It operates at 100MHz physical, 200MHz effective because it sends data at the beginning and end of each pulse. 133-266 for the newer ones.
 
Well, I think it's fishy.

Especially since Intel claims their P4 has a 400FSB and the chip itself is running at 100mhz bus (basicly, saying that the Rambus allows the multiplication of four). And Athlon is using a 133mhz Bus, and using that DDR memory and comes up with a number of 266. (I have no proof, I'm just ranting.....using my own logic)

And isn't it said that DDR Sdram sends data at the beginning and end of each pulse....could it be that that Alpha EV6 data bus was just the highway....but needed a car that could actually go that fast....the car being the DDR Sdram? I think.....yes.
 
That's it! I've decided to upgrade my lowly Celeron 300A overclocked to 450. I'm gonna get myself a P4 1.8Ghz chip (maybe a 2.0Ghz chip) and a compliant motherboard... probably an Iwill. (I've NEVER had a problem with those boards.) Only thing I'll have to get other than those two things: an Antec Server case. (1030 SX I believe... The one with a switch on the back.) I already have the RAM... 256 should suffice for now...

(Checks prices...) That's gonna cost me... about $600. Let's see... if I work full time... I can have that in... 6 weeks. (I dump half my earnings into my savings account for school.)

Well... Looks like I'll be busy soon... Probably after New Years...

Sephiroth 3D

"I don't understand..." "You don't have to understand." - Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Sephiroth 3D.com
[email protected]
 
Don't go for the P4...way overpriced. Get an AthlonXP 2000+ (1.67GHz). Much better performance.
 
Really? My Athalons are crap unless you're rendering, in comparison to our P4s that is.

Sephiroth 3D

"I don't understand..." "You don't have to understand." - Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Sephiroth 3D.com
[email protected]
 
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