[plug] [OT] Strange system speeds (And Q3A: Linux .vs. Windows)

[Tim White]

**** This email is mainly an account of some strange happenings with an 
opening for feedback. If you don't want to hear of a problem that is 
strange, only occurs on a specific box and only under windows then stop 
reading. If you want to hear of a bizarre mystery or are a gamer or think 
you are a hardware or software expert then read on. For all else, its your 
own decision.****

I have these two boxes. For ease I will call them p3-667 and p2-400 and 
there specs are as follows
p3-667:
         * Pentium 3 667 Mhz
         * 192 Mb SD-RAM 133Mhz
         * 80Gb Seagate HDD (5,400 rpm)
         * AGP 4x
         * Intel Desktop Board D815EEA (Motherboard)
         * Onboard sound
         * 400W power supply
p2-400:
         * Pentium 2 400 Mhz (slot)
         * 128 Mb SD-RAM 66Mhz
         * 6Gb HDD ()
         * AGP 2x
         * ASUS P2B/350-U motherboard
         * 16bit sound blaster ISA
         * 235W power supply

I have 2 almost identical graphics cards. Both TNT2 with 32Mb memory. (Not 
identical as one has a newer bios and one also as an extra power molex to 
power the fan from the power supply instead of the AGP port)
As you can see the p3-667 is lots faster. I have proven it to be faster in 
just about everything. (If Linux could start up that quickly then I would 
really enjoy it more,[2] this is why I WANT a Linux bios or similar. 
Although getting rid of services seems to be the thing to do windows is 
loading about the same amount of services including Apache and lots of 
other CPU and RAM hogs, all of which get killed before quake or HL is started)
Playing Quake on the p3-667 with one of the fore mentioned graphics cards 
is worse than slow.
No matter which card I put in I get less than 1fps (approx 0.5 ~ 0.2) but 
the same graphics cards in the other system give a steady 29.4 ~ 29.9 fps. 
(using 'timedemo 1' and 'demo four' although the fps fluctuates between 15 
and 50 during the demo)
Both machines have near identical software setups. Both Windows XP although 
p2-400 is only 2 months old, XP was a clean install. (To bring this back to 
the Linux, p3-667 dual boots and p2-400 may soon become a Linux server and 
used to dual boot)
Quake 3 Arena is an identical install with on the essentials (I know it 
identical as I copied the Q3A folder off p3-667 to p2-400 and Q3A doesn't 
use registery settings)
I can get both computers down to the same set of 23 processes before 
starting quake although it doesn't effect p2-400. Both computers have 
identical graphics card settings and same color depth.
Playing HL[1] on p3-667 using DirectX plays fine and using software 
rendering is still playable. Selecting OpenGL mode in HL is playable 
although jerky so I don't know if it is reverting back to software mode but 
it doesn't appear so.
Quake on the p3-667 with a G450 under Linux runs at 40.9fps (although 
during the demo if fluctuates between 30 and 100)
Under windows with the G450 on the p3-667 it runs at 56.9 to 57.1 
(fluctuating between 40 and 110 during the demo)
I originally thought that it was the sound sub system as the p3-667 has 
onboard sound although that doesn't appear to be the problem.
As you can see from my speed tests and the fact that the G450 has dual head 
(both run at full speed with hardware acceleration) I will be keeping the 
G450 in my box. (Although it sometimes glitches as it has been thrashed 
around for a long time.)
If anyone knows of why the TNT2s behave so erratically in the p3-667 then 
please tell me. When I get the chance I will look into running some more 
test under Linux with the TNT2s.
The main reason, other than the raw speed tests seen above, that I need to 
run Q3A under windows is a mod that fails to play properly under Linux :(

Tim White

[1] Half-Life
[2] Not saying I don't enjoy it, I enjoy it heaps and use it 90% of the 
time I am doing work (especially now I have OO.org 1.1.1 for Linux. I 
needed 1.1.1 as there was a bug that was in 1.1.0 that bugged me and I only 
had 1.1.1 on windows for a while.)

  weirdo AT tigris DOT org (MSN Enabled) | ICQ# 255176389 | Riverton, Perth, WA
--- Computer languages are the only real universal languages