AMD Duron build performance.

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Greetings to all.

Having found it in the my cupboard (after around 25 years) I finally managed to put together a build centered around my old AMD Duron 800Mhz.

The spec is as follows:

Amd Duron 800
Epox 8KTA3L+
768Mb SD100 RAM
Geforce 2 Ti (on Detonator 30.82 drivers)

I obviously had a lot less RAM back then, and my GPU was a Kyro 2 at the time. But it's in the same ball park as the GF2 Ti, I think?

I managed to get Windows 98 installed on it and paired it up with an old 1024x768 monitor.

Now, I don't know if I am misremembering some things but the performance is far lower than I remember/expected.

I started off with Return to Castle Wolfenstein which, even at the lowest of settings, has a wildly fluctuating frame rate which goes from 40ish indoors down to about 10-20 outdoors. Lowering the resolution down to 640x480 doesn't change anything. Outdoor sections are truly unplayable.

Ok, fair enough - that game was a bit later so maybe I played it after upgrading.

So I rooted out my old copy of Ghost Recon which I know for a fact I played hundreds/thousands of hours of on this system. The first level is a big open map which perhaps doesn't help matters, but the frame rate never hits 30. I tried lowering everything to the absolute lowest settings (including resolution) and it does improve things. But I'm pretty sure that I didn't have to do this back then? I used to play the game pretty competitively online so I can't imagine I was at sub-30 fps.

I also tried 1nsane which fairs a tad better, giving me 40ish fps.

I'm just a bit confused as to whether this performance is expected or if there is something wrong somewhere. With the FPS barely changing with resolution drops I'm thinking it's CPU related.

Any help would be great because it's driving me nuts!

Cheers!
 
Wasn't the duron slated for poor performance back in the day? It was a very long time ago but it seems to ring a bell.
 
It's been a long while since I had a Duron 1000.... but back then review sites used 30 fps as the standard for playable and often you needed to be 640 or 800 rather than XVGA so perhaps you ask too much of it.

Perhaps try Quake 3 or 3DMark 2001 .... though these results with a much faster pentium.

GeForce review
 
Thanks for the replies guys.

Well, I never knew that my poor little Duron 800 was so widely regarded as being crap lol :(

It was my first ever upgrade after I got a PC a few years prior so I always remembered it fondly. Maybe too fondly!

My plan was to use the system for messing around on late 90s games such as Half Life etc. So maybe it'll be enough for that - I just need to go hunting and find where my copies are.

I do have copies of Quake 3 and 3D Mark 2001 handy though so I'll give them a whirl next time I get the chance.
 
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Socket 462 board? 100% change to an Athlon for not much money, it will be a really nice upgrade
 
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I don't know where all the hatred is coming from? Anyone that's owned one, knows otherwise.

I had a Duron PC in another room, with the pencil mod, overclocked from 800MHz to 1.2GHz, 512MB RAM, GeForce 4 Ti (I forget whether it was the 4200, 4600, or 4800) - it happily ran HL2 at 1024x768 (that's all the old 15" monitor I had spare would do) with pretty nice visuals for the time, for a spare PC.

Sure, it wasn't the Athlon 3200 XP, in my main PC, but it was great when overclocked, for what it was.
 
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Loved my Duron with it's pencil mod (think I even splashed out on some rear demister paint), lasted a fair while until I upgraded to an Athlon XP Barton.
 
Greetings to all.

Having found it in the my cupboard (after around 25 years) I finally managed to put together a build centered around my old AMD Duron 800Mhz.

The spec is as follows:

Amd Duron 800
Epox 8KTA3L+
768Mb SD100 RAM
Geforce 2 Ti (on Detonator 30.82 drivers)

I obviously had a lot less RAM back then, and my GPU was a Kyro 2 at the time. But it's in the same ball park as the GF2 Ti, I think?

I managed to get Windows 98 installed on it and paired it up with an old 1024x768 monitor.

Now, I don't know if I am misremembering some things but the performance is far lower than I remember/expected.

I started off with Return to Castle Wolfenstein which, even at the lowest of settings, has a wildly fluctuating frame rate which goes from 40ish indoors down to about 10-20 outdoors. Lowering the resolution down to 640x480 doesn't change anything. Outdoor sections are truly unplayable.

Ok, fair enough - that game was a bit later so maybe I played it after upgrading.

So I rooted out my old copy of Ghost Recon which I know for a fact I played hundreds/thousands of hours of on this system. The first level is a big open map which perhaps doesn't help matters, but the frame rate never hits 30. I tried lowering everything to the absolute lowest settings (including resolution) and it does improve things. But I'm pretty sure that I didn't have to do this back then? I used to play the game pretty competitively online so I can't imagine I was at sub-30 fps.

I also tried 1nsane which fairs a tad better, giving me 40ish fps.

I'm just a bit confused as to whether this performance is expected or if there is something wrong somewhere. With the FPS barely changing with resolution drops I'm thinking it's CPU related.

Any help would be great because it's driving me nuts!

Cheers!
ive got the same CPU in a windows 98 build with a GeForce MX4000 128MB. Everything ive tried runs really well and fast at 1280 x 1024. Star Trek Elite Force. Klingon academy , Max Payne.
 
Socket 462 board? 100% change to an Athlon for not much money, it will be a really nice upgrade
Yeah I know I could, but this was my actual chip from back then so I kinda wanted to build the actual system (or as close to) that I had.

ive got the same CPU in a windows 98 build with a GeForce MX4000 128MB. Everything ive tried runs really well and fast at 1280 x 1024. Star Trek Elite Force. Klingon academy , Max Payne.

Hmm. I'll have to try those games out then. The problem is that I can't see what's causing the issue. It's so easy these days with Afterburner or whatever to see exactly what each component is up to. On Windows 98 I can't find anything to do similar.
 
768Mb SD100 RAM

Might be worth a Try with less RAM installed - 256MB should be fine. Windows 98 general doesn't play well with >512MB and can need some tweaks. In reality most things that run on 98 won't need all that RAM anyway.



CPU-Z still has a "vintage edition" that runs on 95/98, so should at least show you if everything is running at the correct speed.

 
Depending on the version of that chip and your motherboard, you could pencil mod it and OC to 1-1.2ghz and see some hefty performance uplift.
 
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