Hello,

I recently inherited the following combo: Sempron 2600 (1.6GHz) on MS-7032 v1.0. I thought it would be a good platform to receive my voodoo 5 5500 pci (mac card flashed to pc).
I set up Win Xp Pro Version 2002 SP3 and Win 98 se and was a bit surprised by the apparent low performances.
So I ran some benchmarks (3d mark 2001 se).

The results:

AMD Sempron 2600+ (1.6Ghz, L2 cache 128kb)
MSI MS-7032 (k8t-neo-v 1.0, bios 5.1)
1GB DDR 400
Driver: Amigamerlin 3.0 for Voodoo 5500 PCI/DVI (tried later with 3.1 too)

3d mark2001 se v330
Win Xp Pro Version 2002 SP3
With one chip only ===> 1240 3D marks
 default, 2 chips enabled===> 1300 3D Marks

Tried again with Win 98se, with amigamerlin 2.5, all default settings: 1400 3D marks

From the very little difference with one and 2 chips activated,  I thought there was a problem with the card. So I later tried it in an old p3-s 1.4 on ms-6309 with 512 meg SDRAM 133, on which I also have a V5 5500 AGP.
The OS on the p3 machine is WIn98SE +unofficial service pack, driver is Amigamerlin 2.5:

3d mark 2000
V5 PCI: 4708
V5 AGP: 4742

3d mark 2001
V5 PCI: 1907
V5 AGP: 2186

The difference here between the AGP and the PCI is very small, so I concluded that the PCI card is fine.

What do you think the problem is with the sempron+ v5 pci configuration? I have since tried sfft drivers, latest amigamerlin 3.1 R1 drivers and still get the same low result.
Anybody has the same or a similar configuration? Am I missing something obvious in the bios maybe?
Could it be the small cache of the sempron? or just bad luck with hardware compatibility?

how does it behave under win98se with the latest official 3dfx drivers?

Well, I haven't tried with different drivers, instead I tried with a different card: a v3-3000 16 meg pci.
the results are as follow:

In both case, OS is Windows 98se + latest unofficial service pack.
PIII-s 1.4 @1582      
fsb:150, sdram:133      
3dmark2000    3362                      
3dmark2001    1789                      

Sempron2600 @1864MHz
fsb:233, sdram:233    
3dmark2000    2787
3dmark2001    1521

You can see some screenshots with more details on this thread (in French):
http://forum.hardware.fr/forum2.php?config=hfr.inc&cat=1&subcat=109&post=567660&page=1&p=1&sondage=0&owntopic=0&trash=0&trash_post=0&print=0&numreponse=7799101"e_only=0&new=0&nojs=0#t7799101

What do you think?

The difference in performance can also be felt in games. I tried Supreme snowboarding (glide3, 1280x1024, 16 bits, max settings for game details), it is definitely smoother on the P3. At 1024x768, not much difference.

I am very interested in feedback from people with the same mobo (or equivalent) to try to find out where the problem is.


To H-street, I will try latest official drivers when I have the time.