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Tossing around the idea of a PPro again.

M

Mr. Horse

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I been wanting to build a dual first gen Pentium MMX or PPro system for years. But every time I set out to do this something gets in the way.

Now I'm tossing around the idea again. I want to keep the system as 1996-1997 as possible and I want to ask a few things.

From a 32bit gaming stand point would a 1mb l2 or 512mb l2 CPU be worth getting. From the way I look at it would be since I'm not going to be doing and Overclocking.

Were there any 50 or 68 pin scsi drives out there that were not extremely loud? I don't mind the chirping or clicking sounds, but the motor and disk spinning sounds can get to me. I'm sure any good 5400 rpm drive should be ok.

Also what would you say is a good 96-97 scsi raid card is? Anything to look for? This is a time frame I'm not all to well vested in, 1 or 2 years newer or older and I would know what to get.

I'll need a full size AT board for my system. Any suggestions? Places to look for information on the old socket 8 broads
 
What you've described is a server machine. Pentium Pro was not commonly used for gaming - Pentium MMX or AMD K6 were much more popular, and the RAID setup was expensive and uncommon during these days - IDE drives were the mainstream. Additionally, I am very skeptical that any of 1990's games would take advantage of dual processor setup. In fact, the contemporary Windows 95 OS does not support SMP, and might not even boot on such a system (and Windows NT was not a popular gaming OS).

For late 90's gaming I'd probably build a Socket 7 system with AMD K6 (K6-II or K6-III if you don't mind being it a year or two newer). I'd also use a CF card for storage - cheap, fast, and silent. The OS would probably be Windows 95 OSR2.
 
I'm more then aware of this. Gaming is not the only thing I'll be using the system for. I'll be using it for data recovery off old media like PD-roms, floppys, tape, ls-120 and so on.

And there were a very small hand full of games from the later 90s that had SMP support, mostly flight sim games and quake3. but that's not the point of having dual Ppro's. Its more for the fun of it.
 
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Horse:

Sergey is right on the button. Currently, I am in the process of building a K6-2 (socket 7 533 MHz) gamer with a VooDoo2 & a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000, along with 256 x 2 168-pin RAM. The motherboard is a re-branded MITAC 5114VU (Compaq Presario 7900) NIB for $39.00 shipped. Most of the parts, with the exception of the CPU, I had laying around. I paid less than $10 for NIB OEM K6-2. The mobo comes with 4 PCI slots and onboard audio/video/USB/parallel/serial/PS2 but no LAN. I'll be using an inexpensive 120 GB SSD and either W95 or W98SE - haven't decided yet. Good luck.
 
Dual CPU are not good at old school gaming, one CPU will be idle.

Last generation 7k, 10K SCSI drives are not that loud, very early 5400 RPM SCSI drives are very loud (Seagate 5.35" FH drives as an example).

I have 2x dual PPros running Win2k and NT4 and have a dual socket 7 that will be running NT 3.5.1 and NT4 when I get around to it (mostly just need a case).
 
The second cpu will not be idle. It will handle background stuff and the os. And once more this system will not only be used for games. That a very small unimportant thing the system will be used for.

As for hdds. I had a lot of 7k and 10k drives. They were all screamers.
 
I think the 512KB and 1MB increased cache versions were really meant to be server CPUs. Nowadays Intel uses "Xeon" to differentiate these from the regular workstation CPUs with a more 'normal' amount of cache. But in those days Intel wasn't yet using that branding.

From a gaming perspective, I think there are three categories that matter here:

1. Games that were intended to be run on a Pentium II or better. These are going to suck on a Pentium Pro no matter how much cache it has. If you want to get extra cache so they suck slightly less, go for it, but it's not going to make the game playable (in the sense of "runs with enjoyable performance"). If the game requires MMX then keep in mind the Pentium Pro didn't have it.
2. 32-bit games that were intended to be run on a Pentium Pro or earlier. These should all run well on the regular 256KB cache version of the Pentium Pro, since this is what most Pentium Pro desktops had. Extra cache shouldn't make any appreciable difference here.
3. 16-bit games that were intended to be run on a Pentium or earlier. A Pentium Pro is not a good choice for these games because it had pretty bad 16-bit performance. You are better off using a Pentium (or Pentium MMX if the game requires MMX) or a Pentium II, unless the game was so old that it would run well on a 386. In that case it won't matter whether you have extra cache or not because you can beat the game into submission on clock cycles alone.

Based on tihs, I'm going to say that from a gaming perspective, the amount of cache is irrelevant. Either the CPU will be fast enough without the extra cache, or it won't and extra cache won't help.
 
Mr. Horse said:
The second cpu will not be idle. It will handle background stuff and the os. And once more this system will not only be used for games. That a very small unimportant thing the system will be used for.

As for hdds. I had a lot of 7k and 10k drives. They were all screamers.
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Well, in that case, checkout Mouser. The have some new Socket 604 Xeons for a fairly reasonable price. But, you want to do it Pentium or PPro. I have one dual CPU board, but it was a server in a previous life. It's lacking in PCI slots - only has 1.
 
Mr. Horse said:
The second cpu will not be idle. It will handle background stuff and the os.
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That depends on the OS you are planning to use: if you're planning to use Win9x (any version), the second cpu will simply not be recognised as Win9x doesn't supprt more than one cpu.
 
kgober said:
I think the 512KB and 1MB increased cache versions were really meant to be server CPUs. Nowadays Intel uses "Xeon" to differentiate these from the regular workstation CPUs with a more 'normal' amount of cache. But in those days Intel wasn't yet using that branding.

From a gaming perspective, I think there are three categories that matter here:

1. Games that were intended to be run on a Pentium II or better. These are going to suck on a Pentium Pro no matter how much cache it has. If you want to get extra cache so they suck slightly less, go for it, but it's not going to make the game playable (in the sense of "runs with enjoyable performance"). If the game requires MMX then keep in mind the Pentium Pro didn't have it.
2. 32-bit games that were intended to be run on a Pentium Pro or earlier. These should all run well on the regular 256KB cache version of the Pentium Pro, since this is what most Pentium Pro desktops had. Extra cache shouldn't make any appreciable difference here.
3. 16-bit games that were intended to be run on a Pentium or earlier. A Pentium Pro is not a good choice for these games because it had pretty bad 16-bit performance. You are better off using a Pentium (or Pentium MMX if the game requires MMX) or a Pentium II, unless the game was so old that it would run well on a 386. In that case it won't matter whether you have extra cache or not because you can beat the game into submission on clock cycles alone.

Based on tihs, I'm going to say that from a gaming perspective, the amount of cache is irrelevant. Either the CPU will be fast enough without the extra cache, or it won't and extra cache won't help.
Click to expand...


Thats what I figured. But I didn't know for sure. Games isn't really what the system will be used for. But it would be nice to be able to play a few erly 9x games on it that otherwise don't play nice with my modern system.
 
Mr. Horse said:
From a 32bit gaming stand point would a 1mb l2 or 512mb l2 CPU be worth getting. From the way I look at it would be since I'm not going to be doing and Overclocking. ...
Click to expand...

About 15 years ago I built exactly this kind of system for my kids to play games; loaded Windows 2000 on it, and it worked ok. Nothing to write home about, and it definitely felt slower than a K6/2-500 felt in the same time frame, but I had all the parts and made it work. EDIT: Forgot to mention that the system I built had a four-disk RAID5, using some 4GB Seagate SCSI drives. Wasn't quite as loud as the first stab I took, which was a 5.25 inch full-height 11GB Seagate.

Also what would you say is a good 96-97 scsi raid card is? Anything to look for? This is a time frame I'm not all to well vested in, 1 or 2 years newer or older and I would know what to get.
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96? Mylex DAC960, PCI version. I have an EISA one if you're interested in EISA...... and I might still have a PCI one in a DEC AlphaServer 2100 I have lying about here. There are plenty of these on eBay for low money.

I'll need a full size AT board for my system. Any suggestions? Places to look for information on the old socket 8 boards
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Supermicro made several of these in AT form factor. I have a P6DNE here with some battery damage, but both VRMs; in fact, it's the one from the machine I built my kids (I ended up swapping them an old Sony Viao 1.4GHz Athlon laptop, which was much nicer for their games). Here's a photo I just took:
20181218-p6dne.jpg
 
Or try and get one of those ALR 6x6 systems... years ago they were on eBay just about every week and cheap LOL. Wonder what happened to those systems, they were very very cool!
 
Denniske1976 said:
Or try and get one of those ALR 6x6 systems... years ago they were on eBay just about every week and cheap LOL. Wonder what happened to those systems, they were very very cool!
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ohh, I'll take one of those, with overdrives, no make that 2.
 
Well the chip is a P2 XEON and I googled this:

It was supported by the 440GX dual-processor workstation chipset and the 450NX quad- or octo-processor chipset.

So while Intel didn't support more then 2 overdrives in a system I can see why they would work.
 
Unknown_K said:
So while Intel didn't support more then 2 overdrives in a system I can see why they would work.
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Same here. But ALR did something that lets you use 4 or more in one system, I seen a few other ALR systems with quad overdrives too.
 
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