slkh

Again my old advice Not the right time to get a Dual CPU motherboard. Recent news mongering around saying that Athlon motherboard 760 can run the processor asynchronically. (Meaning, stick in a 750 Mhz, and a 850 mhz on the motherboard, it will work!!!!)

How about Asus CUR-DLS dual processor motherboard? http://insanehardware.com/reviews/hardware/cur-dls/

Appologize for the duplicated postings. No idea why it happens. It is true that Supermicro P6DGU isn't the latest board available in the market. Not saying i840 platform, it definitely beat the GX chipset in performance. But the price tag that come with it, I mean the RDRAM, is really scaring people off. While in theory, i820 suppose to beat any BX/GX chipset. But in practice, it wasn't so. While i840 with dual channel of RDRAM suppose to really push the performance gap further. But the price of RDRAM which is expected to lower in somewhere around 2164, really make it the options for the richie rich I thought GX chipset was for the Xeon? It wasn't any older than the BX chipset as far as I know. And it does support 133 Mhz FSB, with overclocked AGP bus. If you don't bother about the overclocked AGP bus, it smoke out even i840 in terms of performance For the time being, I don't think it is time to buy any dual processor motherboard because the 760 platform is just around the corner, probably already sampling to the taiwanese manufacturer. That will be my next upgrade.

Supermicro P6DGU with onboard SCSI support. A RAID Port if you need RAID support. Overall stability, I give 9/10 Overclockability, 5/10. Limited bus speed. Board Layout, 1/10 (Worst I have ever seen, with IDE channel at lower left of the board, and the board is HUGE. No way of getting it on Midi tower, need extra long cable (1m cable) if you are going for Full Tower Case) BIOS support = not very good, problematic ACPI support. Features: 8/10

Supermicro P6DGU with onboard SCSI support. A RAID Port if you need RAID support. Overall stability, I give 9/10 Overclockability, 5/10. Limited bus speed. Board Layout, 1/10 (Worst I have ever seen, with IDE channel at lower left of the board, and the board is HUGE. No way of getting it on Midi tower, need extra long cable (1m cable) if you are going for Full Tower Case) BIOS support = not very good, problematic ACPI support. Features: 8/10

Supermicro P6DGU with onboard SCSI support. A RAID Port if you need RAID support. Overall stability, I give 9/10 Overclockability, 5/10. Limited bus speed. Board Layout, 1/10 (Worst I have ever seen, with IDE channel at lower left of the board, and the board is HUGE. No way of getting it on Midi tower, need extra long cable (1m cable) if you are going for Full Tower Case) BIOS support = not very good, problematic ACPI support. Features: 8/10

Q3A(1.17) Demo 1, 1024x768 32 bit colour, bilinear, everything else max out: r_smp 0 = 62.2 fps r_smp 1 = 52.8 fps Q3A(1.17) Demo 1, 1024x768 32 bit colour, trilinear, everything else max out: r_smp 0 = 61.7 fps r_smp 1 = 54.3 fps (Improve compared to Bilinear???) Configuration: Dual Cel300A@464 Mhz Supermicro P6DGU 384 Mb SDRAM @ CAS 2 CL Geforce DDR @ AGP 2X 18.2 Gb Quantum Fireball KA 6.4 Gb Seagate Medalist Pro Windows 2000 Pro with all Updates installed. SB Live Nvidia reference Driver 5.30 (W2K) Notes: Performance degradation somewhere around 16% (or 12% if Trilinear). Slight improvement over the previous few beta. Let's hope Nvidia will continue to improve the driver and push additional 30 fps or so to SMP users. FSAA performance still sucks... Note 2: Anyone realize that the demo actually ran faster on SMP mode on, but slow down quite a lot when rocket is in use?? [This message has been edited by slkh (edited 27 June 2000).]

Driver from yoru manufacturer usually coupled with a few fancy options, while Nvidia Reference Driver (official/unofficial) usually are better than the manufacturer's driver in performance wise.

Appologize for not stating clearly in the beginning. LLion is correct, it is an Unofficial Nvidia Reference Driver. So far so good, no stability problem on this driver. But SMP still get 20% performance hit.

Wrathchild, I have successfully reinstalled into a new directory instead of the Program Files directory which solve my problem when I use the /max /realtime options. Probably because of the space between the program files. However, the performance hit still applies. Approximately 10 fps drop from 61.0 fps My settings are Celeron 300A@450 Geforce DDR 1024x768x 32 Trilinear Max out all the setting available on screen. May I know what is your settings?

Windows 2000 Nvidia Reference Driver 5.30 is available for download at http://www.reactorcritical.com/ Welcome any comments or precautions on the new driver.

I tried lowering down the apperture size, yes I agree it does help a bit. At some time, I heard the audio, but my screen is not refreshing, but later it continue to run fine. I believe if I have not lowered the apperture size, it could have lockup my system. Thanks for the tips. However, by setting realtime, I still can't 100% able to launch Quake without a hang. Could it be I haven't have a full installation? However, the performance hit still applies at all time. Anyone successfully break the barrier?

I tried your tips, it didn't work. I run DNetc, is that the culprit? I sometimes disable DNetc, it run, but sometimes it doesn't run even I disable it. So what should I do now?

Wrathchild, I keep getting a lockup no matter what sort of setting I use, Realtime, normal, above normal etc, etc. It was pretty unstable on my system, sometimes it runs, sometimes it doesn't. Take me a couple of time to rerun Quake and shut it down from the Task Manager to get it to run the intro screen. But once I get it running, the benchmark performance shows about 20% "DEGRADATION" instead of improving the performance by 20 or 30 FPS under 1024 mode. [More info from Games section under 20% performance hit on Quake 3 Arena when enabling SMP] Anymore tips?

I have this problem, but not to that extend. I admit that the Windows 2000 driver for Sblive isn't matured enough. I get occcasional cracking sound, but wasn't often enough to make me complain. Maybe once a week or twice a week is what I encounter. I do not use any Environment Audio, perhaps, that could be the answer? The other thing I found buggy about the player that came with Liveware is that it skip a few second of audio from time to time.