Hi all!

Been lurking this forum for a couple of years but never felt i had something to contribute as of yet. However i have some questions:

This is my retrogaming setup: Pentium 4 2.4 with 512 Ram and Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000 motherboard with an voodoo 5 5500 PCI Rev.2900 using Win98 and the latest official drivers from 3dfx.

Been running some benchmark mainly using 3dmark 2001SE@default no FAA. As im a sucker for old hardware and i like to play around with it and wondering whats the wall i seem to hit here:

Scores:

2348 @ 166mhz v5 5500
2350 @ 170mhz v5 5500
2372 @ 175mhz v5 5500
----------------------
This where the big gain in OCing the card shows:
2385 @ 180mhz v5 5500
2431 @ 190mhz v5 5500
----------------------
2445 @ 195mhz v5 5500
? @ 200mhz v5 5550, At this clock i get alot of artifacts, thus never completed the benchmark.

Theres roughly 100 points gained when OC`ing the v5 to 195mhz and almost no gain whats so ever when pushing the p4 2400mhz to 2800mhz. So that give me the conclusion that something else is holding the card back. In my oppinion it must be the pci-bus that is the bottleneck here, correct? and would a increase in the pcibus frequence (33@stock) give some more performance? and would that be damaging to the card? I do not care about the computer hardware but i wouldnt want to burn my v5.

Kind Regards
Dottoss


/EDIT

Forgot to add some specs

Which tool did you use to overclock the V5 ?
Only the VSA100-Overclocker can OC all GPUs on a VSA100 card.
Get it here :
http://www.voodooalert.de/de/index.php?option=com_docman&task=docclick&Itemid=36&bid=53&limitstart=0&limit=10

Furthermore, 3DMark whatsoever is not the best benchmark tool for voodoo cards. I would prefer game benchmarks like Unreal Tournament or Quake3.

Thats correct, i am using VSA100-Overclocker. Thanks for the heads up though! So, although using the 3dmark as a benchmark is it likely that i have hit the maximum scaling with the p4 2.4 and the pcibus@33mhz?

According to Entech and fillrate tests done by me, Powerstrip is also able to overclock all Voodoo GPU's.

And yep, you're right - it's the PCI bus that keeps the card from rocking. Try a higher resolution or with SSAA enabled, then the card should show a nice scaling. Higher PCI clock doesn't kill the card either.

Greetings from Germany,
Raff

Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't the V.Control 1.82 beta able to overclock both chips? My 3DMark results are the same with V.Control, VSA-Overclocker and Powerstrip.

QuoteOriginally posted by Raff3DC

And yep, you're right - it's the PCI bus that keeps the card from rocking.

By increasing the PCIbus i managed to get some higher scores. Sadly this motherboard didnt support to OC the PCIbus more than to 48Mhz

Anyhoo, heres the scores:

2348 @ 166Mhz V5 5500 PCI@33Mhz
2431 @ 190Mhz V5 5500 PCI@33Mhz

2485 @ 166Mhz V5 5500 PCI@40Mhz
2596 @ 190Mhz V5 5500 PCI@40Mhz

2551 @ 166Mhz V5 5500 PCI@45Mhz
2729 @ 190Mhz V5 5500 PCI@45Mhz

2631 @ 166Mhz V5 5500 PCI@48Mhz
2767 @ 190Mhz V5 5500 PCI@48Mhz

If i could push the PCIbus even higher i think the scaling of the v5 5500 and the p4 2.4 still hasnt reached its maximum anytime soon.
I guess i need to buy an v5 5500 AGP card and find a compatible motherboard for it.

Thx for all answers!