What performance can I expect???

[Parabellum]

Hi,

I am about to upgrade to a Pentium III 600E and I want to overclock it up to 800MHz, if I am able...

As a video card, I have chosen the G400 max and I am wondering what kind of performance I can get in the 600MHz - 800MHz range of CPU. How does the G400 max perform versus the GeForce 256? What performance I can expect in Q3A and UT, HL and TFC?

Is the G400 max easily overclockable? Is the G400 max able to handle the AGP bus up to 89MHz (133MHz FSB)?

Thanks for any replies.

Parabellum

[paulcs]

The Max scales well with CPU's. I'm actually running tests on the slower G400 "Vanilla" and a PIII 600E. I hit a wall at higher resolutions with the current drivers and TurboGL. Anandtech ran some benchmarks using the 5.50 beta drivers and the Vanilla board, and got much better results.

The Max is a faster board, and people continue to report speed increases with progressively faster processors.

The G400 has a reputation for its ability to run on overclocked FSB's. Although I think your chances of getting the G400 to work at this speed are better than with other AGP cards, it's still a gamble. Some have discovered they were running their AGP slots at 100 MHz without ill effect. (This is generally an accident.) Others have had problems with 89 MHz. It's impossible to predict.

I cannot overclock the memory on my Vanilla past 5% without problems. This appears to be the exception and not the rule, by the way. But the board doesn't seem to mind running on a 124 MHz front side bus. We have seen the G400 default to AGP 1x at very high bus speeds. I suspect this is a good thing.

Keep in mind, the G400 Max is of the same generation as the TNT2 Ultra. The GeForce is a "next generation" product. While the Max is faster than the TNT2 in most situations, the reverse is true of the GeForce. I've read that the G400 is better at handling extreme bus speeds than the GeForce, although I don't have any personal experience with this board.

Just for your information, I ran my PIII 600E at 744 MHz without incident all yesterday and overnight on an extremely stable AOpen BX motherboard. I ran quite a few Quake3 benchmarks and the CPU-intensive SETI client for at least 18 hours straight. Your mileage may vary, of course, but this does look like a good overclocker with a nice high multiplier.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net