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Hardware

New 3D Cards On Slower PCs 189

Posted by Hemos from the souping-up-old-hardware dept.
risotto writes "There's always that dilemma of whether to upgrade your CPU or your video card first. There's a useful piece that shows some of today's fastest 3D accelerators but on lower end systems like an Intel Celeron 700 and a AMD Duron 700. There's some pretty big performance jumps to be had by throwing a T&L capable Geforce 2 GTS into a low end system in Quake III and the like."
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New 3D Cards On Slower PCs

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  • i usually find the bottleneck with porn to be server-side. flaky as they are, the "free disk space" services have really revolutionised that part of the internet. between that and divx, i'm as happy as i can be without the real thing...
  • For me the epitome of high tech gaming is snes9x, so I don't care about high end video hardware so much. On the other hand, I do developoment on this box, and even after upgrading recently from a dual PII-266 to a brand new PIII-733, it still takes a long time to do stuff. And dropping from two processors to one gives a tremendous hit on responsiveness too, while doing processor intensive tasks.

    Scarier though is that the people using the software I write would consider my system unacceptably low end, and will undoubtedly spend $$$ on the latest and greatest multiprocessor PC's and Mac's available.

    For gamers, the bang is obviously in a big video card, rather than an expensive CPU. On the other hand, I wonder how much it would take to max out the frame rate on my TNT2 M64. Even for that old thing, my 266 was not enough when playing Descent3.

  • Oops. Forgot I wanted to post more. Here is the second part of my post. This is an actual review of "fast" cards on "slow" systems.

    System 1: K6-2/350, 128MB PC100, Voodoo3 2000 AGP
    OS: Slackware 7.0, Linux 2.2.16
    XFree: 3.3.5 (i think; maybe .6)
    Games: Solitaire under Wine, Doom2, Quake[123], Unreal Tournament

    The non-3D accelerated games (Sol, Doom2, Quake1) were very fast, very playable. Nobody can have any complaints, except perhaps one: when you win the game in Solitaire, the cards-falling-down animation is *s*l*o*w* compared to the computer. Oh well.

    The 3D accelerated games also worked pretty well. Quake2 looked just like it was supposed to -- nice and fast, smooth, no problems, very playable. Quake3, on the other hand, was taking a little long to load, but once you got in, it was pretty decent. It was NOT full-framerate by any means, but it was still enjoyable to play. Unreal Tournament I didn't get to try on there for very long, but what I saw looked good -- it was pretty smooth, and overall very nice. Keep in mind I used Glide on UT, not OGL.

    Overall rating: 6 out of 10, mainly for playability.

    System 2: K6-3/450, 128MB PC100, Voodoo3 3000 AGP (with TVout)
    OS: Win98 (blech) && Slackware 7.1
    XFree: 3.3.6
    Games (Win98): Terminal Velocity, SW Pod Racer, Quake3, Parsec, Parsec LAN-test, Spear of Destiny
    Games (Linux): Quake3, Unreal Tournament

    All of the "older" games under Win98 were pretty kickass. Spear of Destiny looks good on a 486, so you can bet it looks good on a K6-3! Terminal Velocity maxes out around a P200, so same there. Parsec (and Parsec LAN-test) look very nice, especially at 1024x768, and there are no problems with speed, either. The two major Win98 games, then, are Quake3 and PodRacer.

    Quake3 was noticeably improved from System 1. It loads much faster, and the gameplay is quite smooth -- even at 1024x768. (I usually play in 800x600.) If you're looking to make a gaming system from a K6-[23]/450 and play Q3, do it!

    Pod Racer is the reason I had to have windblows on here in the first place. I cannot resist the temptation to run myself into walls at 800 Mph ;-) It's the same story as Quake3, it looks darn good on a VD3 3K, even at 1024x768. In fact, I would go so far as to say it shines.

    Linux games: Q3 and UT. Q3 is basically the same story as Q3 under windblows above. I couldn't tell you which is faster, as this is all perceptual, and there's not a whole lot of difference between win98 and linux 2.2 on the same hardware.

    UT is where this hardware gets a gold medal -- there are no problems with speed to hinder your gameplay, it basically kicks ass. You will love it, if you try out this combo.

    Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

    System 3: dual celeron 366, 192MB PC100, Matrox G400 AGP single-headed 16MB
    OS: Slackware 7.1, Linux 2.4.0-test[78] (oh yeah!)
    XFree: 4.0.1 with supported DRI and GLX and XVideo and everything
    Games: Quake[123], UnrealTournament

    Quake 1 rocks. It absolutely rocks. There is no point in me saying any more, as it rocks on a lesser system anyway.

    Quake 2 rocks as well. This is where an intel chip, as opposed to amd, really does you well. (celeron vs. k6, much better fpu). The graphics are SUPER-SWEET too.

    Quake 3, perceptually, is every bit as fast as on System 2 (they're side-by-side), and it loads faster, to boot! This is a very strong system for gaming. If you're looking to play Q3, and have "only" two lower-end celerons, don't worry! Just get a good video card.

    UnrealTournament: well, ummm, it crashes during the opening sequence. This is due to a combination of lots of not-so-well-tested software -- linux 2.4.0-test7, whatever kernel DRI module is included with that, some unknown version of XFree4.0.1, and the OpenGL rendering subsystem of UnrealTournament. (On the other systems, I always used Glide for UT.) So, while the part of the opening sequence I can see looks really good, do yourself a favor and try it on a more stable system.

    Overall rating: 7 out of 10, because I couldn't play all my games. I was forced to use OpenGL exclusively by the MGA400.

    That's all for now, and if you want to know any more, just e-mail me, or reply to the post. I check my responses.

    -----

  • Just enough?

    There was a bit of sarcasm lost in the typing. If you've ever used win2k on a system with "only" 64MB you'd know what I mean. One bloated office app (read: WORD) takes care of 64MB quickly. Use Visio with 64MB?? Forget it. Go back to 98.

    TFC dropped by 10fps from 98se to 2k. This is w/ a TNT2 card.... I really can't complain about win2k -- it's a marvel how well it runs. :-)

    -sid

  • But what sucks is that not everyone is a pimply faced little prick with rich mommies and daddies to buy them their wittle 1.2GHz Athlons.

    Yeah, some of us actually have (gasp!) jobs and can afford shit like this. Hell, a 1.2 GHz Athlon only costs $500.

    - A.P.

    --
    * CmdrTaco is an idiot.

  • The best machine I have is a 200mmx!! Damnit. :-)
    --------------------------
  • Bah. I spent $0.75 and bought me a pair of 3D glasses. My computing experience has never been the same since.

    Here's a sure sign I need sleep: I read that as commuting experience. I've seen drivers do strange things, but no 3D glasses yet.

  • >I could use some extra crispyness when playing divx movies

    Hmm... was this intentional? Your computer might be a bit toasty with a 1.5GHz P4 :).
  • That's the same question I asked! I'm on a PII350 w/a voodoo3 and I'm running most everything at very reasonable speeds!
  • I can't see the difference between 16 and 32 bits, really.
  • Actually, if I remember correctly, C&C is just another Warcraft clone ;) However I am getting tired of the Quake clones...I can't wait til Serious Sam comes out =)
  • Umm, I still use a P-II 233 (OC'd to 333)
    I have a killer video card and it destroys my brothers P-III 850 in unreal.

    Buy the video card. oh and if you're a gamer be sure to get whatever processor has good FP co-processing. - The guys that have screaming processors will get pissed.

    (remember when you had a 386 and a 387 on the mobo? I loved having 2 processors!)

  • AC wrote:
    Ok.
    Now, let's read the requirements: No AGP.

    Bzzzzt. You lose!

    The comment I was responding to was:
    I would say...a...GeForceMX is going to give you the most bang for your buck. More info can be found here and here.

    I was adding another info link for the GeForce2 MX he mentioned. That's all. Sorry to offend you.
  • I was amazed of the obsolescence speed of my Diamond Viper v550 16 meg AGP card. Got it 2 years ago when many other video cards only had 4 or 8 megs. Now I just got a GeForce, and Halflife doesn't crash as much.
  • A card I recently bought is a Diamond Stealth III S540. It uses a S3 Savage4 chipset, for which there are currently Win95/98/ME/2000/Linux drivers available. More info on www.s3.com [s3.com]

    I payed about 80 US Dollar for a 16MB AGP version. It'll cost something similar for a 16/32 MB PCI version. It isn't very fast, but it looks great.
  • My old Pentium 90 serves as a "drive-server". That is to say, it contains my 5.25 inch floppy drive:-)
  • the prob is that moore's law just ain't giving out like it used to. if we were on schedule, these systems would be low end...

    what the manufacturers need is a little cheerleading drill. come on intel... who's your daddy...
  • When I mentioned pr0n, I wasn't really referring to speed, but to disk space.
  • Gimme an A, gimme a M, gimme a D, CYRIX!!! Something like that? Everybody knows cheerleaders can't spell anyway.
  • I have a PIII 500, 768MB of Ram PC100, running an Abit Mobo with a BX chipset... and I thought I was special.

    No a G400Max doesnt tear through Quake framerates, and apparently my system is low end now a days.....

    Fortunately for us processor speed has finally outstripped processor need (for the majority of applications).

    Now its a matter of data transfer and the processor wasting cycles waiting.

    So.. I wont be upgrading until something truly excites me.. 1.2Ghz processors do not.

    Jeremy

  • In a word...YES!!! This has been a public service announcement.
  • Preach it! I'm glad someone decided to mention the fact that Sharky's definition of low-end is way off. My 486DX2/66 works just fine! I'm just really surprised that no one seems to really realize what "low-end" means anymore.

    I would have expected the majority of the postings on /. to comment on this outrageous issue!
  • You are so wrong it's funny. I have a P-II 233 that will wax any production computer you can pick that doesn't have an upgraded video board. I'll wax it in Framerate and quality.

    Q-III at 1024x768 35fps on that puppy..

    a good video card makes the biggest difference after you get to 128 meg of ram (SCSI-III Ultra makes a big difference too )

    I challenge you sonny... name your contestant and I'll bring in a contender that is at least 1/3 your processor speed and wax it harder than my surfboard.
  • I agree.... 700MHz == low end?

    So the games one can only play on a 800MHz machine are that much better to make it worth upgrading?

    I've been out of the "big penis" games for quite some time, although when I was in I really wasn't in it for bragging rights, it just cost me too much money.

    I just don't see any value in buying more hardware when I can very comfortably do with what I have. I've somewhat changed my hobbies to Home Theater and movies, and I don't have to deal with crap hardware with either easy to use crap software or good software that takes me an evening to figure out.

    All the extra horsepower means is that Microsoft can bloat their way into it with "worthless" features that, if programmed properly, could have been done on a P100, but require PIII to operate with acceptable speed.

  • Lower End? (Score:4)

    by Zecho ( 206792 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @09:44PM (#674802) Homepage
    Wow what would you call my P120?
  • A celeron 700 is a 'low-end' system? Christ..

    My celeron 450 still does me fine, even for new games. Starting to get a bit sluggish on the new ones...

  • amd k62-300, 64meg ram, 10+4 meg hd, works just fine for vb/c coding, music sequencers etc.
    dont play games on it so no 3d card, dont see any need to upgrade any time soon - was going to get a k62-500 for about uk£45 but they dont seem to be available anymore so screw it i`ll stick with what i`ve got!
  • Add in a good socket A mobo. *smack*. 125-160$. That's what makes the difference for most people.

    I had a k6-2 450 for my main machine, and suprisingly enough, a thunderbird 900 was my purchase this last weekend. I decided to not purchase a video card, and continue to use my v3-3000. While it does better in 3d things, it's just not able to push any polys at the higher resolutions.

    Was the jump worth it? Maybe, maybe not. The system is "quicker"....

    if I could just keep my roomate from loading software on it......

  • Sure. Couple of my friends have the same problem as u have including me.(almost identical system config.) Only problem is that I noticed Q3 hanging my system which uses S3 Savage4.
  • I am glad to see that the computer terms have really gone to hell. Lower End used to mean that you owned a PC that could still run all the programs, just at a slower rate. My 400Mhz K6-2 could run anything...-well besides high rendering programs-...that I want.
    I consider Lower End systems to be Celeron 333s..early generation PIIs. Stuff that is really getting on in the years. Not sh*t that was released a few months back.
    Just cause we had (still have) a processor war for Mhz does not mean the older hardware is obselete. Programs can barely keep up, and I hope it stays that way.
    It used to be that your PC is obselete after a few years...now its obselete as soon as you fork over the money.

    You could say that this is all AMDs fault. If it wasn't for the K7, the processor wars would not have happened and Intel would probably have just been releasing new PIII-550s or something right about now. There would be more of a balance. But then again, AMD processors kick ass and have forced Intel to realize that their little monopoly is over.
    All they really have going for them right now is mobile and dual processor systems.
  • Dear oh dear... if a celeron 700 is considered a low end system, what hope does it leave for us out there still running with 400MHz machines, or slower? And what's worse is that each new processor coming out these days needs a new motherboard, and sometimes even a new PSU/case... Time to raid the bank again!
  • /*
    as for an additional FP processor... you are living in the wrong millenium bud.
    */

    And if you'd bothered to read the post more carefully, you'd know the poster wasn't talking about a separate FP co-processor. I think the poster was referring to the built-in FPU--very much still an issue, bud.
  • The Lower End is just a Marketing pitch meaning that if you don't have at least the Lower End, you're either out of fashion or dirt....
  • Oh and just for the Record.....

    WooHoo!!!!!!!!!
  • I have encountered a lot of pc's with these requirements in mind. We always went with the Voodoo 3 3000 pci, it worked pretty well.

    Creative also sells a nice TNT2 Ultra pci now. Which I would prefer over the voodoo 3.

    But I guess its whatever camp you ollow, 3dfx vs nvidia......

  • lower end (Score:3)

    by clinko ( 232501 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @09:49PM (#674813) Journal
    "lower end systems like an Intel Celeron 700 and a AMD Duron 700"

    Geez, I really need to upgrade. I really havn't had that much trouble getting by with a 300 pII, w/80 mb ram. Anyone else agree?


  • Show the wife, parents, S.O., boss this article!

    See here! My computing power is hopelessly inadequate. I NEEEEED faster hardware!

    They even agree on Slashdot!
  • celery 300a @450
    p2 400~450
    K6/2-450

    Huh. These are the high-end machines on my desk at work. Low-end are the P166 I run Linux on, the P133 that's my mail server / firewall at home, and the P133's that are my wife's and kids' machines. My home P233 is midrange...

    "Grandpa, what was it like back in the olden days before gigahertz processors and hundreds of megabytes of RAM? How did you get anything done!?" "Sonny, let me tell you, in my day we only had an Apple ][ with 48K of RAM and a cassette drive. And we liked it that way, by jingo!"

  • Deus Ex still runs like putty though, but you can't have everything.

    Whoever programmed Deus EX can give MS a lesson in creating bloatwar. This is the kind of programming that makes a Celeron 700 low-end. Anybody tried nocturne:-(
  • Here's a mo re complete link for the card [diamondvideocards.com]

    Oh, and it pays to buy bulk instead of retail.

  • Gosh, people are calling 700Mhz machines slow already? I just built an 800Mhz Athlon over summer (I know, but still) and while I've been enjoying it - I haven't really gotten any good proc-intensive games for it - infact, I still have an "Old" Voodoo3 2000 PCI in it. Man. Passed out on the 3D superhighway already?!?!?!
  • Did anyone else out there get a Voodoo 4? I found one for $143, and it totally rocks in Quake III with everything turned on. It averages around 90 fps on 800x600 on my Duron 700 system with everything turned on.

    I haven't been able to find any benchmarks on it at all, and I think it's because everyone's concentrating on the Voodoo 5. (They were released at the same time, I believe. That could have something to do with the cost.) It's really nearly the same card, but with just one processor - it even uses the same drivers.

    Does anyone have any info on this card?
  • I was gonna comment on the same thing. I've been running on AMD K6-III 400Mhz for the last year, and Quake n' UT work just fine (even with my 50% defunct Voodoo3... got hit by lightening). The GeForce2 GTS I just got made everything all happy and such. Who the hell seriously thinks that a 700-800Mhz machine is low end? For Christ's sake. The market may improve rather quickly, but anything released less than a year ago is not "low end".

  • Balanced Systems (Score:5)

    by rnturn ( 11092 ) on Thursday October 26, 2000 @06:02AM (#674821)

    We had a debate where I worked many years ago (late '80s) about how PCs, generally, had crappy overall designs than some of the other systems we were using. The PC folks would crow about how their system was better than our VAXes because it had a faster CPU clock (stupid criterion most would agree). Meanwhile we'd ask the PC bigots why our software ran faster on our slower-clock-rate VAX than it did on their PC. We were careful to write code that could run on either the VAX, PC, or the behemoth IBMs at the central data center. (The IBM's were, by far, the fastest boxes but were so heavily loaded that they were everyone's last choice.) The result of our debate was the conclusion that the VAX (and the IBMs) had a more balanced design and better software. Our in-house benchmarks showed our ``lowly'' VAXen beating the latest Intel boxes; the balanced system was clearly superior for what we needed to do: software development, number crunching, and for most of us, documentation (using TeX). I'd rather have a slightly slower system with software built with a great compiler.

    The PC vendors spend much of their efforts putting a very fast processor in a system with fairly pathetic I/O subsystem. For a single user system this seems reasonable. Systems that were designed with multiple users in mind had to take into account the possibility that multiple processes would be performing I/O and you saw features such as elevator seeking in device drivers that are only recently coming into vogue on the PC. I.e., some effort was going into addressing real performance problems instead of merely figuring out how to get the latest, fastest processor into the system.

    Software bloat is part of a continuing problem. When your word processor needs more RAM in a single PC than we used to have on all the PCs in all the offices in our department, something's really wrong. Not a new problem, though, and it's not all about unneeded features (although that's a huge problem lately). I once obtained a piece of software from COSMIC which stated that it would need 512KB of memory in order to run. Using the MS FORTRAN compiler this was true. However, we stuck the source out on our old PDP-11 (remember, I'm talking about mid/late '80s) and the compiler was able to generate an executable that ran in under 128KB on a system using I/D space. Since no one was willing to tie up their (or any) PC for the week or so that it would take to run the simulation -- at least not after we ran it the first time -- guess where it wound up being deployed? No code changes were made so, apparently, DEC's F77 compiler could optimize rings around MS's (no surprise to me there). The balanced system running superior software wins again.

    I see some strange tradeoffs being made in the PC/Windows area that don't make sense to me: write crappy, inefficient software and throw hardware at the resulting mess in order to get it to run. Now that PCs are being used for multiprocessing and multiple users, the need for quality software is beginning important again.

    Hardware-wise, I'll always prefer to do my homework and choose a vendor that addresses all the aspects of the system and bypass the folks that think they're state-of-art by dropping the lastest hot motherboard into a box. Since so many PC vendors change components without notice I've been opting to build my own systems for a long time now. Last year's processor with 256MB of RAM would be preferable to this year's smoker with only 64MB. Before they became nothing but 200-page advertisement collections, the PC rags used to do decent benchmarks that could show the strengths and deficiencies of various vendors systems. You don't see those any more. Pity.

    Sorry if I got into rant mode. This is just one of my continuing pet peeves.
    --

  • I'm quite happy to see that I'm not the only one that thinks a two-year-old machine is far from obsolete. Shucks, it wasn't more than three years ago when one of the key "features" of Linux was getting the power of unix at a very usable speed from a low-end 486 or any other machine that was choking under Windows 95. Lately, though, it seems every other l33t d00d lives just to own nothing older 6 months and brag about his insanely-high framerates at wasteful resolutions.

    Though most of my company relies on commercial unix systems, we do have a great deal of x86 servers and workstations, some for work, some for play, and some hosting various projects for the community. Business, family, and friends included, we have been hard pressed to need anything faster than a 400 MHz Pentium II for pretty much any task. Most of us don't run Enlightenment or nutty screensavers, which allows a Pentium 233 w/ Matrox Millennium gfx to be quite a speedy workstation (provided it's got a 7200 rpm HD). 3D games are a bit of an exception, but even then, a 400 MHz K6-2 or 300 MHz PII with a Rage128/Voodoo3/TNT2 is more than enough to drive high framerates at 640x480 & 800x600 and whoop up on the kiddies playing Quake on Dad's 1 GHz Dell. I have friends that fight tooth and nail to keep up with the Joneses, which has allowed me to experience the "finer gaming experience". Aside from being a bit more responsive in large open areas with lots of action, I really can't tell much of a difference between an Athlon 650 w/ geForce and a 400 MHz K6-2 w/ Voodoo3. 32-bit color, maybe, but I would need to have the two machines side-by-side or look up screenshots on the web to really notice something that small. When I play games, I do so for the action and fun, not for the visual quality. For that I'll take a scenic drive or visit an art gallery. I won't pay $1000+ for a computer that does nothing more than draw prettier frames for a game. When I spend big money on a system it's for reliability, redundancy, and torque, not for playing games. End Rant.
  • If you notice, the article is from Sharky Extreme. Sharky and the like are known for ONLY running the TOP end of all PC hardware. They do not represent the normal user, or evern the normal slashdotter.
  • "..lower end systems like an Intel Celeron 700 and a AMD Duron 700."

    Damn, low end kicks in fast. Is this what the techies are now considering low end. WOW!. A year ago when I bought my machine 700 mhz was practicly top of the line. I still consider 700 mhz to be right up there. Kinda middle-top. But I guess the 'gods' have spoken and I have been dubbed a low-end user. Guess I have to upgrade.

    I guess this means my dads 475 mhz K6/2 laptop is like a old tin can. My P-II 400 mhz server is just as bad. As well as the desktop counterpart sitting right next to. And gosh, my sisters 150 mhz Pentium is almost a classic. Almost time to get vintage plates.

    What happend to the good old days of 8088's and powerful 286's. I miss my dual 5.25 floppies on my old 640k compaq. Whah!!!

  • Where do i get one of these great "lower end" PCs then.. they sound cool compared to my K6.
  • Let me chime in as well with being perplexed.

    I have a PIII-6xx at work running NT 4.0, and at home I have a Celeron 366 o/c'ed to 460 with 192MB running Win2K. Frankly, qualitatively speaking there is no difference between the two systems. Ok, the PIII at work is a Dell OptiPlex GX1 with a crappy built-in ATI 3D Rage Pro 4MB, while at home I run a TNT2 16MB. Still, with the apps I'm using--Delphi 4, IE5, Visual Studio 6, Word etc--I simply can't tell a noticeable difference between the two machines. I'm sure running the latest 3D games would reveal a significant fps difference, but since I don't, that doesn't matter. I'd be an utter fool to go out and spend money on the current generation of high-end CPUs. Especially since qualitatively the difference between a PIII-6xx and a PIII-1G is probably even smaller.
  • I've given up the cpu war. I learned a while ago to buy system speed. I want my system speed to more closly match the proccessor speed. It doesn't do any good if your 1.13 mhz intel is sitting around picking its nose 90% of the time waiting for some data to get fed to it.

    That's why I bought my athlon with 200mhz system bus. I can smoke most intel machine with their 133 mhz bus.

    Spend the extra money on faster RAM, a quicker hard drive. You'll have a better performing machine in the long run.

  • It ain't gonna be long before the kiddies get tired of bragging about their PC's specs. Soon they'll be on to other things, like the tensile strength of their shoelaces. What ever happined to a good old arm wrasslin' match?
  • I mean 1.13 Ghz. Please don't rip me apart moderators!!!

  • xevil runs fine on my Sparc Classic. Even with the CG3 built in framebuffer, 50mhz chip, and 24 megs of ram. Guess those ultra sparcs won't make it any faster.
  • ``The one big thing in performance I did notice however is going from a ATA/33 harddrive to a ATA/100. That was the largest (noticable) performance gain I've seen in a while with all the MHz floating around, you need a way to feed the silly thing.''

    I couldn't agree with you more. Most new PCs are I/O bound. (I sort of ranted about this in another post.) Personally, I'm waiting for the new SCSI cards to come out. The I/O performance should be frightening.

    Cheers...


    --

  • I currently have a PIII500Mhz, I think it is pretty fast and have not found any games I can't run with it. That makes you wonder what you'd do with a 1.5 P4. Probably pretty much the same thing. I could use some extra crispyness when playing divx movies, but aside from that I'd be more happy with extra storage space. I don't think I would notice the extra speed in day to day usage if it was put in my PC. I found the difference between 233 Mhz (my previous pc) and 500 Mhz already undetectable for most of my apps.

    I completely agree. The one big thing in performance I did notice however is going from a ATA/33 harddrive to a ATA/100. That was the largest (noticable) performance gain I've seen in a while with all the MHz floating around, you need a way to feed the silly thing.
  • Well, the cpu would lose out and that GeForce 2 GTS card would be twidling its thumbs most of the time. The speed of the card outweights the CPU. Just upgrade already. you can get a new machine for not much more than this card anyways.
  • ack I've got the Creative Banshee AGP on my Celeron 433 w/ 256 megs of ram and the thing is a pig. With Voodoo3 cards so cheap, might as well go with one of those. Might as well use 1 year old hardware instead of 3 year old hardware. I'm just too cheap to replace mine as I only play games that need the wiz-bang 3d when I boot into Windows for Half Life TFC. (Twice in the last month.)
  • Lower end.....?

    Well, if you are having problems getting rid of those old 700Mhz systems, I can probably offer you a fair price. Let's say $100 a piece?

    After all, they are nearly useless nowadays anyway.

  • Links been slashdotted... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ... here's a mirror:

    GeForce2 GTS Performance On A Value Platform
    by Chris Angelini, Ben Hirsch, Alex Ross, : October 24, 2000

    When NVIDIA originally announced the plans to include hardware transformation and lighting acceleration in the design for their GeForce 256, it was speculated that owners of value systems would see the most performance gain. Since the processor would be doing less work on the 3D pipeline, fewer applications would be CPU limited, and frame rates would increase. Of course this was theoretical, and real-world scenarios did not always turn out so optimistically, but low-end systems did see some semblance of a boost.

    Six months later, the GeForce2 (or infamous NV15, as it was called) made its way onto the market. Boasting a "second generation T&L engine," the GeForce2 offered impressive performance gains over the first generation chip due mainly to a die shrink, providing for the same T&L engine to be clocked 80MHz faster and updated drivers that allow for texture compression by default. Despite the truckload of marketing babble that accompanied the launch, the GeForce2 has done its job, and is currently the fastest consumer desktop solution available.

    Most high-end video cards accompany comparably powerful CPUs. However, we thought it would be interesting to see what kind of benefit a GeForce2 could bestow upon a "value-oriented" system. Is gaming just as viable on a Celeron or Duron as it is on one of the GHz beasts we use in our test machines? We are betting an ASUS V7700 Deluxe on it.

    Test Setup

    Intel Performance Test System
    Processor: Intel Pentium III@1Ghz
    Heatsink: CoolerMaster DP5-6H51
    Memory: 128 MB Micron PC133 CAS2 SDRAM
    Motherboard: Asus CUSL2 815
    Hard-Drive: 30 gigabyte Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM ATA2 (ATA66)
    Sound: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live
    CD/DVD: Toshiba CD-M1402
    Power Supply: Sparkle 300 watt
    Operating System: Windows 98 Second Edition/Windows 2000 Professional

    AMD Performance Test System
    Processor: AMD Athlon "Thunderbird"@1Ghz
    Heatsink: CoolerMaster DP5-6H51
    Memory: 128 MB Micron PC133 CAS2 SDRAM
    Motherboard: Asus A7V
    Hard-Drive: 30 gigabyte Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM ATA2 (ATA66)
    Sound: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live
    CD/DVD: Toshiba CD-M1402
    Power Supply: Sparkle 300 watt
    Operating System: Windows 98 Second Edition/Windows 2000 Professional

    Intel Value Test System
    Processor: Intel Celeron@600Mhz
    Heatsink: CoolerMaster DP5-6H51
    Memory: 128 MB Micron PC133 CAS2 SDRAM
    Motherboard: Asus CUSL2 815
    Video Card: Leadtek GeForce2 GTS (64MB) with Nvidia Reference Drivers (Detonator 3, ver. 6.18)
    Hard-Drive: 30 gigabyte Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM ATA2 (ATA66)
    Sound: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live
    CD/DVD: Toshiba CD-M1402
    Power Supply: Sparkle 300 watt
    Operating System: Windows 98 Second Edition/Windows 2000 Professional

    AMD Value Test System
    Processor: AMD Duron@700Mhz
    Heatsink: CoolerMaster DP5-6H51
    Memory: 128 MB Corsair PC133 CAS2 SDRAM
    Motherboard: Gigabyte 7ZX
    Video Card: Leadtek GeForce2 GTS (64MB) with Nvidia Reference Drivers (Detonator 3, ver. 6.18)
    Hard-Drive: 30 gigabyte Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM ATA2 (ATA66)
    Sound: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live
    CD/DVD: Toshiba CD-M1402
    Power Supply: Sparkle 300 watt
    Operating System: Windows 98 Second Edition/Windows 2000 Professional

    Software/Test settings
    Common: Windows 98 Second Edition, Direct-X 7.0A, V-Sync was disabled
    Common: Windows 2000 Professional, V-Sync was disabled

    Video Cards Tested
    Asus v7700 GeForce2 GTS Deluxe 32MB with NVIDIA's officially released reference drivers version 6.18
    Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 GTS 32MB with NVIDIA's officially released reference drivers version 6.18

    Quake III: Arena Normal Intel Platform Windows 98 SE

    Quake III is very dependant on fillrate for smooth game play, so anyone with a GeForce2 should remain happy, despite the CPU. No matter how powerful your processor is, if you are still running a Rage Pro, this will definitely not be your favorite game.

    We benchmarked our Value systems against our Performance machines in order to get a good idea of how the individual platform affects frame rates. Desktop color is set to 16-bits in order to ensure all tests run at Normal Quality indeed defaulted to 16-bit. All timedemos are run with the sound system "on," because that's the way the game should be played.

    The Celeron system doesn't provide enough power for the GeForce2 to become heavily weighed down. Conversely, the Performance machine feels a fillrate limitation closer to 1280x1024.

    Quake III: Arena Normal AMD Platform Windows 98 SE

    AMD's Duron is able to muster roughly 1/3 more low-resolution performance than the Celeron, thanks to the faster front side and memory busses. At 1600x1200 the frame rates of the Duron 700 and Thunderbird 1GHz are nearly indistinguishable.

    Quake III: Arena MAX Intel Platform Windows 98 SE

    Increased demands put on the GeForce2's video bandwidth limits performance on both machines closer to 1280x1024. The Intel Value platform manages to keep above 30fps, even with Quake III's quality settings completely maximized.

    In Retrospect

    Whoever said "build your system in a balanced manner" must have been stuck with a Pentium 200MHz machine. There is nothing wrong with coupling an inexpensive, value processor with one of the fastest video cards on the market (unless of course, you are running with 16 or 32MB of RAM - then you should be listening to the guy with the Pentium 200).

    If playing first person shooters in high-resolutions and 32-bit color is your focal gaming goal, then more emphasis should be placed on your video card, rather than your processor. If passing up on a GHz machine means the difference between a GeForce2 and a Savage 2000, by all means, may the (Ge)Force be with you.

    If simulators are more interesting than blowing people to shreds in Quake III, be sure and take that GHz machine - simulator game play is far more dependant on CPU processing power than the fill-rate of your video card (although that still isn't a good excuse to buy a Savage 2000).

    Now that you've seen how nimble today's value processors can be in a gaming environment, grab the nearest Duron, overclock it to the max, and put our performance numbers to shame. Happy gaming everyone!

    Chris Angelini
    Editor

    Benjamin Hirsch
    Technical Analyst & Lab Manager

    Alex "Sharky" Ross
    Editor-in-Chief

  • Yes AGP. I really think that there needs to be some improvements in the available Linux drivers. That would probably solve a lot of people's problems.

  • Wake up call: Everyone is a troll (Score:5)

    by Sludge ( 1234 ) <slashdot@@@tossed...org> on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @10:47PM (#674838) Homepage
    When Hemos stated lowend, he wasn't referring to the number of cycles per second the CPU was able to do. Rather, he was talking about the low cache Duron and Celeron CPUs. Good writing doesn't make you think like the author before you understand the prose, and this post was not good writing.

    However, what the hell do you think you are all doing by correcting him?

    Michael Labbe
  • Agreed, but if all of your pr0n is locqted on your hard disk, you can load the whole collection into a viewer program and have a slide show that last forever. Or the "my pictures" screensaver that comes with WinME. Just take care that it doesn't kick in when you've got your girlfriend over. Happened to me once :-( Garantueed to get you single in no-time...

  • And I thought I used old systems! :-)

    Hell, I can remember when a 1.13 MHz Intel chip would have been considered awesome. How fast was the clock in the Altair again?


    --

  • I -completely- agree. I've been just fine and dandy with my K6-2 333 (overclocked to 350), with 128 MB RAM and a TNT2 Ultra. I, also, play counter-strike well on my system, fragging up there with the best of them (guess my cable modem helps too...).


    -- Don't you hate it when people comment on other people's .sigs??
  • I see some strange tradeoffs being made in the PC/Windows area that don't make sense to me: write crappy, inefficient software and throw hardware at the resulting mess in order to get it to run.


    I think it is fairly clear why this happens. To whit: hardware design and evolution is fairly straightforward engineering. It costs money, yes, but the path to higher performance is mostly clear.


    Software engineering, done right, requires an enormous investment of time and people. And by the time a particular piece of software is "well-made", a competitor has already made version 2 of their software that does the same thing. Of course, their version 1 was crappy and required high-end hardware to run, but so what? People were able to use it to get work done, and even though they spent more on hardware, they saved money by having a tool available early.


    The tradeoff of having buggy, bloated, incomplete software early--but that is still a useable tool, versus having perfect software sometime later, is a tradeoff many would--and do--make. Microsoft clearly operates in this mode, and while they have some dirty business practices, they have made and continue to make useful software tools that help people to get work done.

  • Re:lower end (Score:3)

    by jilles ( 20976 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @10:58PM (#674858) Homepage
    I agree, any PC bought within the past three years should be able to run any office application (given enough memory, i.e. >= 64Mb). However, if you look at the current market, a 700 Mhz processor is indeed lowend, intel nor AMD produces processors that are slower than that anymore. So while your 300 Mhz machine might be more than adequate for what you use it for, it might be hard to find it on the market because the components it was made of are no longer being manufactored.

    I currently have a PIII500Mhz, I think it is pretty fast and have not found any games I can't run with it. That makes you wonder what you'd do with a 1.5 P4. Probably pretty much the same thing. I could use some extra crispyness when playing divx movies, but aside from that I'd be more happy with extra storage space. I don't think I would notice the extra speed in day to day usage if it was put in my PC. I found the difference between 233 Mhz (my previous pc) and 500 Mhz already undetectable for most of my apps.
  • Deus Ex is based on the same engine as Unreal Tournament, though an earlier version than the current UT codebase.

    The Unreal Engine has historically been notoriously crappy on NVidia hardware (well, most anything except 3DFX/Glide, really). Its not so much that its bloatware as it is that some of the 3D subsystems (texture management, especially) are somewhat legacy and were originally written with Glide and software rendering in mind.

    This has been fixed quite a bit over the past year...Hopefully some future patch to Deus Ex will roll the improvements into that game.

  • I have a 266MMx portable. The majority of the PCs at work are 233P2s. We don't even have a server that runs at 700MHz (although the new two are P3s). The fastest PC we have on the floor at work, out of 56, is 600MHz. I'm currently looking at upgrading a 233P2 to 700MHz.

    My PC at home is "low end" -- it's an old P75 with a 300MHz AMD K6-2 in it. Lets see what a decent 3D card does in that!

  • I totally agree with you. I have a Celeron 300a->450, and though by looking at the numbers I can see that it is 'out of date', I just can't see the need to upgrade at all. What application is there that runs appreciably faster on one of today's superchips? OK my kernel might compile faster.

    My previous machine was a P100, which is now giving perfectly adequate performance to my parents for word-processing, web and email. I kept it four years, and only towards the very end of that time did I begin to feel it was underpowered.

    It gets to me that the author just assumes that anyone who owns a PC and reads /. is going to be playing games on it. I have consoles for that. The 33Mhz processor of my PSX does not need upgrading, and most of the games I have for it kick the arse of all the PC games I have seen recently, which are basically all jut Quake or C&C redone anyway.

  • Re:Lower End? (Score:3)

    by Anne Mariee ( 247513 ) on Thursday October 26, 2000 @12:08AM (#674864)
    In other words, I remember thinking how fast my (486 DX/100) was when I got it. My current P3 runs at the same speed, thanks to bloatitis, the disease which makes software makers put more and more crap in software in an effort to force you to upgrade.

    This is of course the 1st law of graphics packages - Photoshop will always take forever to load.
  • Variex is a typical Frnech slang word to design the kind of W4rr10rZ that love to boost their pissies.
    I personally use a K6-2/350 (half what you call a low-end PC) with an ATI-AIW (Rage128)/16Mo. I have never attempted to measur my framerate under Quake3 or UT but I just love it as it is.
    Do you think I am a spoiler or I am just trying to open your eyes on the difference between specs and sufficient confortable playability ?
    --
  • I don't know. What do you think a good name for a computer is? Bob? Fred? Sam? Kathy?

    Chip?

  • Re:Lower End? (Score:3)

    by Anne Mariee ( 247513 ) on Thursday October 26, 2000 @12:18AM (#674869)
    My vibrator is even slower than that - it's only 20 MHz
  • Heck, I've been doing commercial software development in Lisp in C++ on a PII 333 and have been for several years. At the time, the 333 was the fastest you can get, and I have had zero complaints about speed since then. Traditionally, Lisp is a hardcore language that eats up the cycles like there's no tomorrow.

    Makes me wonder about the people who claim they need a 700 MHz to surf the web and listen to MP3s, you know?
  • I just upgraded my cpu from a Celeron 300 (my system wouldn't overclock any more to 450, not sure why. It would crash the games, which was the only thing I OC'ed for. Think it was heat). I got a PIII 600, the latest my (rev1) BH6 would handle. I don't notice THAT big a difference. In games, a fair amount of frameage.
    ---
  • Of course, after above 200mhz, most userland programs pretty much appear to run the same. There is a noticible difference when compiling, gziping, etc, but that is way more intensive than what most people do, browse the web, read email, listen to an mp3. Memory upgrades do so much good because more disk caching can occur, and more memory for multiple user progs. A better video card is in a way a just memory upgrade (alhtough thats not entirely true the cards have a little processor on them and that gets upgraded as well). My current video card has *64megs* of memory on it. The computer I gave to my parents has 96 megs of system RAM. A couple of years ago, such a video card would have been considered insane. 300$ is pretty crazy for a video card, but far from insane. But a video card is all about presentation, so if it renders the graphics a little quicker, then that really adds to the general sense of usability, etc the user can easily notice.
  • A 700MHz Celeron/Duron box is pretty much the lowest spec you can buy these days. Intel/AMD no longer make chips at clock speeds less than that. My 300MHz Celeron isn't 'low end'. Its obsolete.

  • An even cheaper alternative for any system. (Score:4)

    by empesey ( 207806 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @11:21PM (#674890) Homepage
    Bah. I spent $0.75 and bought me a pair of 3D glasses. My computing experience has never been the same since.

  • The GeForce2 MX GPU is winning editor awards all over the place. Happenstancilly, I found a card with it for $104, shipped: come 'n get it [onvia.com].

    Slashcode won't let me insert the URL correctly; it adds spaces. Please remove the spaces from the URL after clicking on the link in order to view. Should look like this:
    http://www.onvia.com/CnetShopper/products/index.cf m? Task=Vi ewProduct&SearchText=geforce2%2520mx&IdCatalog=256 0321 [onvia.com]
  • ...but how many people change cpus every 2months? ...

    Well, since new 700MHz CPUs cost ~$80 [onvia.com], my guess would be people who can afford to spend $40 a month, or roughly $1.33 a day.

    (Remove space between "duro" and "n%2" to view the link.)
  • Since when has Celeron or Duron been low-end? (Among the x86, among all computers all x86 are low-end). My 486 is a low-end x86 and I still consider my ppro a middle-end machine - it is adequate for most tasks if I don't use latest bloatzillas and all.
  • I could give anyone considering an upgrade based upon money capabilities would be RAM. I've upgraded systems and the largest increase in performance would be at very least doubling your amount of RAM.
    It really doesn't make much sense to try and run a "high-end" video card on a slower system, even to run quake because, sure you might have beautiful graphics, but it's gonna be about 10 to 15 FPM. That's like fixing the body of your car before you even touch the engine or drivetrain that really needs the attention!
    You'd look REAL good cruising down the street in a shiny car....with a trail of black smoke or loose parts behind you.

  • The article commented on PS2 developers struggling with programming the new hardware. This is what happened with the N64, and one reason for its lower sales compared to the PS1.

    But regarding their upcoming system, Nintendo wrote, "Instead of going for the highest possible performance, which does not contribute to software development, our idea was to create a developer-friendly next generation TV game machine that maintained above-standard capabilities" (From http://www.nintendo.com/gamecube/ind ex. html [nintendo.com])

    In the end, it's all about gameplay. The graphics are just icing. This is why Starcraft still continues to sell well, despite being 2 yrs old and using 640x480 2D sprite graphics.

    Rather than being the Betamax, the PS2 may be the N64 redux, while Nintendo captures the market with rapidly developed, fun games upon the 'cubes release.

    The real 'X-factor', IMHO, is the X-Box (no pun intended). MS has shown savvy in which games it has produced and distributed, but many other consumer market attempts have shown less insight: no internet acceptance until late in the game, MSN, various attempts at entering the banking industry, etc.

    It's going to be interesting.
    -----
    D. Fischer

  • I consider my Celeron 300 to be "low end" only because it's approaching 2 years of age.

    We are reaching an interesting stage in computing. My "low end" box can run most applications as fast as any other high end system. I'm not an avid gamer. The only benefit to me would be for some large programs I occasionally need to recompile. But then, it would be a 2 minute compile vs. a 10 minute compile. I'm going to get up for coffee anyway, so why bother with a new system?

  • Low end : Duron 800
    High end : TBird 1000

    I bet these big kids wax their CPU's every day, thinking it makes them faster. It brings back the uplifting gino conversations that sounded like "You suck because I drive a corvette and you drive a camaro.. camaros are for grannies".

    Now I'll go mail some Ritalin to Sharky's boys.
  • "There's always that dilemma of whether to upgrade your CPU or your video card first. There's a useful piece that shows some of today's fastest 3D accelerators but on lower end systems like an Intel Celeron 700 and a AMD Duron 700"

    I think most people found the /. lead-in rather missleading. Talking about low-end CPU and determining your upgrade path implies older CPUs (well, to me and obviously many others). When you read the article (as you suggest), you soon discover that the /. lead-in is wrong, with article more aligned with helping people choose a new system (high-end or value as determined by current state of the market.)

    It's just another example of /.'s increasing sloppiness.
  • [read the subject]

    1. As others have pointed out, 700 MHz is not low-end. My fastest computer, that I have ever had, is a K6-3/450. (Well, the dual Celeron 366 is kinda faster, but kinda not. It depends.)

    2. Unlike what other posters have said, just because the chip makers no longer MAKE anything 700MHz doesn't mean you can't get a system with 700MHz. I bought both the K6-3 and the two Celerons this summer, new. It's called pricewatch.

    So, neither is 700 MHz "low-end", nor is it even "low-end" in terms of systems you can make!

    Geez. I've just been wishing and wishing for a T-Bird @ 800 Mhz... silly me, that's almost low end!

    -----
  • This program XL-R8R [madonion.com] will benchmark your system as a gaming platform (calculate framerates for different types of games), and will then connect to a database, find results from people with similar hardware, and tell you what you should expect in terms of framerate, if you were to upgrade to this or that hardware.
    --
    Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
  • That's exactly what I thought.

    I've been running a Celeron 366 (at 457mhz) for quite some time now, and I haven't felt the upgrade pinch in respect to cpu/mb.

    I've only just (in the past 2 years) been able to get myself out of that "fastest is best" mentality. In reality, my current PC can handle everything I want to do and more. (design, code, quake)

    Too many people fall into the trap of constant (and unnecessary) upgrades. I can't believe slashdot can call 700mhz "lower end".

  • DivX does partial decoding instead of dropping frames? Pretty nifty. And a P500III isn't fast enough to have buchloads of cycles left over? That is scary
  • Cute typo:
    "in lisp in C++"

    Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming states that "any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp"
  • Read the fsckink links before posting !
    Its's Sharky Extreme : PC : Hardware : GeForce2 GTS Performance On A Value Platform

    "Value" is not "low end", is just cheaper than "high end".

    You insulted my P166mmx ! :)

    --
  • As it seems everyone else it pointing out,
    a celery 600 and duron anything-mhz are NOT low end.
    You want to do a real story, show the performance increases from TNT, TNT2, GF, GF2 on things like
    celery 300a @450
    p2 400~450
    K6/2-450
    (god in hell, who'd have thought THESE would be low end this quickly).

    And who in their right, left, or anywhere IN their minds sets the desktop to, or plays games at 16 bit?
    You may as well do 8 bit monochrome.
    Show me 32 bit, or don't bother doing it.
  • ... after clicking through 20 pages of graphs that only differ in colour?
  • I recenly upgraded from a TNT-based video card to a GeForce2 GTS on my Pentium II based system.

    The result? Q3A/Linux took a leap from 640x480x16, mid-detail and probably 20 fps to 1280x1024x32 max-detail and probably 30-50 fps.

    The difference was unbelieveable; I thought that I had bought a completely new machine. I was playing Q3A with max settings at higher framerates at 1280x1024 than I had seen on Quake2 (with its 16-bit color) at 800x600.

    I have no doubt that I couldn't have acheived the same kind of performance bonus had I spent the same amount of money on a new CPU.
  • These guys at Sharky need a reality check. They seem to have a serious inferiority complex in claiming that a Celeron 700 or AMD Duron is low-end. I used to run Quake3, and more importantly Unreal Tournament on a P2-400 with Voodoo2 just fine. Of course I absolutely love my Celeron @ 850 with Geforce2 DDR but that's just gravy. In my case, the top-end video card made a world of difference much more noticeable than any blind cpu upgrade. The core motherboard and cpu always suffer from bloated software, while the video card has its own tweaked embedded code that's always running at full blazing speed, as long as the rest of the PC can provide the scene data fast enough to keep up. Sure, maybe getting a P3-1050 might give me 5-10 extra fps in Quake, for a 400$ pricetag, but if you spend all your hard earned simoleans on bleeding-edge hardware, you won't have a penny left to buy games =)
  • > Sure, the post was poorly-worded, but you at least knew that it was
    > a story comparing 3D accelerators, not overall system performance.

    Fair enough, it was a story about 3D cards. But most posters seem to have keyed in on the statement declaring a 700 MHz system low end, and the whole nature of the thread was skewed by that. I was simply following the flow, that's all. I don't doubt that a Geforce 256 would add considerable zest even to a 400 MHz machine. I simply don't consider that machine all that low end for most tasks.

  • quick note: (Score:5)

    by fluxrad ( 125130 ) on Thursday October 26, 2000 @01:10AM (#674953)
    someone was smokin' some rock when they posted this. The article in question is about "value" systems, not lower end ones.

    right now, i own a P-III 300 and a K6-2 400. The only reason i consider these low end is because i'm a geek and more Mhz means....well, a bigger penis i guess...

    Anyway....AMD K6-2/400 with a Voodoo3 3500 and 128Meg of ram plays Counter-Strike just fine...and, in the end, isn't that really all that matters?


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • <rant>Increasing RAM is not necessarily the best way to improve performance, especially if you're running that piece of shit known as Windows NT. I've got an NT box here (not my fault) with 1GB of RAM and it's swapping out to virtual memory. Peak memory usage of this machine is 450MB and current usage is 320MB, but the fucker is STILL SWAPPING (yes, hard page faults). Even with 640MB of free memory doing absolutely fuck all. Apparently, it's due to NT's VM system being optimized for machines with small amounts of physical RAM. What I really, really need right now is a baseball bat and a Microsoftie to vent my anger on.</rant>

    For games performance, a new graphics card may be your best bet. I've just upgraded my K6-2 450 linux box from a Matrox G200 (with XFree86 3.3) to a GeForce 256 (XFree86 4.0.1) and the difference is unbelievable. Quake 3 is now playable and Soldier of Fortune is much faster.

    HH
  • A Firewall?

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