M571: effect of onboard video on system performance

[timmy]

I have just installed a Radeon SDR 32 MB PCI video card in my M571 3.2 system, so the existing Rage Pro xpert@play video with 8 MB was available for installation in my M571 3.2a system. This gave me the opportunity to observe how my upgrades have affected performance. Very interesting is the memory performance jump that is observed by using a video card in place of the onboard video.

I have seen speculation regarding the performance of the SiS 5597/5598 onboard vga. Some have said that it performs very well. Perhaps their comparison is with other onboard video systems, but my observations bear out the facts that using the cpu to process video information and using system memory as video memory is not the most efficient way to handle system video needs.

Here are my measurements of system performance benchmarked with Sandra 2001te:

1. M571 3.2a, K6 200 cpu (board set at 66 x 3 = 200 MHz), 128 MB system memory, 2 x 64 MB CAS 2 DIMMs, onboard video & sound, Windows 98 FE:

Performance rating: 201
CPU benchmark: 471/240
Multimedia benchmark: 432/126
Memory performance: 62/76

2. Same system with K6 3 333, board set at 66 x 5 = 333 MHz:

Performance rating: 401
CPU benchmark: 788/407
Multimedia benchmark: 1098/1434
Memory performance: 76/81

Here we note the greatly increased multimedia benchmark, due to the K6 3's much greater MMx instruction set support and 3D Now! support. Also, memory performance is increased.

3. Same system as in #2, except that Windows 2000 Pro is installed and chipset registers have been tweaked:

Performance rating: 401
CPU benchmark: 809/409
Multimedia benchmark: 1078/1407
Memory performance: 73/77

Windows 2000 drivers are often not optimized, altho this decrease in memory performance was the opposite of what I observed on my M571 3.2 system with K6 3 400.

4. Same system as #3, except onboard video replaced with ATI Rage Pro xpert@play 8 MB PCI video board:

Performance rating: 401
CPU benchmark: 809/409
Multimedia benchmark: 1078/1407
Memory performance: 107/116

Here, it is noted that memory performance is greatly increased. Often, benchmarking programs are faulted for not reflecting real world performance, but I've found that these Sandra 2001te benchmarks accurately represent the performance one notes in the use of the system.

I present this information as food for thought to those contemplating upgrading their M571 3.2, 3.2a, or 7.0 system.