Calling all Coppermine-128 Celeron 600 owners...

[computerdude92]

Hello guys,

I'm going to start using a Celeron 600MHz (66MHz FSB) CPU in a Toshiba laptop that takes desktop Socket 370 CPUs. The system will have 256MB of ram and a 32GB SD card inside an IDE adapter for the Windows 98se OS.

I am downgrading the 1GHz PIII CPU originally found in the laptop so I can avoid overheating issues. (Design flaw with this model)

The system will be used for retro games, DVD playback, and file transfers with PCMCIA to CF card adapters.

I'm kind of worried about the performance. I have to wait until this Friday to install it because the laptop is at my buddy's place. I used to have a Celeron 800MHz desktop with 100MHz FSB running Windows XP and it was sluggish when reading USB thumb drives... as if the faster FSB update was not enough to fix the CPU. I know I had between 256 to 512MB of ram in that particular system.

Do any of you remember using the 600MHz Celeron model, or are currently using such a system?

Thanks for any answers.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Why not use a 600mhz PIII? Is the temp difference between the III and Celeron really that different?


I had a 433mhz celeron desktop for several years(then "upgraded" to a 466mhz. Dark times). It was actually just fine for gaming albeit at very lower settings. That machine did not have a dedicated GPU, so probably a fairly close comparison for a laptop.

DVD playback I'm not so sure. I did play DVDs on a 933mhz PIII just fine when that was my nearly fanless htpc(really wish I hadn't tossed that system, it was really cool), but have never tried to play DVDs on a celeron.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

I'm not sure what kind of answer you're hoping for; the long and short of it is it's not going to perform "great". The 66mhz bus was "okay" for Celerons up into the 400mhz-ish ballpark but it really did turn into a bottleneck by the time the Coppermine Celerons came out. Assuming there aren't other bottlenecks it should play a DVD, I used to play them on my 366mhz (dual) Celeron back in the day, but that was getting close to the bottom bar for that if your machine didn't have a dedicated MPEG2 decoder. If by "gaming" you mean 2D games and solitaire, sure, it'll do that, but anything from the original Half-Life and up is going to be kind of sad.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

I can confirm it will run Unreal Tournament ok on very low settings.

 

[computerdude92]

The games I play on Win98se run good on even a Celeron 366 and 8MB video ram. I'm usually a casual gamer and thus not so picky about having access to high game settings or not.

The most demanding 9x games I play are like Lego Stunt Rally. I only play games on Win9x if they refuse to run on WinXP. So if the game is new enough to play on WinXP, then I won't need faster hardware for Win9x.

Since the laptop originally came with Windows XP, it has some kind of 16MB graphics. I have to check what exact one it is... Hopefully it will help out the Celeron well enough in gaming.

 

[computerdude92]

I can confirm it will run Unreal Tournament ok on very low settings.

I suppose you're talking about UT 2004? That game can run on an XP-era machine, which I would be using to play it.

I just saw a video where a PII 400MHz plays UT-99 very smoothly. I'm guessing based on my readings of old reviews, my Celeron 600 is equal to some kind of PII in games.

Also - the original Half-Life game that was mentioned came out in 1998, so I thought it's supposed to run good on this Celeron from early 2000?

 

[hunterjwizzard]

I suppose you're talking about UT 2004?

I am not. I am talking about Unreal Tournament, which came out in 1999: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Tournament

UT2004 doesn't have a prayer of running on that machine. But OG Unreal Tournament, as well as the original Unreal game and Return to Nal Poli will perform ok.

Also - the original Half-Life game that was mentioned came out in 1998, so I thought it's supposed to run good on this Celeron from early 2000?

My only experience with original Half-Life is playing Counter Strike, which again should run just fine at lower settings. Basically anything that doesn't *require* a graphics accelerator will run fine. If you're in to fantasy you might also look at the Might and Magic series, which recycled the same game engine for several generations and was thus very un-demanding un the later versions.

What sorts of games do you like? I have a huge collection from that era and played most of them on a terrible Celeron.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

I only play games on Win9x if they refuse to run on WinXP.

My tenure in the win98 era was spent on a eMachines eTower 433i, with a potato chip for a GPU and a sound card derived from a bag of angry cats. My gaming experience was not great, is what I'm saying.

So when I wanted to get into retro-gaming, I went and built a machine that would have been absolutely bleeding-edge for its time. We're talking a 933mhz PIII, 768mb of RAM, and a Voodoo3! Its sort of amazing to see all my old favorites again rendered, this time on a real system. Some games look exactly the same(*cough*MightAndMagic*Cough*), some games its like playing an entirely new game. Really cool stuff.

So if the game is new enough to play on WinXP, then I won't need faster hardware for Win9x.

Keep in mind that just because an older game "runs" on XP does not mean you'll necessarily get the full experience. When I initially brought a lot of my win98 games to XP, they looked and played exactly like they did on my celeron, despite having a system that on paper was 3 times more powerful. That's why I like having a few powerful, native 9x machines available.

But, as I type this, I am also restoring a vintage laptop for casual gaming, so I absolutely see the appeal of having a nice, portable, low-power system. Honestly I just love me some tech.

Since the laptop originally came with Windows XP, it has some kind of 16MB graphics. I have to check what exact one it is... Hopefully it will help out the Celeron well enough in gaming.

Assuming there are proper 9x drivers for it, this should make all the difference in the world.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Also - the original Half-Life game that was mentioned came out in 1998, so I thought it's supposed to run good on this Celeron from early 2000?

It very much depends on how you define "good". When Half-Life came out in 1998 they put absurdly low system requirements on the box (133+ Pentium), and maybe if you had a good accelerator like the original Voodoo you'd be able to get better than a slideshow out of that, but more realistically the game called for a decent Pentium II.

So... sure, a 600mhz PIII laptop will probably be "okay", assuming the video card isn't completely worthless and you don't install the higher-resolution texture packs, but, again, it's not going to be fantastic. I ran it on a 550mhz (overclocked) Celeron with a 92mhz FSB and it ran "okay" even with the higher resolution textures, but I also had a Voodoo3 card in it. I would wager that an early 2000's Toshiba laptop, especially if it were a cheaper model, isn't going to have anything close to a Voodoo in it.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Of course you can't "legally" run Half-Life on that system since the steam servers the thing targets no longer exist. I actually have an original copy of Half-Life sitting on my shelf that will never see the light of play. /sad day

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Also - the original Half-Life game that was mentioned came out in 1998, so I thought it's supposed to run good on this Celeron from early 2000?

Vanilla Half-Life needed at least a PIII 600 or better if you wanted to run at anything besides potato P resolution. The original Pentium 200 requirement was a bit hopes and dreams, even at 320x200. HL mods were another story entirely. Some of the more complex mods like Natural Selection would chug on anything less than a PIII / Athlon at 1 GHz.

I had an AMD K6/2 400 with a Voodoo1 and later a Duron 800 with a Geforce 2. The former was mostly unplayable on TFC online, the latter was playable at potato 640x480. It wasn't until I got my Athlon 1700 that I could play at higher resolutions with a good frame rate.

Of course you can't "legally" run Half-Life on that system since the steam servers the thing targets no longer exist. I actually have an original copy of Half-Life sitting on my shelf that will never see the light of play. /sad day

You mean WON servers. The original HL ran on the World Opponent Network. There are unofficial patches for a community run WON2 network, but it has been derelict for a long time.