(Warning, big pictures)
Hi everyone!
During this past months I have been messing with a 770Z and 770X models, both have the 8mb VRAM graphics. And I bought two MMC2 750mhz CPU alongside them for testing. I still havent done the upgrade on the 770X because I need to fix the backlight first but Ive done some benchmarks regardless.
First thing I did was update the BIOS to the latest version available, and then the RAM to 512mb. With that, I installed a Msata SSD to IDE and Windows98SE as it is the only one with 3D hardware acceleration. And to my great surprise, this Trident Cyber9397DVD card is actually capable of hardware 3D acceleration, I was able to install DX7 and DX8 with full 3D support, but DX9 only has DirectDraw support but still GPU accelerated, very surprising. I used 3DMark to do some synthetic benchmarks and here are the results before the CPU upgrade (All tests were done in 640x480 16bit color):
- 3DMark99: 492 Overall Points and 2738 CPU Points
- 3DMark2K: 295 Points
- 3DMark01: 99 Points
The rest of 3DMark tests wouldnt load, displayed an illegal instruction error or wouldnt perform any test because there is no DX9 support. In games, Quake was very playable, GLQuake did launch but it was a slide show meaning that, although slow, it also has OpenGL 1.0 support, amazing. Games like Imperium Great Battles of Rome were doable but not great, and 3D titles like VRally was stuck between 2-5FPS with everything set to low. I did more testing with KernelEX and was able to install and run Minecraft 1.0 with the help of TitaniumGL, a OpenGL to DIrectX wrapper, in any case it wouldnt go beyond 1fps and all the textures were darkened and you could see the polygones. A similar thing happened in VRally were the textures were glitchy. Classicube run in software mode at 4 FPS all low.
I am lucky enough to have two 1Ghz Pentium 3s PGA CPUs, and I had someone pull one of the Pentium3 and place it in the MMC2 replacing the 750mhz CPU, all via BGA. The process did seem to be done perfectly, so I did the Speedstep mod before trying the CPU first, maybe a mistake. I then pulled apart the 770Z and placed the 1Ghz MMC2 CPU in its place. It is actually pretty easy and straight forward process to disassemble the machine, but to test the CPU you have to put almost the machine back together. Sadly it didnt work, the machine wouldnt boot and the mini symbol screen would only show the speaker symbol turning on and off repeately. In the manual it seems that repeated beeps meant a CPU or GPU issue, I reseated everything with the same result, the CPU was getting very warm so power flows ok. When I took the cooler from the MMC2 card I found that a screew actually dented the CPU:
https://imgur.com/a/9RASO0E
Im not sure it is only superficial and if it wouldnt matter, or even if the Speedstep mod was done incorrectly. But it would heat up yet not boot. I tried the remaining unaltered 750Mhz MMC2 and it worked just fine, I had to edit the BIOS and install powerleap but other than that its working nice. This leads me to believe that maybe the 1Ghz mod is too much, Ive read that these mods work better with the 770X which I still have to try. Now this the 750Mhz CPU running at 600Mhz I did some tests, and here are the results:
- 3DMark99: 733 Overall Points and 9088 CPU Points
- 3DMark2K: 421 Points
- 3DMark01: 137 Points
Very nice upgrade here to be honest, in games, Quake, Quake 2 run nicely and Quake 3 does run but smoothly only below 640x480, not great but smooth. Minecraft 1.1 runs superflat at 2-3 fps, still all blacked out, Classicube all set to low rocks at 22FPS! And games like Imperium and VRally are now actually playable with 10 FPS being the lowest Ive seen.
Miscellaneous info now, the BIOS is actually locked to only use 137GB hard drives, meaning that anything beyond that, even if its recognised by the OS, wont be useable. I installed Win98SE in a 118GB partition and XP in a 60GB partition and it wouldnt work, ntoskrl error. Same goes for Linux, I installed Q4OS in the whole disk but it would try to load "past hd0" and fail. I ended up doing a multiboot with Win98SE, XP, Q4OS withing 137GB and it is working perfectly fine. Also important, with the CPU upgrade, the OS might load with glitches, with or without GPU drivers installed, 16bit or 32bit color, I do believe it is the AGP bus not liking the new 100Mhz bus from the CPU. Powerleap does not work, for me, under XP. And what it is most weird of all, XP can get the screen so corrumpted, it becomes a color festival, I dont have images cuz I thought it was going to break the machine if I didnt turn it off, it does dissapear after restarting, it may need several restarts to fix itself or only once, luck based. When I opened it I inserted another 256mb RAM inside, the BIOS detects 768MB but will only use 512MB.
Overall the machine works amazingly, I was lucky enough to get one with a working battery that lasts more than an hour. It can game, it can go online, and it is perfectly usuable for office work. I have yet to test more games and tune it further. I would love to grab one of the PGA-MMC2 cards, apparenty it came from a Panasonic laptop from what I could read in here, to try my luck with the remaining 1GHz PGA CPU I still have. And of course to try the, maybe damaged, 1GHz MMC2 card in the 770X.
Please let me know if you think my 1Ghz MMC2 CPU is completly gone or if its superficial, if you know what kind of Panasonic uses those CPUs and of course if you would like me to try anything else