Things can be improved marginally, but it'll cost you. Not worth it unless you really love your 386.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-06-30, 15:25:

Things can be improved marginally, but it'll cost you. Not worth it unless you really love your 386.

But changing some components or simply tweak the ones already installed?
I 'd like to use a GD5434 maybe in the future or an ATI Mach64 but their prices are absurd and no way.
I forgot the Winbench 3.1 (in Win3.1 but with the EMM386 and various things loaded) score that gave a good 9.000.000 score number more or less score @ 800x600.
Anyway I spent already a lot time ago for the components and lately found this mobo (and finally also a good looking case) for it.
Still I've not closed it cause I'm not sure about the PSU. I'm in the middle of the classic question, a simpler AT one or a more modern but still old ATX v1.2 one with the -5V (this config requires it)? I ask myself if beside the speed is more dangerous a 2003 ATX psu or a 1993 AT psu when in the first its complexity might balance in negative the older capacitor lifetime of the second.. I got some good AT psu but they are all good until something goes wrong...

I'd say it's very good, on the fast side of dx/40's and there is no need to do anything else. Gains will be minimal and of no practical use. Unless you're seeing this as a find-the-limits project, there is no other need to pursue that extra 0.5fps

konc wrote on 2020-06-30, 15:36:

I'd say it's very good, on the fast side of dx/40's and there is no need to do anything else. Gains will be minimal and of no practical use. Unless you're seeing this as a find-the-limits project, there is no other need to pursue that extra 0.5fps

I hoped to surpass the 3dBench 16.0 point but no way...😁 And I didn't want to stress everything too much.. not to mention overclocking or similar things.
I might try to tweak the bios but I don't want the system to be unstable. I spent days understanding that the vga drivers usually found online for this video chip make the system unstable in Win when installe on the ISA version or at least on my ISA version of this chip/chipset combination... At first I was also thinking if finding 50ns rams and 12ns L2 cache would make some miracles but they'd probably costs a lot! 😀

486DLC-40 is probably the most economical way to to improve performance.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-06-30, 15:49:

486DLC-40 is probably the most economical way to to improve performance.

I've that but this is another problem too... my mobo has both the soldered cpu and the cpu/npu sockets.. but there're no info at all if the mainboard would even boot with both cpu installed and I'm not going to desolder the first when maybe it would not boot even without it (even if I read someone doing that).
So I don't want to risk to break anything powering up two cpus maybe connected on the same lines and I left the 386 soldered. Also there's the "486" factor that make it feel like it's not a 386 anymore... you know.. 😁 I wish I had only the cpu socket and no cpu soldered because I really like the ceramic 386 cpus compared to these plastic ones that feel so cheap..
But I hope to find more info on this, what could happen when installed. More than one told me not to try it.. still resisting. 😁