VOGONS


AMD 5x86 X5-133 (now with POD)

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First post, by derSammler

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So here's my AMD 5x86 X5-133 I built lately.

* PC Chips M919 Rev. 3.4 with 256 kb L2 cache module
* 32 MB RAM (FPM)
* AMD 5x86 X5-133 @ 160 MHz, 16 kb L1 cache
* Pentium Overdrive @ 83 MHz
* ESS 1868 sound card with Dreamblaster S2
* Intel Ethernet card with BNC and RJ45 (active card with own processor and memory)
* Adaptec AHA-1505 SCSI controller card (not actually used, but good for connecting external devices)
* S3 Virge 325, 4 MB
* Matrox Mystique, 4 MB
* 3dfx Voodoo Graphics, 4 MB
* AOpen 24x10x40x CD-RW drive
* 3.5" floppy disk drive
* external CF adapter on primary IDE (no hard disk inside!)
* Green switch re-used as turbo switch 😁

Running Windows 95C currently with quite a few DOS and Windows games installed already. However, software installation is not done yet.

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Last edited by derSammler on 2019-07-02, 18:55. Edited 6 times in total.

Reply 1 of 92, by keropi

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Everything looks so shiny! I like it 😀
How does it perform in win95 gaming? Never tried it with anything less than a pentium1 @100+ mhz...

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 3 of 92, by derSammler

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keropi wrote:

How does it perform in win95 gaming? Never tried it with anything less than a pentium1 @100+ mhz...

I have only tried a few Windows 95 games so far. Fury3, Hover, Pitfall, Age of Empires all run great. Going to try GL Quake later today. 😀

I run mine with a Cyrix 5x86-120. I never got any of my Banshee cards to work in it though...

A Banshee would be quite wasted in such a system anyway, as the CPU doesn't even have enough power to fully load a Voodoo 1. If you want 2d/3d in one card, the Voodoo Rush is the way to go. The Rush also has the advantage to work better with slower CPUs than the Voodoo 1.

Reply 4 of 92, by eviljoeclark

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I don't really consider it a system for 3d; I just happened to have a few of the Creative Banshee cards, which I heard have pretty good 2d performance. I went with a Number Nine Imagine 128 card instead.

Reply 5 of 92, by feipoa

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Any luck running VLB graphics on this board? I recall having trouble getting my 4MB VLB S3 968 card working. It would be kinda unique to run 2D on the VL bus and a Voodoo1 on the PCI.

Are you comfortable running the Am5x86-133 without a fan?

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 6 of 92, by derSammler

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Yes, VLB works. It was actually my plan to use a VLB card for 2D and the Voodoo for 3D. However, I only own and tested a Trident TGUI9400. While that one isn't that bad for a card made by Trident, pushing 10 mb/sec. over the bus, it's too slow for me. I then learned that even the fastest VLB cards hardly exceed 20 mb/sec. A Trio32 PCI I used for testing while building the system already reached 40 mb/sec. and the Virge/DX I use now even goes up to 45 mb/sec. With the Virge I can also play S3d games, which is quite cool having two different, proprietary 3D APIs in one system. Maybe one day I get a PCX1 for the last free PCI slot and an original 3D Blaster for the last free VLB slot. 😁

The CPU isn't running without a fan. There's a case fan installed behind that large piece of plastics which cools the CPU. Before I had the fan installed, the CPU wasn't getting warm, either. The heatsink is also much higher than it may look on the picture. And should the CPU catch fire, I have another one in my collection. 😉

Reply 8 of 92, by feipoa

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A VLB 3D Blaster would be even more unique.

That is an interesting DOS game menu - I haven't seen this before.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 11 of 92, by amadeus777999

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Thx.

EDO , according to the boards I used it on, is only faster in the way of being able to achieve higher clockspeeds without destroying beautifully tight timings(higher than 50mhz).

Guessing from main memory "throughput" you're 9-11 MB shy off a good value. The FPM only LS486E(Rev :c1) I tested got 38MB at 33mhz fsb with an x133.

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Reply 12 of 92, by chinny22

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I found my 133 a bit slow for S3d games, but I'm guessing like you it's more of a case of because I can more then what the system was built for.
Is a very nice (and clean) system though

Reply 13 of 92, by derSammler

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I have not yet tweaked the BIOS settings. Maybe that's why the RAM is not as fast as it could possibly be.

I found my 133 a bit slow for S3d games

That problem is mainly caused by the S3d toolkit patcher for running games on newer Virge chips. I tested Screamer and couldn't believe how bad it performed even at 320x200 after seeing how well Tomb Raider worked. Tomb Raider doesn't require any patch for the Virge/DX, so I removed the S3d toolkit patcher from the Screamer S3d patch, temporarily installed an original Virge 325 and gave it another try. And guess what? It was way faster. The S3d toolkit patcher is a piece of complex shit. While it makes the games run on newer Virge chips, it raises CPU requirements to a level that does no longer fit any Virge card at all (time-wise). It also makes some games crash badly, like Descent 2. I may permanently swap the Virge/DX with the Virge 325, but I need to get a new one, as the one I have is faulty and often causes the system to freeze.

Reply 14 of 92, by derSammler

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I tweaked the BIOS settings and gained 23 MB/sec. additional RAM throughput. I may try how it performs at 160 MHz. I also have a stack of 16 MB memory modules with 50ns, those may come handy. 😁

Reply 15 of 92, by Munx

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I keep reading that a Voodoo 2 can give a noticeable boost in a 486 machine over a V1 thanks to dual TMUs. Any chance of giving that a test?

My builds!
The FireStarter 2.0 - The wooden K5
The Underdog - The budget K6
The Voodoo powerhouse - The power-hungry K7
The troll PC - The Socket 423 Pentium 4

Reply 16 of 92, by derSammler

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While I have a spare Voodoo2, I don't see much point in testing that. The 486 can not fully utilize the Voodoo1 because it has to do T&L in software, for which it is not fast enough to push the Voodoo1 to its limits. The second TMU on the Voodoo2 won't help here, specially since it would only improve rendering speed if a game uses multi-texturing.

The Voodoo Rush is the only 3dfx chipset that works better with slow CPUs compared to the Voodoo1.

Reply 17 of 92, by derSammler

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Here's speedsys with optimized BIOS settings and 160 MHz. Score reads 59.76, btw. Only took a picture instead of saving a .pcx file, since I have to check stability first before risking to write junk to the hard disk.