3dbench 1.0c should be handy for this! It's very sensitive to anything video bandwidth related...

udam_u wrote:

Any suggestions? (;

Pentium Overdrive 83Mhz perhaps? After all, it is Intel's best Socket 3 processor 😉

Also for boards that support EDO, it would perhaps be a nice idea to test with EDO and FPM, as not all revisions of any particular chipset supports EDO (some of us have boards with chipsets that are an earlier revision that doesn't support EDO, alas).

And cheers for starting this initiative 😉

what's the highest fsb supported by these boards?

noshutdown wrote:

what's the highest fsb supported by these boards?

That depends on the boards really.

Thanks guys! (:

@Mau1wurf1977

3dbench 1.0c should be handy for this! It's very sensitive to anything video bandwidth related...

Yes, this tool is really phenomenal! I'm using it as a rating during bios tuning. (:

@Tetrium

Pentium Overdrive 83Mhz perhaps? After all, it is Intel's best Socket 3 processor Wink

Also for boards that support EDO, it would perhaps be a nice idea to test with EDO and FPM, as not all revisions of any particular chipset supports EDO (some of us have boards with chipsets that are an earlier revision that doesn't support EDO, alas).

And cheers for starting this initiative Wink

Unfortunately I don't have Pentium Overdrive. This CPU is very rare in Poland. If I had one I would gladly add it to test. Maybe in the future, who knows. (;

I really like your second idea! I will test two motherboards based on UMC chipset (maybe even the same model) - one with old chipset revision and second with newer one. It will be very interesting comparison.

@noshutdown

what's the highest fsb supported by these boards?

It is true what Tetrium wrote. The highest fsb (66MHz) is available on motherboards based on UMC chipset. However not all boards based on UMC work with such high FSB - for example the highest working on Shuttle HOT-433 is 60MHz when ga-486am/s is able to handle 66MHz.

After brainstorming I decided to use following programs in comparison:

Quake1 shareware 1.06
Pcpbench
3dbench2
MDK test
Vspeed
Sysinfo
Dhry1od
Whet1od
cachechk

udam_u, I'm really looking forward to these tests. Good luck! Hehe, your pet rodent must be super fit by now! 😉 😀

retro games 100 wrote:

Hehe, your pet rodent must be super fit by now! 😉 😀

Yup, it's downloaded! 😁

@rg100

udam_u, I'm really looking forward to these tests. Good luck!

Thank you! (: After a few hours of testing I'm close to finish testing first motherboard! ^^

Hehe, your pet rodent must be super fit by now!

Currently he is as strong as small dog he he he. 😁 Neighbor cat is scared! Fortunately I do not have to feed him directly - I have special tool for such purposes. [;

add a quake2 crusher too, man!

@noshutdown

add a quake2 crusher too, man!

Sorry, I'm not going to add Q2 to my test suite because it contains too complicated geometry. Additionally in this turn I use only MSDOS tests - I will retest all motherboards under windows in second turn.
Regards! (:

It will also be important to note down which BIOS version is being used with which chipset as this could also affect the performance.

I'm guessing UMC and ALi come out first and second with only a narrow margin between them followed by SiS then VIA. It's probably for the best that an Opti chipset isn't included because it would most likely be dead last by an embarrassing margin.

@feipoa
Thanks! This is good idea. (:

@sliderider
Yeah Via Pluto is terribly slow but I haven't tested SIS, ALI and UMC chpiset yet so I'm no sure final classification. If I had motherboard based on Opti chipset I would gladly add it to the test. BTW does anyone on vogons have motherboard based on Opti PCI chipset???

I've tested various 486 boards and the UMC seems to be the fastest..... I've tried SIS and VIA, and I have an Opti 82C895 board but its VLB, not PCI. I don't think i'll get a chance this weekend to test it either 🙁

I had a 'Symphony' chipset board which I gave to another fellow retro enthusiast, anyone know how these fare?

Tetrium wrote:

Pentium Overdrive 83Mhz perhaps? After all, it is Intel's best Socket 3 processor ;) […]
Show full quote

udam_u wrote:

Any suggestions? (;

Pentium Overdrive 83Mhz perhaps? After all, it is Intel's best Socket 3 processor 😉

Also for boards that support EDO, it would perhaps be a nice idea to test with EDO and FPM, as not all revisions of any particular chipset supports EDO (some of us have boards with chipsets that are an earlier revision that doesn't support EDO, alas).

And cheers for starting this initiative 😉

In FPU related tests then the POD will most likely outshine everything else and in any test requiring or optimized for Pentium instructions but because it is multiplier locked, you realistically can't run it at over 100mhz (40mhz bus x 2.5 multiplier) and that may even be more than some of them can stand after all this time. A 50mhz bus speed would put it at 125mhz which is likely too far out of spec to boot if it doesn't just burn up the chip on powerup. The POD also isn't the equivalent of a Pentium running in a Pentium socket. It is bound by the limitations of the 486 motherboard architecture, so it will never run at the same speed as a similarly clocked chip on a socket 5/7 motherboard. Integer performance may be better with an AMD or Cyrix chip overclocked to the max, and they can take a bus speed higher than 40mhz, so which runs faster really comes down to what you intend to do with it.

In theory, you could run a POD on a 66Mhz fsb with a 1x multi (fan detached+other cpu fan on a molex) for 66Mhz, though that wouldn't be very practical 😜

Tetrium wrote:

In theory, you could run a POD on a 66Mhz fsb with a 1x multi (fan detached+other cpu fan on a molex) for 66Mhz, though that wouldn't be very practical 😜

That would be interesting to test, if the POD running at 66/66 is faster or slower overall than a POD running at 33/83. In theory at least it should be faster than the POD running 25/63 settings. Does the POD work fast enough to utilize double the FSB bandwith is what needs to be asked. If it doesn't 33/83 may still be faster.

@DonutKing
I wonder how good is your motherboard compared to other VLB motherboards based on UMC, SIS, VIA, (...). This would be also very interesting comparison... (;
Symphony chipset seems to be even more rare than Opti. Do you remember the name of motherboard you had?

Regards! (:

Sorry, I've got no idea. From memory it was ISA only and had a Dallas RTC. The symphony chips had a treble clef printed on them.