Rage 128 VR is clocked lower than Rage 128 GL and uses 64-bit memory interface to save money. Rage 128 Pro is a later chip than the original Rage 128 GL and VR and has support for newer features.

Interesting, thanks sliderider! I cant ALT-CTRL-DEL when I use the Pro. The system just hangs but the VR works fine. Well....Better than fine. I'd go as far as to say there's no better match than a Cyrix 5x86, Biostar MB-8433 and an ATI RAGE 128. They compliment each other brilliantly.

the new ram arrived.

2 x 64MB 72 pin module (part:KM44C16100AK-6)

The 133 system really only likes one 64MB simm.
I have not found a way to get it stable with 2 x 64MB simms with the timings I have.

I spent some time recently using the cyrix 133 system to play Lands of Lore, Doom 2, Warcraft II, Hexen, Duke 3D and it has performed flawlessly with branch prediction on within dos in these games.

Rage 128 VR 32MB working perfectly without a hitch and I can't fault the Awe 64 Gold - sounds great hooked up to a Roland SC-55ST

It's nice to see someone following in my footsteps. Does the Matrox G200 perform about the same as the 128VR for those games you mentioned? I too was also pretty excited when discovering how well the inexpensive 128VR ran on this motherboard.

When (high-res) Windows use, DAC quality and -overall- speed is the priority, ATi and Matrox are surely optimal choices.
For those who play a wider range of older games, S3, 3dfx Voodoo2/3 and nvidia is the way to go.
I would rather pick a TNT PCI on any day for its VBE 3.0 support and near perfect DOS VGA compatibility.
Then again, there is no joker card in this game...

The TNT doesnt work properly on any 486 chipset that im aware of.

Have you tested that extensively? I was using the Riva and Riva ZX PCI more, because I have spares of those. I have recently moved to the Elsa Erazor II PCI on a Zida Tomato 4DPS 2.11 based PC but have not come across any serious issue so far...

I have tested many different video cards in the Biostar MB-8433 v2 (S3, Matrox, Rendition, ATI)
The three Matrox cards I have: G200, Millenium and Mystique all perform very well in this board.
Of the two Rage cards: 128VR and 128PRO: The 128VR works flawlessly and the 128PRO works but appears to have some issues.

I find the Rage 128VR and the Matrox G200 to be on pretty even footing in Dos Games
Benchmark wise the Matrox G200 always seems to perform around 0.2 points faster than the Rage in all pcpbench tests.
Speedsys gives me a 0.15 score advantage with the Matrox G200 over the Rage 128VR.

Any differences between the two are probably negligible due to the 33MHz FSB.

Its hard to notice any difference in games - The Matrox textures look a little more refined than the Rage but my eyes only ever notice it in Duke 3D and Hexen. Both very fast cards and very responsive in Windows 98

The Cyrix 133MHz SCSI System with 64MB FPM + Rage 128VR 32MB + Creative AWE 64 GOLD:

Duke 3D works fast on 640x480 VESA + reasonably on 800x600 VESA
Warcraft 2 is flawlessly smooth.
Lands of Lore perfect.
Doom II perfect.
Hexen perfect.
Heretic perfect.
Windows 98 with SE 3.25 perfect

Jolaes76: I'd be interested in getting my hands on a Tomato 4DPS but I can't find one at the right price. Such a shame I had a mishap with the ECS UM8810 board 🙁

I must replace it with a PCI Socket 3 mobo with good support for Cyrix 5x86

It just a question of (a little) time. There are at least 3 or 4 candidates beside the Zida. The Taken board is very good as well. Might be cheaper, too.

rgart wrote:

I find the Rage 128VR and the Matrox G200 to be on pretty even footing in Dos Games... Its hard to notice any difference in game […]
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I find the Rage 128VR and the Matrox G200 to be on pretty even footing in Dos Games... Its hard to notice any difference in games - The Matrox textures look a little more refined than the Rage but my eyes only ever notice it in Duke 3D and Hexen. Both very fast cards and very responsive responsive in Windows 98

The Cyrix 133MHz SCSI System with 64MB FPM + Rage 128VR 32MB + Creative AWE 64 GOLD:

Duke 3D works fast on 640x480 VESA + reasonably on 800x600 VESA
Warcraft 2 is flawlessly smooth.
Lands of Lore perfect.
Doom II perfect.
Hexen perfect.
Heretic perfect.
Windows 98 with SE 3.25 perfect

Do any of those games have a timedemo to bench with? I'm curious also if any of the games run any faster in Win95.

rgart wrote:

The 133 system really only likes one 64MB simm.
I have not found a way to get it stable with 2 x 64MB simms with the timings I have.

While I have several types of 64 MB SIMMs, I have only found one pair which works in this board for 128 MB RAM with the fastest settings. It is the gold contact Samsung modules noted in my World's Fastest 486 link. I haven't been able to source more of these. I know at least one other forum member has a set of 4.

rgart, are you able to pass the DirectX dxdiag Direct3D test with the ATI Rage 128VR installed?

EDIT: Direct3D functions with the Cyrix 5x86 CPU but not the Am5x86 CPU, although MDK in D3D mode seems to function with the Am5x86 CPU. Outlaws, Battlezone, Final Reality, and 3DMark99 do not function with the Am5x86 CPU but function properly with the Cyrix 5x86 CPU. DirectDraw functions with both CPUs. GLQuake functions with both CPUs.

EDIT2: Nevermind. This took some time to figure out. Here are the results. Use display driver version 4.11.6263 (GL v1.1.1274) for Cyrix 5x86 chips. Direct3D and OpenGL works with the Cyrix 5x86, but Direct3D does not function on the Am5x86 (DirectDraw works though). For the Am5x86, use driver version 4.11.6105 for Direct3D games and driver version 4.11.6263 for OpenGL games. 4.11.6105 will function with GLQuake, but it is slow. I wonder if there is some way to use Direct3D drivers from .6105 into the .6263 installation...

Its been some time since I turned these systems on, approximately 12 months. Today I went through some testing with the only system still commissioned, the Cyrix 5x86 133. After some initial grumbling from the SCSI hard disk everything seemed to be in working order. The ATI RAGE 128 VR become a permanent fixture and stayed on as the video card of choice.

I'm having some problems related to the Creative AWE 64 GOLD though, any games that access the sound cards DMA either slow the game to an absolute crawl where it takes me 30 seconds to just access the menu and quit, doesn't play any actual sound and/or I sometimes get an error relating to the sound cards DMA access in programs I use like dosamp. All games I tested auto detected the sound card when accessed through the install/setup program but when loading the actual software or testing the sound card only the first moment of the speech will play and then cut out.

TESTED: Hexen, Doom2, Doom1, ROTT, Windows 98, Fate of Atlantis, Warcraft 2, Wolfenstein 3d.

The Warcraft 2 setup program only plays the first word then cuts out when testing "digital sound" and Wolfenstein soldiers on and works without a hitch but I believe wolf3d sound doesn't require use of the sound cards DMA value, am I correct?

I'll pull the AWE64 card out, visually check the caps, remove the dust, re-seat it and check through the MB8433 bios but does anyone have any experience with sound effects cutting out like this?

Never has happened to me. Did you try a) different AWE64Gold, b) different sound card entirely?

I reseated and cleaned the AWE64 Gold and the symptoms persisted. I have overlooked that I must have been tinkering with a network card on the Cyrix 5X86 133 system 12 months ago. I removed the NE2000 compatible card and the wierd AWE64 conflict resolved itself.

I admit I have had no success with any of the network cards I have available to me on this system however I'm more than happy for it to be stand alone.

Nice nice... Good builds. 😀
I have one question though. How is the temperature on the SCSI drives?

That is curious. Every network card I've used on the MB-8433UUD has worked well. I'm using my MB-8433UUD with a Voodoo2 now, so I had to give up the PCI NIC for an ISA NIC. There are some 100mbps ISA ones by 3Com and Intel, which are about 3x faster than 10mbps cards. I have been playing Outlaws on this system when I have a chance. It runs very well at 800x600 with the G200's D3D. The framerate ranges from 13 - 46 fps. Oddly, with movement and action the frame rates goes high, while standing still watching the clouds pass it is the lowest.

How did you set your Cyrix 5x86-133/4x to run at 2x66? From what I recall, the Cyrix 5x86-133/4x will run at 4x/3x during boot. If you want 2x, you need to use software. So you boot with 33 MHz, 4x, then toggle software to 2x, then pull the FSB jumper to set it at 66 MHz? There are certain BIOS settings you need enabled for successful operation at 66 MHz.

brostenen: I have never had any issues with 10K SCSI drives in these small 486 cases and I've run them for years on 24/7. Perhaps because the throughput never really gets above 35 MB/s.

feipoa: I've had trouble with the 5 or so network cards I have attempted to use with the MB-8433 and the Cyrix CPU combination. It was frustrating because Windows 98 isn't so responsive meddling with the device manager and changing/installing drivers and it sapped considerable time waiting. I only intended to use it for occasional file transfers but now I just choose to suffer with a serial cable and laplink 5:)

What video card have you ended up using for your Cyrix 5x86 133 system and is it the fastest and most stable? Are you using the Matrox G200 and Windows 98 GUI for your operating system?

Disregard the earlier (removed)picture of the Cyrix 133 MHz system running at a FSB of 66MHz. That was using a different Cyrix CPU, I had no success running the Cyrix 5x86 133 CPU with a multiplier of 2.

brostenen: I've had no heat issues from the SCSI system, it does tend to grind away and make a bit more noise but its substantially faster with loading time than an equivalent IDE system for all the DOS programs I frequently use.

Great thread and great effort and still surprising that the Cyrix is is still slower when compared to a much older CPU like the Pentium 66 on a proper board (Quake, PCPBench SVGA, L2 Cache)..

rgart, I am surprised you are having NIC issues with your system. Which NICs did you try?

I have two Cyrix 5x86-133 systems setup. They are as follows,

Biostar MB-8433UUD v3.0
IBM 5x86-133/2x @ 3.70 V (QFP chip, not PGA)
66 MHz FSB
1024 KB write-back cache
64 MB FPM memory (you can use 128 MB but should switch RAM Read ws from 1 to 2)

Windows 95c
Windows NT 4.0

Matrox G200 SDRAM 16 MB
Voodoo2 12 MB w/100MHz memory (STB brand)
Promise Ultra100 TX2 w/80GB whisper quiet IDE HDD, CD/DVD-ROM, 3.5" CF-IDE adapter (rarely used)

Audican32 Plus (Yamaha YMF718-S) with NEC XR385 wavetable daughter board
IBM 100/10 ISA ethernet adapter (same hardware as Intel EtherExpress PRO100 ISA)

DTK PKM-0033S
Cyrix 5x86-133/4x @ 3.70 V
33 MHz FSB
1024 KB Write-through cache
128 MB FPM memory

Windows 95c
Windows NT 4.0

Voodoo3 3000 16 MB
Adaptec 2940U2W SCSI controller w/73GB Ultra320 HDD, CD-ROM
3.5" IDE-CF connected to onboard IDE (rarely used)

Creative AWE64Gold w/32 MB SIMMconn
3Com 3C515-TX Fast EtherLink ISA 10/100BASE-TX

My other two 486 systems are a Ti486SXL-40 and a VLB-based AM5x86-160.

I previously had an Adaptec 2940U2W on the Biostar system, but the HDD started to have trouble. I was getting some strange HDD write errors in Win95. That HDD was very quiet. The backup cloned SCSI HDD for that system is just too noisy (high pitched idle spin). I then switched to a Promise SATA150TX2 Plus, but after a few days, I experienced some strange behaviors related to the HDD controller in Windows 95 only. I then switched to the Promise Ultra100 TX2 ATA controller and haven't had any issues. The drawbacks of the Promise Ultra100 TX2 controller is that you cannot use soft reset. If you try to soft reset, the system will hang at the Promise IDE BIOS. A hard reset lets you boot just fine. The other issue with the Promise Ultra100 is that I could not figure out how to get the CD-ROM drive to work in DOS. You can still connect the CD-ROM drive to the onboard IDE controller if you need DOS CD-ROM support though. I did not have either of these issues with the Adaptec 2940U2W, however I cannot tolerate the noise of my remaining "backup" Ultra160/320 drives. Unfortunately, it is too difficult to find a quiet Ultra160/320 drive on eBay. Good luck getting the seller to test the spin noise for you.

The Biostar system is a little faster overall compared to the DTK system. On the Biostar system, GLQuake, with sound and all defaults enabled, benches around 27 fps. Both systems are stable, meaning I could play Outlaws and GLQuake for at least an hour without issue.

Combining a fast D3D card with a Glide card on the Biostar system really allows you to push game play into the early Pentium era. Not sure how the ATI Rage 128VR compares to the Matrox G200 on a 486 concerning D3D speed, but I recall the ATI Rage 128VR didn't have working NT4 drivers when using a Cyrix 5x86.

Feipoa: The network card in question that was giving me grief was an ISA Complex Readylink ENET16 Combo Rev E Card (NE-2000 compatible). I really don't need the network access though so it was an easy decision just to pop the card out. I noticed both your IBM 5x86-133/2x and Cyrix 5x86-133/4x systems are set to 3.7 volts. I made a few changes to the Cyrix 133 system last night.

- Matrox G200 installed.
- 3DFX Voodoo 2 card installed.
- Windows 95 rev C installed. (why was I using win98)
- Voltage trimmer set to 3.7 volts

Testing to come when I have some spare time and I clearly need to sift through the information I am lacking on GLIDE wrappers.