If the rest of the system is stable and runs at sensible speeds, why not.

This is a VLB system, so you're running VLB at 50MHz. I'd do some benches to see how that works out. If it's stable, it probably beats 40MHz (which also needs 1WS), but I'd check whether it actually beats 133MHz CPU/33MHz VLB with no wait states.

VLB at 40 and 50MHz with 0ws is possible. My ET4000W32P and ARK1000VL can do it. I've heard S3 86x cards can do it too, but it depends if the memory is soldered or in sockets.

soviet conscript wrote:

Here are my BIOS settings, I'm not a wiz at memory timings so if anyone has any suggestions. If I set my DRAM speed to anything but slow I get stability issues.

Unfortunately I've yet to see an FPM memory stick that can take the fastest settings at 50MHz in a 486.
I'm not too familiar with VL/I-486SV2GX4 so I don't know if the cache is at its fastest or at a slower setting. I can only rely on the 3DBench score which is rather low for 150MHz (okay it's low for 160 which shouldn't theoretically be much faster than 150) so I guess it isn't at its fastest.

FPM and cache speed is one of the reasons I prefer the 4*40 MHz setting instead of 3*50. The other is VGA speed, but if your VGA can take 0WS then it's a non-issue, if "transparent" for "local bus ready" option works that board is a VLB VGA speed demon. How could you get it working together with the HDD controller btw? This combo has already stabbed me in the back with sharp pointy data losses, even at 40MHz (OPTi 895, 0WS). A warning: maybe they won't play this nice at "transparent" and the last thing you want is an unstable HDD controller!

Does the board work if you set the multiplier to 4x btw? I had one that wouldn't even POST like that.

alvaro84 wrote:

Unfortunately I've yet to see an FPM memory stick that can take the fastest settings at 50MHz in a 486. I'm not too familiar wit […]
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soviet conscript wrote:

Here are my BIOS settings, I'm not a wiz at memory timings so if anyone has any suggestions. If I set my DRAM speed to anything but slow I get stability issues.

Unfortunately I've yet to see an FPM memory stick that can take the fastest settings at 50MHz in a 486.
I'm not too familiar with VL/I-486SV2GX4 so I don't know if the cache is at its fastest or at a slower setting. I can only rely on the 3DBench score which is rather low for 150MHz (okay it's low for 160 which shouldn't theoretically be much faster than 150) so I guess it isn't at its fastest.

FPM and cache speed is one of the reasons I prefer the 4*40 MHz setting instead of 3*50. The other is VGA speed, but if your VGA can take 0WS then it's a non-issue, if "transparent" for "local bus ready" option works that board is a VLB VGA speed demon. How could you get it working together with the HDD controller btw? This combo has already stabbed me in the back with sharp pointy data losses, even at 40MHz (OPTi 895, 0WS). A warning: maybe they won't play this nice at "transparent" and the last thing you want is an unstable HDD controller!

Does the board work if you set the multiplier to 4x btw? I had one that wouldn't even POST like that.

I didn't do anything special to get the HDD controller working except turn down the DRAM speed setting. At faster settings, it tends to lock up when it gets to the HDD controller during POST.

I tried the "transparent" setting and it seems just as stable, granted I only ran some benchmarks and messed around for a short time but so far no instabilities. benchmarks all increased but nothing too huge. gained about 3 FPS in DOOM and maybe 2 or so points in the other benchmarks. Quake speed increase was negligible as well as PCP bench at the higher resolution.

It's funny, I have the manual for this board and it never mentions AMD in the entire thing, just settings for Intel and Cyrix CPU's. I don't even see a setting to allow for a x4 multiplier.

soviet conscript wrote:

It's funny, I have the manual for this board and it never mentions AMD in the entire thing, just settings for Intel and Cyrix CPU's. I don't even see a setting to allow for a x4 multiplier.

AMD has mapped the 5x86's 4x setting to the DX4's 2x. So if you see a jumper for DX4 multiplier setting, that must be the one.

150 with 50mhz fsb and everything maxed out(strongly dependend on the board) is The performance option for 486 class machines.
I would be interesed in your score in shareware Doom1.9, demo3(with "screensize" screenblocks9).

I once had a GA-486VS and an AvanceLogic gfx card with everything at the tightest timings running at 150/50 and it was pretty nice.

i stick with 50fsb and 1wait because i simply don't trust 40fsb with 0wait as well as pci clock.

soviet conscript wrote:

It's funny, I have the manual for this board and it never mentions AMD in the entire thing, just settings for Intel and Cyrix CPU's. I don't even see a setting to allow for a x4 multiplier.

@soviet_conscript, may I ask what revision of the board do you have? The only manual available online for this board I could find is the one for revisions 2.x and it does mention AMD CPUs (the enhanced Am486DX4 in particular, though not the 5x86 which was introduced later) in the CPU Type Selection section.

If your manual doesn't mention this then perhaps it's for one of the 1.x revisions of the board, which is not available online AFAIK. In that case could you share pictures of that manual here? A while back I manually determined what most of the jumpers do in my 1.8 board by poking around with a multimeter, but it would be great to have an official "source" of info.

TheMobRules wrote:

soviet conscript wrote:

It's funny, I have the manual for this board and it never mentions AMD in the entire thing, just settings for Intel and Cyrix CPU's. I don't even see a setting to allow for a x4 multiplier.

@soviet_conscript, may I ask what revision of the board do you have? The only manual available online for this board I could find is the one for revisions 2.x and it does mention AMD CPUs (the enhanced Am486DX4 in particular, though not the 5x86 which was introduced later) in the CPU Type Selection section.

If your manual doesn't mention this then perhaps it's for one of the 1.x revisions of the board, which is not available online AFAIK. In that case could you share pictures of that manual here? A while back I manually determined what most of the jumpers do in my 1.8 board by poking around with a multimeter, but it would be great to have an official "source" of info.

Sorry for the super late reply. I think its revision 1.7

soviet conscript wrote:

So whats is your guy's opinion about running an AMD5x86-133 @ 150MHz as opposed to 160MHz? […]
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So whats is your guy's opinion about running an AMD5x86-133 @ 150MHz as opposed to 160MHz?

[...]

Speedsys = 52.72
Quake 320x200 = 13.7

With 160 MHz I got:

Speedsys = 59.76
Quake 320x200 = ~16 fps

You don't gain much by 50 MHz FSB, due to wait states. So 160 MHz is the better option.

My board ran pretty stable at 50MHz with a x3 multi @ 150MHz vs 40mhz x4 @ 160MH. I got slightly better benchmarks results at the 150MHz BUT I had to set DRAM speed to "slower" in the BIOS else I had no stability. So with these DRAM settings 150MHz was marginally faster. 160MHz however was stable with DRAM speed set to "fastest" and here the 160MHz setting blew the 150MHz setting away in benchmarks.

soviet conscript wrote:

Sorry for the super late reply. I think its revision 1.7

Just noticed your reply! Thanks a lot for the manual pics, they are extremely useful!!

The jumper settings seem to also match v1.8. By the way, with the latest BIOS from ASUS, you can set a few undocumented jumpers in order to enable WB L1 cache on the processors that support it:

ASUS VL/I-486SV2G(X4) REV. 1.8 conversion and jumpers guide