dionb wrote on 2026-06-04, 22:26:

Years ago I made one too, but it's very limited in scope (synthetic mem tests only) albeit for an impressive number of platforms […]
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BitWrangler wrote on 2026-06-04, 19:33:

^^^^ That is still about the only thread I can find that has any of the "middle children" SiS, Via or ALI chipsets in it compared against intel. Lots of single platform, multi GPU, single platform multi CPU, 486 chipsets, PII/III chipsets, Athlon chipsets, and some Super7, but between "early" and super there seems to be a big gap in systematic testing. I have been trying multiple different search approaches last night and this morning, nothing is popping out.

Get lots of rumours like maybe one of the SiS chipsets is fast, maybe the pre super Aladdins are pretty fast, etc, but nothing concrete. On the Via side I've heard before that the VPx is the fixed and tuned up VP1 so is nippy, but again, nothing useful for comparisons.

Years ago I made one too, but it's very limited in scope (synthetic mem tests only) albeit for an impressive number of platforms:
https://dionb.eu/chipset1.html

Aside from differences between chipsets (which are in the same ballpark as the one you linked to), my big takeaway was how big the differences between boards with the same chipset could be, and - very much related - how incomparable BIOS settings could be, both minimum default and highest performance settings available.

Sadly I had to offload all my vintage stuff when I moved house in 2008, so I'm not in a position to repeat any tests :'(

Thanks that is very interesting.

Shows up the penalty there of shared RAM for the graphics, ouch, so yeah if you wanna slow a board down, single SIMM plus halved again with that brings it down to 386 memory performance nearly.

That M560 looks interesting will have to dig into those.

But yeah, quite a variance on some of those different board, same chipsets, I used to see 10% spread sometimes on Anand or Tom's motherboard roundups all with same chipset, and wonder if the manufacturers fixed it later with better BIOS or not.