I get 106.7 in 3DBench 1.0c, and 2134/1260 in Doom timedemo demo3. Quake won't complete its timedemo demo1 test because of instability.

Marvelous result! I think that this board should be better than HOT-433 because of its 2/3 FSB-PCI divider. I can chose only between 1:1 and 1:2 on HOT-433 (PCI 30MHz when CPU runs at 180MHz).
I'm sure that yours CPU will be stable with Peltier. (:

I am using a CoolJag copper heatsink, and although the heatsink clips do not fit the socket 3 heatsink "lugs", the heatsink itself sits perfectly OK on top of the CPU.

I replaced original clips from socket 370 cooler by pentium 1 "wire clips". (:

Thanks a lot! This was a really fun project. Also, I managed to increase my 3DBench 1.0c score by 0.2 points, to 106.9. Hehe. I used a Diamond Viper V330 Riva 128 video card, instead of the S3 325 card.

I'm getting some more interesting results. I set the mobo's multi jumper to 3x, and set the mobo's bus speed jumper to 50MHz. This makes the 5x86 P75 run at 150MHz, and is confirmed on the BIOS POST display. In the BIOS settings area, I set the "CPU clock/PCI clock" divider setting to 1:1, and everything works! Not only that, but I set all BIOS settings to their most aggressive values: Zero wait states for everything, etc, etc.

Why is this working OK? Surely this should fail. Surely the PCI video card (a V330) would not tolerate a 50MHz system bus speed. However, Quake timedemo works, and gives me 17.1 FPS. And all other graphics benchmarks work as well. My cache chips say ... 15, so they are not the fast 12 ns variety.

I tried to get 3x multi, 60 MHz bus = 180 MHz to work, with the BIOS clock/PCI divider setting set to 1:1. It would not work. Every test I ran, I could get the BIOS POST display to appear on the monitor. However, every test run would not boot the DOS operating system. Many times, the display said "missing operating system". It's interesting, because the PCI video card appeared to behave OK. The problem appeared to be accessing DOS on the integrated IDE channel. I'm using a 40-pin ribbon cable, with a compact flash device.

udam_u wrote:

I get 106.7 in 3DBench 1.0c, and 2134/1260 in Doom timedemo demo3. Quake won't complete its timedemo demo1 test because of instability.

Marvelous result! I think that this board should be better than HOT-433 because of its 2/3 FSB-PCI divider. I can chose only between 1:1 and 1:2 on HOT-433 (PCI 30MHz when CPU runs at 180MHz).
I'm sure that yours CPU will be stable with Peltier. (:

Heh, I got 108,6 with HOT-433. That's the mark to beat 😁
Good work anyway!

Wow! Incredibly strange result. Ide controller should not work at 50MHz. (: What type of hard drive are you using? Quantum Fireball? Your Q1 result is very good so this could be true but I have never seen stable system which work properly with PCI set to 50MHz!

Can you check this benchmark please?
http://www.mediafire.com/?879qjmlsohshz8p

My motherboard also seems to be stable under DOS with agressive timings because DOS doesn't use memory protection. However you have to succesfull boot to windows if you want to prove stability. (:

EDIT:

I'm using a 40-pin ribbon cable, with a compact flash device.

Now i understand why your computer worked properly.

EDIT2:
@BastlerMike I have obtained 110.5fps but computer was unstable under W95. (:

My best stable settings allowed me to reach 102.1fps. Here you can read about my attempts:
My Ultimate 486

udam_u wrote:

My best stable settings allowed me to reach 102.1fps. Here you can read about my attempts:
My Ultimate 486

I'm just re-reading this thread now, to look at all of the benchmarking information. In the meantime, I ran mdkb, and it started at about 44, then quickly moved down to 36, where it remained. So, I guess my score was 36. Also, I ran PcpBench, and scored 10.9 in mode 100 LFB.

My next task is to get this 180 MHz system running Windows. I think I will give this system a good workout, and attempt to get Windows ME running. If that fails, I'll try Win98. I'll post back with my results today...

Guys, your 3DBench2 scores of ~108 and ~110 are awesome. I am very pleased with my 106.9, but perhaps I will take a photo of my chipset BIOS settings area, and ask for some advice - I wonder which fields I can set to Disabled or Enabled to make it go a bit faster? I'll post a pic sometime today. Thanks a lot.

If you use ME, I'd suggest you give it lots of ram or it'll swap a lot. ME doesn't run well with less then 128MB and chances are good your board won't be able to cache all of that memory.

As luck would have it, I couldn't find my Windows ME compact flash drive! 😉 I used my Win98SE CF drive instead. It all appears to work OK. Here are the BIOS settings I used, for Win98SE:

I would be very interested to know if these are the best settings to use. Also, I would like to know if there are any settings I could change, to maximise the performance of DOS. I realise that for DOS, all wait states can be set to 0, and also the cache setting can be set to the lowest numbers. But what about the other settings? Thanks a lot for any advice. Begin Edit: Sorry. I meant to say all settings can be 0 wait states, except the read state, which I need to set to 1, otherwise DOS will not boot. End Edit.

While I was using Windows 98SE, with the system running at 180 MHz, I ran some Sandra 2002 Pro benchies. Poor old Sandra, she seems to be a bit confused about the processor speed.

]

I've done some more tests. I must say that Win98SE is stable, on this 180 MHz system. I ran every SuperPi test, up to and including the 1M test.

😁

That was using a 1MB S3 325 PCI Virge card. Hehe.

I've just found out something useful. When I ran those Win98 tests above, I was using 2 sticks of EDO RAM. Each stick was 32MB, total 64MB. I'm doing some more DOS testing now, and so I set the BIOS settings back to their original very aggressive settings. I noticed this caused a problem, which did not occur before. I can't boot up DOS any more. What's the problem?

Well, to solve the problem, I removed 1 SIMM stick. I reduced the amount of RAM from 64 to 32 MB. Now, DOS will boot. Sure, I could get DOS to boot OK with 64 MB of RAM, but the crucial thing is that I needed to make the BIOS timings less aggressive. So, if you want to max out your BIOS settings, and make them as fast as possible, consider removing some memory from your 486 system.

Edit update: I just tried a Dell Nitro S3 GX 4MB PCI video card, and I get 37 points for the Shiny "CPU/Video Gamers Performance Test v1.4" benchmark program! This download link can be found in @udam_u's post above.

I've got some new DOS benchmark scores, and they're good! BIOS timings: Cache is 3 1 1 1, Read = 1, Write = 0. I've slowed things down just a little, to allow Quake to run, and it does run OK now! I am using a Dell Nitro card.

17.0 FPS in full screen timedemo demo1 mode, and 19.2 in "2 notches" less than full screen mode. Also, PcpBench mode 100, in NOT LFB mode = 11.8!

Edit: PcpBench (mode 100, not LFB) = 12.5! That's if I set the cache timings to 2 1 1 1.

retro games 100 wrote:

Edit: PcpBench (mode 100, not LFB) = 12.5!

This is the highest PCPBench score I've seen for a 486. It's a whole 2 FPS faster than my 120MHz Intel/SIS496 machine! 😳
Now, where did I put my AMD 5x86? 😦

5u3 wrote:

retro games 100 wrote:

Edit: PcpBench (mode 100, not LFB) = 12.5!

This is the highest PCPBench score I've seen for a 486. It's a whole 2 FPS faster than my 120MHz Intel/SIS496 machine! 😳

I fear that udam_u and BastlerMike will quickly destroy my top score. 🤣 I cannot beat their superior 3DBench 1.0c scores. However, regarding PcpBench and just for this moment in time only, victory is mine! 😉

I'm going to see if I can make a quick 1 minute movie, using my crappy digital camera. I'll show the mobo being powered up, and then run ChkCPU, to show the 180 MHz processor speed. Then I'll run PcpBench, and record the score. I'll give it a go now, and if it's worth looking at, I'll try and upload it to my new YouTube account...

I've uploaded my first ever YouTube video. It must be the worst quality video ever seen. Sorry about that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbQKLTEYy1U (Shows this overclocked mobo, ChkCPU, and PcpBench score of 12.5)

You have got busy day today! (:

I would be very interested to know if these are the best settings to use.

I use the same settings as you(omitting FSB to PCI divider 1:2). (:

I realise that for DOS, all wait states can be set to 0, and also the cache setting can be set to the lowest numbers. But what about the other settings? Thanks a lot for any advice. Begin Edit: Sorry. I meant to say all settings can be 0 wait states, except the read state, which I need to set to 1, otherwise DOS will not boot. End Edit.

I recommend to use bios settings obtained during Windows test. In DOS with agressive timings your computer still works bad but there is no mechanism which could inform you about malfunctions.

Sandra and 3D Mark99 looks really cool!
I haven't used 3D Mark 99 and Sandra on my rig because they require additional Windows dll's.

Well, to solve the problem, I removed 1 SIMM stick. I reduced the amount of RAM from 64 to 32 MB. Now, DOS will boot. Sure, I could get DOS to boot OK with 64 MB of RAM, but the crucial thing is that I needed to make the BIOS timings less aggressive. So, if you want to max out your BIOS settings, and make them as fast as possible, consider removing some memory from your 486 system.

Interesting result. This should depend on wires length from memory slot to chipset. Maybe if they aren't equal memory controller need more time to sync.

Edit update: I just tried a Dell Nitro S3 GX 4MB PCI video card, and I get 37 points for the Shiny "CPU/Video Gamers Performance Test v1.4" benchmark program! This download link can be found in @udam_u's post above.

You have beaten my score! (: I have obtained only 36fps!

I fear that udam_u and BastlerMike will quickly destroy my top score. Laughing Out Loud I cannot beat their superior 3DBench 1.0c scores. However, regarding PcpBench and just for this moment in time only, victory is mine! Wink

I'm sure that your system is faster than mine. You have reached better result in Quake which is more impartial than any other simple benchmark like 3Dbench and Shiny. How much cache have you got? I have got 512kB cache in my rig.

I like your video and photo with description. This may be very usefull for other users. (:

udam_u, thanks very much for your comments! 😀 Regarding the cache size on the mobo, I only have 256kB. Also, they are 15ns chips. I would really like to test out 12ns cache chips. Perhaps I should make an effort to look for some on ebay! However, I expect they are rare.

I'm also looking for 12ns cache chips. Have you ever read this guide?
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/cache/char.htm
It seems that tag ram is the most important part of cache. First I'm going to buy 12ns tag ram then I will consider upgrading rest of cache memory. (:

I only have 256kB.

My CPU was able to load half program into the cache. (; Maybe this caused that I have obtained better result in 3Dbench.

retro games 100 wrote:

Well, to solve the problem, I removed 1 SIMM stick. I reduced the amount of RAM from 64 to 32 MB.

Have you tried using 4x 16MB SIMM's? Perhaps the board just doesn't like ds SIMM's??

Unfortunately, I've caught some winter bug, and I'll have to abstain from the exciting world of retro hardware for a few days.