I remembered 1 thread on a German forum, someone had build a 486 with USB, SATA and a 200Mhz 5x86

Heres the thread: http://www.planet3dnow.de/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=388817
He messed up when he forgot to do his research and bought an Intel Overdrive instead of a Pentium Overdrive and spend hours getting XP to install.

If your German isn't as good, then translate using google

That link doesn't work too well 🙁

Works for me though

Alternative is to do a google search for: Mein 486er @ 200MHz,128MB RAM,SATA,USB 2.0

Tetrium wrote:

I remembered 1 thread on a German forum, someone had build a 486 with USB, SATA and a 200Mhz 5x86 […]
Show full quote

I remembered 1 thread on a German forum, someone had build a 486 with USB, SATA and a 200Mhz 5x86

Heres the thread: http://www.planet3dnow.de/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=388817
He messed up when he forgot to do his research and bought an Intel Overdrive instead of a Pentium Overdrive and spend hours getting XP to install.

If your German isn't as good, then translate using google

How did he get XP to install to a 486 Overdrive or 5x86? XP requires a Pentium.Those guys who got it running at 8mhz couldn't get it to boot at all on a 486.

sliderider wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

I remembered 1 thread on a German forum, someone had build a 486 with USB, SATA and a 200Mhz 5x86 […]
Show full quote

I remembered 1 thread on a German forum, someone had build a 486 with USB, SATA and a 200Mhz 5x86

Heres the thread: http://www.planet3dnow.de/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=388817
He messed up when he forgot to do his research and bought an Intel Overdrive instead of a Pentium Overdrive and spend hours getting XP to install.

If your German isn't as good, then translate using google

How did he get XP to install to a 486 Overdrive or 5x86? XP requires a Pentium.Those guys who got it running at 8mhz couldn't get it to boot at all on a 486.

He didn't 😜

He tried and kept failing, thinking he had bought a Pentium overdrive instead of the regular 486 Overdrive he ended up with.

Tetrium wrote:

sliderider wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

I remembered 1 thread on a German forum, someone had build a 486 with USB, SATA and a 200Mhz 5x86 […]
Show full quote

I remembered 1 thread on a German forum, someone had build a 486 with USB, SATA and a 200Mhz 5x86

Heres the thread: http://www.planet3dnow.de/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=388817
He messed up when he forgot to do his research and bought an Intel Overdrive instead of a Pentium Overdrive and spend hours getting XP to install.

If your German isn't as good, then translate using google

How did he get XP to install to a 486 Overdrive or 5x86? XP requires a Pentium.Those guys who got it running at 8mhz couldn't get it to boot at all on a 486.

He didn't 😜

He tried and kept failing, thinking he had bought a Pentium overdrive instead of the regular 486 Overdrive he ended up with.

I am impressed that he managed to find a 5x86-160. Where the heck did he get that from? I thought 150 was as high as they went and that even that one was extremely rare. A 160 must have been nearly impossible to get, unless it's a remarked fake.

some amd5x86-133 are capable of running at 200, although i believe running at 60*3 would be faster(if your mainboard and ram can cope with that).
well those cpus may be hard to find today, but some may have a lot of them left from last century...

sliderider wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

sliderider wrote:

How did he get XP to install to a 486 Overdrive or 5x86? XP requires a Pentium.Those guys who got it running at 8mhz couldn't get it to boot at all on a 486.

He didn't 😜

He tried and kept failing, thinking he had bought a Pentium overdrive instead of the regular 486 Overdrive he ended up with.

I am impressed that he managed to find a 5x86-160. Where the heck did he get that from? I thought 150 was as high as they went and that even that one was extremely rare. A 160 must have been nearly impossible to get, unless it's a remarked fake.

It is mentioned in the wiki though, although wiki also mentions the Cyrix 5x86-133 probably doesn't exist at all (me an feipoa have some really good "shit" in the house!!! 😁 😁 😁 😜).

And AMD 5x86 seems an easier overclock so 200Mhz is possible (though no guarantees it'll reach 200Mhz stably).

And a shame he never took a pic of the AMD 160 though. My guess he bought it for an inflated price as he seemed to be willing to spend big time.
If you got the big money (or want to spend big money), theres a lot less limits to what one can purchase, especially if you want it yesterday 😜

Tetrium, thank you for the post; it was, at times, very interesting, amusing, and even sadening to read. His test methodolgy may not have been all hammered out very well. In the end he sold his working mobo/AMD-ADZ-160-200 system (on eBay!), perhaps out of frusturation, and got slammed with an Intel DX4 Overdrive when he thought it was a geniune Pentium Overdrive.

He was plagued with compatability issues using a Voodoo4-4500-32MB RAM in Windows ME, Windows ME gave him a BSOD every hour, he couldn't get Win2000 working correctly, and was stubborn not to use NT4 due to the lack of sufficient USB support. He could never get his PCI SATA/ATA card to boot using it as the system root; he had to use the onboard CPU-hogging PIO4 as his system drive, which, he deduced, gave him terrible network performance on his ISA card, at 250 KB/s (FYI, I can routinely get around 900 KB/s on an ISA network card).

To summarise, this is what he ended up getting stable (but for how long?):

1) Motherboard/Chipset/Cache
SOYO SY-4SAW2
SIS Chipset
256 KB single-banked Cache

2) CPU
AMD X5-160ADZ overclocked to 200 MHz

3) Memory
112 MB (4x32) FPM (something broke and it reports 112 MB instead of 128 MB)

4) Harddrive/Controller
Onboard PIO-4 IDE, 8.4 GB

5) Graphics
PCI Elsa Winner 2000-8MB

6) Audio
Unknown

7) NIC
ISA 3Com Etherlink III

8) Operating system
Windows 98SE

9) Other features
PCI 4-USB Controller
USB Optical Mouse
NTFS Read/Write Support in 98SE
PCI SATA/ATA Controller - Via VT6421A (secondary, storage only)
2 TB SATA harddrive (secondary, storage only)

To critique this system:

1) I'd want to know the long-term stability of the AMD X5 @ 200 MHz

2) 256 KB cache is too low for the amount of RAM. Unfortunately the cache looks soldered, but difficult to tell. Maybe he can upgrade to 512 KB and put his cache in WT mode?

3) I'd swap out the RAID and put in a 10/100 network card. RAID in Win98SE for a data server? Ugh!

4) He toyed with the idea of using an ATI Rage 128 - 32MB but sold his system before any attempts were made. I'd have liked to be the eBay buyer of that system!

5) AMD X5-200, assuming the cache/memory wait states are the same as in the motherboard used in the Ultimate 486 Benchmark Comparison, he'd have an ALU/FPU/OVERALL score of 167/81.7/103.8, respectively. Pretty impressive, considering the Overall score beats the Cyrix 5x86-133 by 9%, although the FPU is still behind by 4%. For ALU, he would be the reining champion. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the AMD X5-200 can be run at 2-1-2 cache and 0/0 RAM settings, so take anywhere from 1-15% off these numbers.

6) After this read, I'm motivated to update the Ultimate 486 Benchmark Comparison to include derived CPU data for AMD X5-180, AMD X5-200, and Cyrix 5x86-150.

My guess he bought it for an inflated price as he seemed to be willing to spend big time.

That sorta goes in line with my thought that there are a few retro geeks out there with deep pockets jacking up the eBay prices.

It is mentioned in the wiki though, although wiki also mentions the Cyrix 5x86-133 probably doesn't exist at all

I can assure everyone that they exist and work. I've run some long-term stability tests on mine at 3.7 V, and the system hasn't crashed -- its been going for 2 weeks straight. My big debate now is 64MB vs. 128MB RAM with 512KB WB cache. For few open windows, 64MB feels faster, but for a modest amount of use, 128MB RAM feels faster, esp. with the Cyrix 5x86-120 because of the faster memory FSB. Anyway, this is off-topic.

Any other "World's Fastest 486" contenders? I know Udam_U got an AMD X5-180 running on a HOT-433 and rg100 got an AMD X5-200 runnong on a Biostar MB8433-UUD v3.1, but I don't have the whole system picture. Udam_U got his Cyrix 5x86-100 running at 150 MHz, but again, no full sytem specs and benchmark evidence.

I'm kicking myself now for this, I let a Cyrix 5x86 133 get by me for an extremely low price because I looked it up and the site said that it was probably a fake. Sounds like there's a pretty good chance it was real now. But my question is, are they really overclockable? Or did I miss that somewhere? 😖
EDIT: Sorry for the unnecessary post, I just found the info I was looking for rigth in front of me.

To be honest, I haven't experimented much with the overclocking my Cyrix 5x86-133/4X out of fear of killing it. Please refer to the warnings in the Cyrix literature about heat and voltage for these processors! I did a quick test at 3.7 Volts and 160 MHz, but the screen stayed blank. I did a quick test with a 120 MHz Cyrix once for 150 MHz operation at 5V, and the screen turned on, but it wasn't stable. The Cyrix 5x86-100/4X will run at 133 MHz, but mine was not long-term stable. I forget what voltage I used, probably not high enough.

In reality, and for the really determined individual, you can probably OC a Cyrix 5x86 to 150 MHz, but you'd need to put in place a variable resistor on your motherboard's voltage regulation circuit to find the optimum voltage for which the CPU didn't overheat/crash. I'd buy the most expensive heatsink compound you could find for that extra 5% of cooling power, and a somewhat rare 3-clipped Socket 370 heatsink/fan. I say rare because I've only ever tested one 3-pronged clip style that will clip successfully onto a socket 3 ZIF socket. I have 2 now. Most will initially grab, but then slip off. An extra pivot point is needed in the clip. Unfortunately, most motherboards have capacitors and other SMD parts in the way, except for the MB8433-UUD.

You'd also need a batch of Cyrix 5x86 CPUs to determine which was the best overclocker. If I were to g uess, it would be one of the Cyrix 5x86-133/4X/3.6V CPUs. I have a 3.7V variant. But perhaps also a Cyrix 5x86-120/4X or 5x86-100/4X. You'd also need a motherboard with a manual FSB-to-PCI divider option, particularly 1/2 and 2/3.

EDIT: It turns out that the IBM 5x86c chips for the Thinkpad TP365E overclock better than expected.

feipoa wrote:

To be honest, I haven't experimented much with the overclocking my Cyrix 5x86-133/4X out of fear of killing it.

Actually, for that reason I haven't even bothered to test mine until I get the attic sorted out.

feipoa wrote:

If I were to g uess, it would be one of the Cyrix 5x86-133/4X/3.6V CPUs. I have a 3.7V variant. But perhaps also a Cyrix 5x86-120/4X or 5x86-100/4X. You'd also need a motherboard with a manual FSB-to-PCI divider option, particularly 1/2 and 2/3.

Afaik there were very few production runs of this CPU (the Cyrix-133) and initially had 3.6v printed on them. Later they raised it to 3.7v due to stability issues so my guess would be that (even though usually lower voltage means a better part) because the production run was so short and the 3.6v parts were actually made before the 3.7v part, overclockability (if they have any that is) would be the same.

Btw, mine is one of the earlier 3.6v parts (and I actually wanted a later one 🤣, sure backfired 😜)

Added Speedsys images of the Cyrix 5x86-133/4x on the SiS496 chipset vs. the IBM 5x86c-133/2x on the UM8881 chpset.

Added images of the MB-8433UUD with 1024K cache modification.

Added an image of the DTK PKM-0033s with PS/2 mouse modification.

Afaik there were very few production runs of this CPU (the Cyrix-133) and initially had 3.6v printed on them. Later they raised it to 3.7v due to stability issues so my guess would be that (even though usually lower voltage means a better part) because the production run was so short and the 3.6v parts were actually made before the 3.7v part, overclockability (if they have any that is) would be the same.

Refer to my follow-up post in cpu-world.com. That wasn't so the case, as I've found out. My Cyrix 5x86-133 is from 49th week, 1995 and it has 3.7 V written on it. From that massive eBay Cyrix 5x86-133 auction, cpushack mentioned that all the CPUs were from the 2-7th week of 1996, where some had 3.6 V and some 3.7 V.

It may be that Cyrix stamped the top after characterisation? Makes sense to me. Lets assume that a Cyrix 5x86-133 wasn't stable at 3.6V 133 MHz, but it was at 120 MHz, so they stamp it as Cyrix 5x86-120/4X, same for the Cyrix 5x86-100/4X, but for the 100/4X, they ensured it was stable at 3.45 Volts. Or perhaps they'd get a few samples made and later stamp on it how the engineering sample comes out prior to each production run?

I used to think the way you do, but it wouldn't make sense to stamp them 3.7 V, later 3.6 V, then 3.7 V, unless they had some really high hopes afterwards. If that were the case, the first one (mine), would read 3.6 V as well. Unless, of course, the characterised sample was the oddball good one stable at 3.6 V.

feipoa wrote:

Is an AMD X5-200 better if proven long-term stable? This is certainly arguable.

Sorry for not giving you any more 200Mhz systems, but I think there were simply very few ever made.

And on top of that, we only figured the PCI divider out for ourselves quite recently, basically a few months or so before you joined.

The few people who did manage to get it running at 200Mhz would possibly not admit to having stability problems, if they had them.
I really don't know which boards had proper bus mastering.
Could you tell when the Biostar was made?
It can read EDO, so it should be 1995 or newer.
Could you check the year+week code on the PCB? It's usually printed on the backside of the PCB and is VERY handy in figuring out when a board was probably produced ;D

feipoa wrote:

Afaik there were very few production runs of this CPU (the Cyrix-133) and initially had 3.6v printed on them. Later they raised it to 3.7v due to stability issues so my guess would be that (even though usually lower voltage means a better part) because the production run was so short and the 3.6v parts were actually made before the 3.7v part, overclockability (if they have any that is) would be the same.

Refer to my follow-up post in cpu-world.com. That wasn't so the case, as I've found out. My Cyrix 5x86-133 is from 49th week, 1995 and it has 3.7 V written on it. From that massive eBay Cyrix 5x86-133 auction, cpushack mentioned that all the CPUs were from the 2-7th week of 1996, where some had 3.6 V and some 3.7 V.

It may be that Cyrix stamped the top after characterisation? Makes sense to me. Lets assume that a Cyrix 5x86-133 wasn't stable at 3.6V 133 MHz, but it was at 120 MHz, so they stamp it as Cyrix 5x86-120/4X, same for the Cyrix 5x86-100/4X, but for the 100/4X, they ensured it was stable at 3.45 Volts. Or perhaps they'd get a few samples made and later stamp on it how the engineering sample comes out prior to each production run?

That's how it usually works. A chipmaker produces a batch of chips and chips with similar theoretical performance are often specced differently (take for example the K6-III+ line, they go like:400Mhz 1.6v 450Mhz 1.7v 500Mhz 1.8v etc)

feipoa wrote:

I used to think the way you do, but it wouldn't make sense to stamp them 3.7 V, later 3.6 V, then 3.7 V, unless they had some really high hopes afterwards. If that were the case, the first one (mine), would read 3.6 V as well. Unless, of course, the characterised sample was the oddball good one stable at 3.6 V.

Woops, I missed that thread, I forgot your 133 isn't from that lot.
Nope, that would indeed make no sense, at least not if they were send from the factory that way.
Theres the possibility your chip was send back as defective/malfunctioning, retested and re-stamped with 3.7v instead of 3.6v as it would work that way.
Intel did a similar thing with their first batches of 386's (from before they called them 386DX) when they found out some didn't work in 32 bit properly

It was from this thread,
http://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15889

We may never really know for sure about the true intent of the 3.6V vs. 3.7V markings. Another user on the cpu-world forum, Windmiller, has a Cyrix 5x86-133/4x/3.6V from the same batch as mine, 49th week 1995.
You can refer here,
http://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9089

With all this shuffling around of core voltages (for the same production run even), it may be true that Cyrix discovered some stable at at 3.6V and some at 3.7V, and not necessarily intended them all to be run at 3.7V. I wonder what criteria they used to establish 'stability'?

Perhaps anything stable at a voltage higher than 3.7V, they renamed as a 100/120/4X unit. I have a 100/4X from 2nd week of 1996, but there is no voltage printed on it. In any case, if I had to choose, I'd pick the 3.6V version over the 3.7V version.

P.S. This thread is still accepting participants in the World's Fastest 486 contest, the prize being personal satisfaction.

feipoa, you're definitely the 486 champ around here. You've done some awesome research in to this. Congratulations! 😀 Getting 200MHz out of my 486 was a hoot. I've talked about it elsewhere on Vogons, and so I'll skip the details. I'll very quickly summarise some thoughts:

1+3) Used 32MB, 256KB cache (WB). Seemed fine. Upgrage option = double this amount (but not tested).
2) CPU may have been "magic".
4) ISA EIDE IO controller seemed to work OK, with a CF drive.
5) G200 worked well. (Thanks for that tip!)
6) Audio, again not tested. Something old and crusty (ISA) should be OK.
1+7) 50MHz bus, divider 1:1. Wonder if any NIC would work at that speed? Unlikely / not tested.
8 ) Definitely Windows 95. Wouldn't consider anything later.
9) No USB tested. PS/2 worked OK.

BTW, "3x & 60 = 180MHz" got a good PcpBench score, so that's another option, but would probably make things more unstable in the long term. And that's the problem I have with my set up, compared to yours. I haven't tested my 200 MHz machine long enough. Not nearly long enough. I'd say it was switched on for no more than 10 hours in total. But during that time, the benchmark scores I got were "out of this world". I vaguelly recall doing a stress test too - with a whole bunch of tests running at the same time in Windows 98, including SuperPi, Prime95, Sandra, and WinTune. All tests worked, no problems.

rg100, your results were most promising! You have some data to show for it, unlike that German dude. 32MB cached RAM in 98SE is just not ideal, and Win95C should be better. 32MB in NT4.0 would be a headache with what I have running. It would be interesting to benchmark the PIO-4 CF with my Ultra2-LVD SCSI, just to have the numbers. I can do that when I have time.

Your results, with the addition of a second 200 MHz sighting, prompted me to create some AMD X5-180, X5-200, and Cyrix 5x86-150 scores in the Ultimate 486 Benchmark Comparison. The charts are now updated (in colour now!) and so is all the text and pdf. If I had to do it all over again, I'd probably use the Biostar with 64MB RAM, 512KB cache so that all the RAM is cached. That way, the scores are more comparable to other people's systems who have all cached RAM.
The Ultimate 486 Benchmark Comparison

So far, I'd say our two systems are pretty good contenders, at least as close as I've seen so far. I'm hoping for some others out there, preferably some non-UMC-based successes!