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Not sure I've ever seen a Super Socket 7 board with no AGP and that many ISA before! That is a rather unusual one. Very interested to see where this winds up!

^^ Interesting you call this a Super Socket board - how do you define one? I was under the impression that to qualify, the board required 100 MHz FSB capability at the very least, and possibly an AGP slot. And yes, the board is rather unusual.

I didn't get too much time for benches, but did try a few. Firstly, I tried an ET4000AX utility called DMODE - anyone try this out before?

It seems to allow various modes of interest. Of note, the ability to change how registers behave for CGA, EGA and VGA. How good is this regarding compatibility?

Also of note is the ability to force an 8 or 16 bit bus; this comes in handy for slowdown using the video controller rather than the CPU. So you could create a graphics-bound setup instead of being CPU-bound. I managed to get some time to test this board with the fastest CPU settings on a few benches:

Added the Voodoo 3000 and Nvidia MX400 for reference. They're in the same ballbark as the Tseng ET6100. Whilst the ET4000AX, being ISA based, is way off the mark, especially when forced to operate at an 8bit bus width. I can safely say it's being 'maxed' out!

More to follow...

I completely missed that you were running it at 83x6, rather than 100x5. Mea maxima culpa, there.

j^aws wrote:

So, how slow can this board go? XT 8088 equivalent speeds are possible, covering 6 distinct eras: 8088/ 8086, 286, 386, 486, 586/ Pentium and Pentium II. More 6-in-1 benches to follow...

Interesting benchmark test with this board. I assume that you want to slow down from a low-end 386 speed (when all caches are disabled) to slower XT or 286.
But how do you want to separate between these (8088/ 8086, 286) as you have only this one additional "turbo-switch" ??

melbar wrote:

j^aws wrote:

So, how slow can this board go? XT 8088 equivalent speeds are possible, covering 6 distinct eras: 8088/ 8086, 286, 386, 486, 586/ Pentium and Pentium II. More 6-in-1 benches to follow...

Interesting benchmark test with this board. I assume that you want to slow down from a low-end 386 speed (when all caches are disabled) to slower XT or 286.
But how do you want to separate between these (8088/ 8086, 286) as you have only this one additional "turbo-switch" ??

Not only fill in gaps below 386 speeds with 286 and 8088/ 8086, but also fill in gaps around 386 - Pentium 100 smoothly, which isn't possible on a normal K6 setup with a SS7 board.

I can separate between 8088/ 8086 and 286 by using multiple parameters besides Turbo/ Deturbo. Parameters available: FSB, Multiplier, L1 Cache, L2 Cache, L3 Cache, Memory Timings and Latency settings in BIOS. How significant the impact on speed depends on the parameter(s) and the state of the CPU speed. For example, insignificant parameters at high CPU speeds become very significant at 8088/ 8086 speeds.

The lowest FSB currently for this board is 50MHz, however, it could be possible to get more undocumented settings from this:

I maybe able to get lower FSBs from the missing 4th pin, JP1. I'm pretty sure the IC next to it is the PLL Clock Generator, but I can't seem to find a datasheet for it. In any case, even at 50MHz FSB x 2 Multi, the board can still downclock to XT speeds, where Speedsys drops below the number 1. I'll see if I can post a Speedsys profile in that range, but it does take an eternity to run at that speed range...

Okay, so there are so many ways to bench this setup - I'll start with a focus around 8088/ 8086 to 286 speeds:

Speedsys ~ 113

Same config with NSI version 8 (Norton System Information) ~ 595

I'll be switching mostly to NSI for benches, especially at the slow end of the spectrum due to it returning results much faster than Speedsys. For the NSI Computing Index:

NSI = 1.0 = 4.77 MHz IBM XT

I'll follow this path for slowdown below (there are many paths). By flicking the working Turbo header, and going into De-Turbo mode:

Speedsys ~ 9.26

NSI ~ 48.5

You can see the drastic change in the Speedsys memory throughput with De-Turbo. Continued on next page...

jade_angel wrote:

Not sure I've ever seen a Super Socket 7 board with no AGP and that many ISA before! That is a rather unusual one. Very interested to see where this winds up!

I kinda thought all SIS530-based boards didn't have AGP — which is why most people tend to go for MVP3 or Aladdin V. But I've also never seen a full-featured SIS board — they often have just one ISA port.

... Keeping the above config, but disabling L1 and L2 cache (internal), and enabling L3 cache (external in BIOS):

Speedsys ~ 1.19

NSI ~ 2.4

Topbench ~ 6

Landmark (ver.6) ~ 5 MHz AT

You can see that we have approached 8088/ 8086/ 286 territory. The above settings would be one of three baseline starting points to scale using both FSB and Multipliers for various speed profiles.

Continued on next page...

Another baseline config, same as above but with with all caches disabled (L1, L2, L3):

Speedsys ~ 0.62

NSI ~ 1.2

Topbench ~ 4

Landmark ~ 3 MHz AT

You don't see many Speedsys scores below 1.0; welcome to 8088/ 8086 territory...

Continued on next page...

... The 3rd baseline config, same as above but with slowest BIOS timings:

Speedsys ~ 0.45

NSI ~ 0.9

Topbench ~ 3

Landmark ~ 2 MHz AT

... With Speedsys approximating to less than 0.5 (0.45) and NSI to around 0.9 - this is 8088 territory. Looking at the last two batch of results, NSI 1.2 and 0.9, I have only adjusted BIOS timings. Tweaking this can adjust an NSI range from 0.9-1.2, and attain different XT 8088 speed profiles. For example, Turbo'ed 8088 XTs and NEC V20s...

Moreover, I have used only the PCI Tseng ET6100 so far in these tests, and if you look back at my earlier post with the ISA ET4000AX, I can use this card for graphics-bound scenarios. I have more options to test, especially using MDA/ CGA/ EGA/ VGA register switching using its DMODE utility...

More will follow later, where I'll scale-up from these three baselines using FSB and Multiplier parameters. This will show a smooth range of speeds from 8088-386...

This Board has SIS Graphics onboard ?

is there a VGA Header ?

EDIT:
Ok this is without SiS VGA.

Nice Board, only 2 PCI ?

Congratulations you have a machine that can be speedwise equivalent to a PCjr, an IBM 5150/5160 and Turbo XT.

Quite a feat.

@matze79:

Yes, it doesn't have an on-board VGA, but I do have another Turbo-switched S7 that does. Only 2 PCI slots will suffice for this board as the Apocalypse 5D has both PowerVR PCX2 and a 2D core on the same card. The other PCI slot will likely be a Voodoo 1/2...

@carlostex:

Yes, it is indeed a feat, as it's very hard to get IA32 CPUs this slow. I do have another board that goes even slower - possibly even to an Intel 4004 speed range...

I've been really busy lately, but managed to get some tests done and formatted some datapoints from XT speeds to around a 486 for the time being - outlining the smooth scaling.

You can see both FSB and Multi scaling using the aforementioned baselines:

The cells highlighted in red are anomalies, where the expected Speedsys numbers are lower than expected. Bizarrely, they are slower with faster parameters...

Next, I've collated the datapoints to show the smoothness in scaling:

I stopped around Speedsys ~ 9, this is around where I de-turboed with all caches enabled, as seen in one of my earlier posts. The above datapoints have scaled up to just below that speed.

Below is a graphical representation of the above table:

More datapoints can be added to make the scaling even smoother... So, we've scaled from a PCJr/ XT to a slow 486. Here is the fastest Speedsys snapshot with Deturbo and only L3 Cache enabled:

I'll continue later with more scaling past 486 speeds and into Pentium and beyond... If anyone wants to see a Speedsys snapshot at a particular datapoint, then just let me know and I can post one here (they do take ages at the lowest speeds).

Okay, some more benches - pretty much an extensive run to continue from where I last left off:

Above are a range of datapoints for various baselines - so many to fill in! Most are done, especially the ones that return Speedsys results the fastest. I have enough datapoints to fill out a smooth range from PCJr/ XT @ 4MHz to K6-III+ @ 500MHz with plenty of granularity, as shown below:

And below is a graphical represenation of the whole scale, with select datapoints:

Baselines 1, 2, 3 and 4 use De-Turbo as a parameter for slowdown. Baselines 5, 6, 7 and 8 are with Turbo (normal, fast). So 5 to 8 give an idea as to what speed ranges are available for a typical Socket 7 setup without Turbo functionality. As you can see, the whole range is very expansive and smooth, and should be more than adequate to cover a vast range of games...

Need a break form benches for now...

Using the turbo switch in this way makes the machine something special. You, sir, have created a truly rare breed!

I would like to see this machine benchmarked by checkit as it gives Dhrystone/Whetstone scores.