SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-05-31, 05:07:[...]
No cache on a Pentium is asking for a BAD time! Welcome to slowcity, and not in the good way 🙁
I have a Compaq P90 machine in storage without cache and even upgraded with a P120 it was just dreadful in the longrun. Okay i guess for Doom though.
There are vastly more advanced DOS games than Doom2. Look at it this way: with L2 cache, you have the option to disable to get lower performance. Without L2 cache, you're stuck at your performance without options. I ran into DOS games that were too slow on my P100 on i430FX with PLB (probably same speed as a P133 on this board with async), and I'm a 4x strategy gamer, not an FPS player...
That said, don't overestimate the impact of asyc cache. It only adds about 10% onto mem performance. Nice, but not earth-shattering.
That SIS chipset though. My Compaq had a...UMC chipset i think. Whats with OEMs in the Socket 5 era not using Intel? I mean, cheaper obviously, duh.
But i allways kinda associated non Intel chipsets in the early Pentium era to be kinda...trash?
Not quite, it's all to do with timing. Intel's i430FX blew everything else away when it was released in mid 1995, but before that Intel's i430NX was their only So5 option and it was an appalling slug. This is SiS' second generation Pentium chipset and although 10% slower than i430FX is easily 20% faster than i430NX, with support for PLB cache and EDO DRAM. So before i430FX became available, this was one of the faster options, faster than Intel's best offering. As this was an early-mid 1995 system, it's actually a quite rational choice.
Later on they were also competitive at various levels. Most of the 'trash' reputation came from awful low-end motherboards and CPUs that required running PCI out of spec. Clock-for-clock the ALi Aladdin IV was the fastest So7 chipset, faster even than the i430TX, and with more generous L2 cache options as well. Unfortunately you were stuck with Acer OEM or PC Chips boards if you wanted one. No wonder people prefered nice solid Asus, FIC or Abit with Intel chipset...