idspispopd wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

Im testing a Gigabyte GA-5SMM SiS SS7 board from a Compaq Presario 5420.

I have not done much testing yet but so far Im positively surprised! Isnt this boards onboard SiS 6306 video solution supposed to be slow?

I would have thought that especially the Compaq version of the motherboard would struggle when using the onboard video as it lacks the optional 8MB video memory and instead uses the system ram. I have only done a few tests with the K6-400 that came with the board but so far the SiS 6306 using 4MB of CL3 PC100 SDRAM seems much faster in DOS than I would have thought and this is with the safest/slowest BIOS settings.

I suppose those shared memory solutions are slower for 3D acceleration than the same chip with dedicated memory, but for DOS usage I can imagine that it's fast enough.

Lucky enough the boards CPU and memory performance is bad enough to nullify most of the SiS 6306s good DOS video performance but games that is dependant on fast video and PCI throghput like DOOM perform way better than they should.

It's not quite retro, but I've been itching to build an ultimate Phenom II system lately. I recently pulled a 2.8GHZ Ph2 X6 1055T out of a dead HP computer and installed it in my previously unoccupied Asus 890FX board. I never paid much attention to the Ph2 when it was a new CPU. The performance is actually quite startling. With a slight bump up to 3.1GHz, this Phenom is a little faster than my 3.33GHz Core 2 Quad Q6700 in single-threaded benchmarks. In multi-threaded workloads it's really no contest. There's a huge step up in per-core performance over AMD's previous architecture, the K8. It's too bad Intel already had their first gen i5/i7s out at the time that Ph2 was AMD's top CPU.

Anyway, I scored a Ph2 X6 1090T Black Edition for $30. Out of the box, this baby runs at 3.2GHz, has an unlocked multiplier, and 6MB of L3 cache. Eventual goal: to put it under a decent tower cooler and overclock it to around 4.2GHz.

Other specs:
Asus Crosshair IV Formula 890FX motherboard
EvGA GTX-760, though I may put my GTX 680 in this machine instead.
8GB of DDR3-1600. I have another 8GB kit on the way to max the board out.
250GB SSD and a 2TB HDD
X-Fi Titanium PCIe

As I failed to get any really good SuperPi scores with my Gigabyte GA-5SMM SiS 530 board I thought I would see just how fast I could get the built in SiS 6306 video controller.

The VESA video memory bandwidth in Speedsys is among the best I have seen and the FPS in DOOM is also among the best I have seen with a Socket-7 system. The SiS 530s CPU performance is really sucky though so "CPU heavy" Quake only performs so so. Both my PC Chips 577 MVP3 board and my Gigabyte GA-5AX Aladdin 5 board are faster when it comes to anything that depends mostly on CPU or memory speed.

K6-3+ @620 5x124 motherboard cache off 256MB

Quake: 75.5 FPS
Doom: 140.66 FPS (2134 gametics in 531 realtics)
3dbench2: 342.6 FPS
PCPbench: 138.5 FPS

This setting seems fully Windows stable at 2.2V (2.3V set, 2.2V sensor)

Skyscraper wrote:

As I failed to get any really good SuperPi scores with my Gigabyte GA-5SMM SiS 530 board I thought I would see just how fast I c […]
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As I failed to get any really good SuperPi scores with my Gigabyte GA-5SMM SiS 530 board I thought I would see just how fast I could get the built in SiS 6306 video controller.

The VESA video memory bandwidth in Speedsys is among the best I have seen and the FPS in DOOM is also among the best I have seen with a Socket-7 system. The SiS 530s CPU performance is really sucky though so "CPU heavy" Quake only performs so so. Both my PC Chips 577 MVP3 board and my Gigabyte GA-5AX Aladdin 5 board are faster when it comes to anything that depends mostly on CPU or memory speed.

K6-3+ @620 5x124 L2 off 256MB

S620_124.jpg

Quake: 75.5 FPS
Doom: 140.66 FPS (2134 gametics in 531 realtics)
3dbench2: 342.6 FPS
PCPbench: 138.5 FPS

This setting seems fully Windows stable at 2.2V (2.3V set, 2.2V sensor)

None of my K6-III+ chips were stable at speeds above 100 FSB. Maybe it's just that I didn't disable the CPU L2 cache in bios. I'm not sure why that would matter though.. that and I'm not too fond of crippling chips even if the overclock works.. I might have to try that later though.

Disabling L2 cache in BIOS should disable the (not so important) L3 motherboard cache, not the CPU's built in L2 cache, no?

alexanrs wrote:

Disabling L2 cache in BIOS should disable the (not so important) L3 motherboard cache, not the CPU's built in L2 cache, no?

Yea its the L3 cache thats disabled, it can only cache 64MB with its 512 KB anyhow.

I renamed it "motherboard cache", it was a copy paste from my notes.

Skyscraper wrote:

alexanrs wrote:

Disabling L2 cache in BIOS should disable the (not so important) L3 motherboard cache, not the CPU's built in L2 cache, no?

Yea its the L3 cache thats disabled, it can only cache 64MB with its 512 KB anyhow.

I renamed it "motherboard cache", it was a copy paste from my notes.

Kind of off topic but I'm curious now. Will any ms-dos programs actually use the K6-III+/Sharptooth Chip's 3rd cache? As in, will anything use all 3, L1+L2 CPU & Motherboard cache as well?

kithylin wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

alexanrs wrote:

Disabling L2 cache in BIOS should disable the (not so important) L3 motherboard cache, not the CPU's built in L2 cache, no?

Yea its the L3 cache thats disabled, it can only cache 64MB with its 512 KB anyhow.

I renamed it "motherboard cache", it was a copy paste from my notes.

Kind of off topic but I'm curious now. Will any ms-dos programs actually use the K6-III+/Sharptooth Chip's 3rd cache? As in, will anything use all 3, L1+L2 CPU & Motherboard cache as well?

Yes in DOS it dosnt matter that the motherboard cache can only cache 64MB memory and many programs and games will benefit from the L3 cache. Windows uses memory top down and can lose performance if you go over the cacheable range withou disabling the motherboard cache. If you do not have a CPU with built in L2 its almost always better to stay within the cacable range and always use the motherboard cache. The L3 cache improves the performance 3-5% on SiS 530 from what I have read.

Here is the same system as before at 4.5 x 133 = 600 MHz with a PCI SiS 6326AGP (totally logical name), I would have thought this was more or less the same thing but check out the performance difference.

4.5x133 is about as fast as 5x124, I use the 133 MHz option with the SiS PCI card to not cripple the PCI bus to 31 MHz and and I use 124(31) with the built in video as its the highest FSB = speed it can handle. You can see on the Speedsys screenshort that the onboard video is fully inactive although its still listed as part of the chipset, the total memory size is listed as 256MB not 252MB as it would if the onboard video was active in any way.

For some reason the VESA video speed with the PCI card is only about 30% of the speed with the built in AGP video

K6-3+ 600 4.5x133 motherboard cache off 256MB
SiS 6326 PCI 4MB

Quake: 66.2 FPS
Doom: 81.63 FPS (2134 gametics in 915 realtics)
3dbench2: 164.6 FPS
PCPbench: 98.7 FPS

Interesting and thank you for the insight. I may have to re-visit my K6-III+ system again in the near future and play with it with motherboard cache off and see if it will (finally) do everything I've been trying to do with it for years (Run windows XP for example).

kithylin wrote:

Interesting and thank you for the insight. I may have to re-visit my K6-III+ system again in the near future and play with it with motherboard cache off and see if it will (finally) do everything I've been trying to do with it for years (Run windows XP for example).

This is how it should look like, notice that the L3 cache speed is double the memory speed!

This CPU and board can cache the full 256MB with both L2 and L3 cache so there is no performance degradation in Windows when using the L3 cache. The M577 with MVP3 chipset gain 5-10% or so from using its 1MB motherboard cache with a K6-3(+) or K6-2+ CPU. The board thinks it can only cache 255MB so I use the memory hole to limit the memory to 255MB. 😀

K6-3+ 6x100 PC Chips M577 Via MVP3 256MB
PCI S3 Trio64V+ 2MB

Quake: 93.0 FPS
Doom: 90.97 FPS (2134 gametics in 821 realtics)
3dbench2: 319.5 FPS
PCPbench: 179.7 FPS

I cleaned one of my desks this morning and found my best 600 MHz capable K6-2 500 CPU under a stack of heavy stuff, it was hidden under s sheet of paper so I must have missed it when I was moving stuff around.

Needless top say the pins were all bent, at one side flat against the CPU. A single pin broke off when it fixed them, luckily it was a Vss (Voltage ground) pin and the CPU seems to work fine without it. I think I will retire this CPU from benching and use it to keep dust out of the socket on the Compaq Presario 5420, I doubt I will use that system much.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

It's not quite retro, but I've been itching to build an ultimate Phenom II system lately. I recently pulled a 2.8GHZ Ph2 X6 1055 […]
Show full quote

It's not quite retro, but I've been itching to build an ultimate Phenom II system lately. I recently pulled a 2.8GHZ Ph2 X6 1055T out of a dead HP computer and installed it in my previously unoccupied Asus 890FX board. I never paid much attention to the Ph2 when it was a new CPU. The performance is actually quite startling. With a slight bump up to 3.1GHz, this Phenom is a little faster than my 3.33GHz Core 2 Quad Q6700 in single-threaded benchmarks. In multi-threaded workloads it's really no contest. There's a huge step up in per-core performance over AMD's previous architecture, the K8. It's too bad Intel already had their first gen i5/i7s out at the time that Ph2 was AMD's top CPU.

Anyway, I scored a Ph2 X6 1090T Black Edition for $30. Out of the box, this baby runs at 3.2GHz, has an unlocked multiplier, and 6MB of L3 cache. Eventual goal: to put it under a decent tower cooler and overclock it to around 4.2GHz.

Other specs:
Asus Crosshair IV Formula 890FX motherboard
EvGA GTX-760, though I may put my GTX 680 in this machine instead.
8GB of DDR3-1600. I have another 8GB kit on the way to max the board out.
250GB SSD and a 2TB HDD
X-Fi Titanium PCIe

Nice setup, and I agree...the Phenom 2 is a wonderful CPU. I have 2 Phenom II x4 setups, the 945 has been used regularly for nearly 7 years without a single issue. I briefly had an fx8350, and despite a few tasks that I could see a noticeable difference, I was surprised at how well my 975 @3.8 ghz performed against it, especially considering both of my setups are on DDR2 boards, not DDR3. The 975 will remain my main system until next year some time whenhopefully Zen comes out (and is hopefully a bigger performer).

I have always wanted one of those x6 varieties though! Let's see some more pics of the system!!!

I also like the Phenom chips. Got a 555 BE which fully unlocks 😀

Best thing for me is the socket. You can buy a current board, and it will take these chips no dramas.

With Intel, there are so many sockets, so while you can get cheap, older processors, you can't get a decent new board anymore.

My friend had a Phenom 1100T - pretty good chip, seemed to work though was a little anemic in some places.

He also had a Phenom 920, that was just plain awful and was never stable.

There was that tri-core weird thing I had too which flat out didn't work.

I don't know much about them in general as the whole Phenom thing is after my time, but if the Tri-core and the 920 are anything to go on, they are a mixed bag at the best of times. I also think they hung onto the whole backbone too long, as it seemed to have few upgrades over my original Athlon 64 outside of them adding DDR2 support. I think it was this point I realized that the AMD I used to know was not coming back. I also found the whole "Unlocked Multiplier" game of luck and the "Enable Hidden Cores" bullshit to be very unprofessional on the part of AMD and the board makers, it was like buying cheap shit from China - most of which, it probably was. I don't think things like that should be welcome in this industry.

Still, that one is a 1000 series so hopefully it is more like the 1100T and less like the 920. I'd sooner take one of these over a Core 2 system anyway.

New SS7/Slot-1 era motherboard on my test bench today!

Its an IBM "Level K3" i440LX motherboard, I got pretty much no results online when I tried a search but by looking at alot of pictures showing Slot-1 boards I figured out it's a "TYPE A-2" motherboard from an IBM Aptiva 2140 or 2142.

My board came with 2x32MB memory, a PII 233 and a cable with a power button plus two leds. Its a discarded board I bought in a lot of broken boards but it was one of the 32MB modules that was faulty, the board it self seems fine. Now when I go the board running it turned out the time spent identifying the board was time wasted as it clearly says IBM Aptiva 2140 in the BIOS setup...

The Aptiva 2140 "TYPE A-2" "Level K3" motherboard.

The placement of the two USB ports is genius!

I have found a later BIOS for the board. I think I wil flash it at once as the current BIOS is from a time when the PII 266 was the hottest thing around and the PII 300 was something everyone had heard about but noone had seen.

Finally I've put in use Allied Telesyn AT-8024 10/100 LAN switch in my lab, time after I've found it in the dumpster - a little noisy, that little fan, I must say... but it does well its job and so it not deserved the bin 😜

Went to install two extra 512kB RAM chips in my S3 Trio64V+ card, only to find the eBay seller had shipped me 128kB chips instead. Turns out he'd put the wrong part number in the auction title, but the correct capacity, and the item description had the correct capacity and part numbers. So hopefully I can get the right parts so I can run my Trio at 1024x768 with more than 256 colours.

Incidentally, if anyone is wondering what it looks like when you use 128kB chips in a card that assumes they are 512kB, it looks like this:

I had my favorite 17inch LCD die today while I was away running Windows update. Got home and it simply refuses to turn on, no matter how much I mess around with it. Only thing I own with DVI gosh darn it!

Malvineous wrote:

Went to install two extra 512kB RAM chips in my S3 Trio64V+ card, only to find the eBay seller had shipped me 128kB chips instead. Turns out he'd put the wrong part number in the auction title, but the correct capacity, and the item description had the correct capacity and part numbers. So hopefully I can get the right parts so I can run my Trio at 1024x768 with more than 256 colours.

Incidentally, if anyone is wondering what it looks like when you use 128kB chips in a card that assumes they are 512kB, it looks like this:

That definitely sucks. Glad I got mine with 2MB already installed. You can get the chips from Aliexpress easily enough, You just have to paste the correct part number into the search bar
to get results.

ODwilly wrote:

I had my favorite 17inch LCD die today while I was away running Windows update. Got home and it simply refuses to turn on, no matter how much I mess around with it. Only thing I own with DVI gosh darn it!

Pop that guy open and see if you've got failed caps!