Don't know whether someone cares, but I believe some versions of the i486DX2-66 were dual voltage (3.3v/5v), whereas the am486DX2-66 was solely a 3.3v-only model.

There were 5V versions of the am486DX2. I used to have a bunch, and they ran hot.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

There were 5V versions of the am486DX2. I used to have a bunch, and they ran hot.

Ah, okay, sorry. Seems there were indeed different versions out there.
I've never seen them myself though. For some reason I always ended up with AMD's "3 VOLT" versions. 😀
Anyway, because of safety reasons I often used the intel 5v version for my builds back then and it always worked.
I wonder, whether I accidently installed it also in a 3.3v socket or not..

Anonymous Coward wrote:

There were 5V versions of the am486DX2. I used to have a bunch, and they ran hot.

Yea, I had a 5v Am486DX2-66, which needed a heatsink+fan. The CPU died after about 2 years.

Scali wrote:

Yea, I had a 5v Am486DX2-66, which needed a heatsink+fan. The CPU died after about 2 years.

i tried to make a list of amd486dx2 variants, drop in and give some advice here:
too many variants of amd486dx2-66

Scali wrote:

Afaik that's not true. I had an Am486DX2-66 back in the day. It died, and I replaced it with an Intel 486DX2-66. My benchmark fi […]
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Afaik that's not true.
I had an Am486DX2-66 back in the day. It died, and I replaced it with an Intel 486DX2-66.
My benchmark figures were 100% the same.
As far as I can tell, the Am486 is a carbon-copy of the Intel chip. There's one minimal flaw however, that I cannot explain. For some reason, I could install OS/2 on the Am486, but after installation, it bluescreened when it tried to boot. It could only boot to safe mode.
Once I had it replaced with the Intel, OS/2 ran fine on that system. So it has to be something in that Am486 that's not entirely compatible. But OS/2 is the only software I've ever had problems with on that chip.

I tried contacting LGR about where he got his information on the AMD variant being faster but no response which is what I expected cause I'm sure the guy is constantly bombarded by comments and PM's. heh, I remember talking to him quite often on Digital Press forums before his channel blew up, much easier to get responses then.

anyways I wonder is there a list anywhere with programs/games that have incompatibilities with the supposedly 100% clone AMD chips?.

feipoa did a brilliant job in this 486 Benchmark comparsion from 2011:
The Ultimate 486 Benchmark Comparison
486/66 WT vs WT they are nearly identical across the board. The differences are likely due to margin of error.

Imperious wrote:

The 486 LGR built in that video had no motherboard cache, likely why it ran Duke Nukem 3d so badly.
My Intel dx2-66 runs it perfectly smoothly at 320x200. With a AMD 5x86@160mhz it's smooth at 640x480.

I just wonder how he managed to overlook something that important. I remember watching that video and thinking "OK, where's the cache? You need cache chips for a 486."

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Imperious wrote:

The 486 LGR built in that video had no motherboard cache, likely why it ran Duke Nukem 3d so badly.
My Intel dx2-66 runs it perfectly smoothly at 320x200. With a AMD 5x86@160mhz it's smooth at 640x480.

I just wonder how he managed to overlook something that important. I remember watching that video and thinking "OK, where's the cache? You need cache chips for a 486."

I remember him mentioning when he showed the other boards he was considering, "Maybe I'll take the cache from this board and put it in the one I'm going to use"

Imperious wrote:

The 486 LGR built in that video had no motherboard cache, likely why it ran Duke Nukem 3d so badly.
My Intel dx2-66 runs it perfectly smoothly at 320x200. With a AMD 5x86@160mhz it's smooth at 640x480.

Interestingly, his latest update video for the system involves adding cache to the machine. It improves it slightly, but isn't worth writing home about.

My original 486 was VLB with a 1MB Cirrus logic 5428. I have no idea what the motherboard was, it was branded "Edge" but I suspect probably PCCHIPS or some other cheap
unit, it's long gone unfortunately. My current 486 with the same cpu is a lot more powerful. It seems that the PCI bus
and likely faster cache and more Ram makes for quite a performance boost.

CkRtech wrote:

Imperious wrote:

The 486 LGR built in that video had no motherboard cache, likely why it ran Duke Nukem 3d so badly.
My Intel dx2-66 runs it perfectly smoothly at 320x200. With a AMD 5x86@160mhz it's smooth at 640x480.

Interestingly, his latest update video for the system involves adding cache to the machine. It improves it slightly, but isn't worth writing home about.

He might have memory/cache timing options in his BIOS that would speed things up further. My 486 has memory timings (slowest, slower, default, faster, fastest), Cache Write Cycle Option, and Cache Burst Read Cycle. Tightening those up makes a huge difference from the defaults. If LGR is at defaults, and has similar options, he can net at least another 10% by tightening things up. My Doom score goes up 11.8% going from BIOS defaults to the fastest settings.

Yeah, there should be a bunch more power left in the machine's configuration options. 11.6 MB/s RAM throughput seems less than half of what it should be.

leileilol wrote:

and part of that issue is that it's LGR - a very popular channel. any misinformation he''ll mention will be echoed among the crowds of easily impressible retro millenials out there and youtube doesn't allow video editing to fix mistakes (except for annotations, where he could put a big block of text. youtube sage status carries great responsibility

Also Moraff had obnoxiously shilled AMD 286-486 cpus in the day as being faster so that might also have something to do with it 😜

Well I am a millennial but not everyone in my age group are virgins to this hobby however it does make me wonder where he gets his information.