I would say VL-BUS is fast enough for anything you can do on a 486-class PC. 3D games are generally not playable at SVGA resolutions on a 486.

If you want absolutely the highest possible performance or to push your 486 to limits. Like P75+ rated CPUs and more, you'll find better PCI options than anything you can put into a VL-Bus slot. It would also easier to maintain system stability. Once you reach 40 MHz bus, the VLB is no fun.

That's being said I think ET4000/w32p is a fantastic period correct choice for any "normal" 486 system.

You could always get a board with vlb and PCI.

ARK Logic ARK1000VL is a very fast card for pure dos. Some caes its faster than ET4000

cyclone3d wrote:

You could always get a board with vlb and PCI.

Yeah, but it might take a while before I find any 486 motherboard with PCI slot where I live. That was main reason why I asked if my tseng labs card would be fast enough to be paired with one of those amd 133Mhz cpus or would it limit things.

VLB ET4000 will be fine for a 5x86 133.. even overclocked to 160Mhz.

There are some utilities such as fastvid that may make it even faster.

If you are lucky you will be able to run it at the 40Mhz bus speed with no added wait states. Just depends on the card.

You can build a fast machine with either VLB or PCI. The only difference is cost as good VLB cards are more expensive and harder to find then PCI.

Baoran wrote:

If you want to build a fast 486 are VLB video cards fast enough that I would be taking full advantage of the cpu or would I need to find a motherboard that has pci slots and use later PCI video card?
I am talking about something like 133Mhz 486 and either using my VLB tseng ET4000/W32p with it or if I need to find pci 486 motherboard for the cpu.

First off, in order to get an AMD 5x86 to work you need a motherboard with a newer bios.
So VLB motherboard are out of the question.
VLB motherboards only support up to 486dx4-100 CPU’s.
like the Gigabyte GA-486vs.
Or you could use a 33mhz VLB motherboard with an Intel Overdrive 486dx4-100 CPU.

These CPU’s are more commonly found on eBay.

The AMD 5x86 Overdrive CPU by Trinity works or Evergreen are hard to find and there is NO guarantee they will work with your motherboard. On the box they list allot of OEM computers that are not compatible with these AMD overdrive CPU’s. So it’s a gamble if it will work or not with you third party motherboard.

On the other hand I nave never had any problem with the Intel Overdrive CPU’s.

But if you go with a PCI socket-3 motherboard they usually have newer bios and support for the original AMD 5x86. No overdrive CPU needed.

Also VLB cards are getting hard to find and are getting expensive.

You best performance and least expensive and more reliable would be a Socket-3 , PCI , motherboard.

Intel486dx33 wrote:

First off, in order to get an AMD 5x86 to work you need a motherboard with a newer bios. So VLB motherboard are out of the quest […]
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Baoran wrote:

If you want to build a fast 486 are VLB video cards fast enough that I would be taking full advantage of the cpu or would I need to find a motherboard that has pci slots and use later PCI video card?
I am talking about something like 133Mhz 486 and either using my VLB tseng ET4000/W32p with it or if I need to find pci 486 motherboard for the cpu.

First off, in order to get an AMD 5x86 to work you need a motherboard with a newer bios.
So VLB motherboard are out of the question.
VLB motherboards only support up to 486dx4-100 CPU’s.
like the Gigabyte GA-486vs.
Or you could use a 33mhz VLB motherboard with an Intel Overdrive 486dx4-100 CPU.

Ummm.. when I was running an AMD 5x86 133 at 160 back in the day.. as-in, I bought both brand new from a computer store, the motherboard I had was only ISA/VLB. And it was a standard CPU, not one of the upgrade chips.

I do remember the first board I bought claimed support for the AMD 5x86 but it would always BSOD when installing Windows. I took the board back and they also couldn't get it to work. They ended up upgrading me for free to a higher model motherboard that did actually work with the AMD 5x86.

I've probably got a few ISA/VLB boards laying around that would work with the 5x86.

Edit: Looks like boards with the SIS 471 chipset fit the bill.
Best VLB motherboard for AMD 5x86?

There may be others. I've got a few boards, including 2 or 3 that are PC-Chips looking boards that have a BIOS from 1994 or 1995.

I'd get a pci mobo. Add extras like usb and video cards are far easier to find.

You can certainly run the 5x86 in a VLB motherboard with older chipset as soon as you use an electrical interposer that can convert 5V to 3.3V/3.45V as many VLB boards are designed for 5V CPUs only.

It might not be optimal solution though as older chipsets often lack support for write-back cache. So there could be a small performance penalty compared to later chipsets.

The BIOS can also report crazy CPU type and speeds during POST. In fact this is usually the only thing the BIOS update usually solves with regards to 5x86 compatibility. Often you are fine without any BIOS update.

These 3rd party overdrive chips are just usually stock CPUs with simple passive interposers and sometimes extra jumpers to override MB multiplier jumpers.

I also have an option of running kingston turbochip 133Mhz with my vlb motherboard if normal amd 133Mhz doesn't work. It should be the same cpu basically if I understand correctly.

Yeh my VLB motherboard can accept 5x86 just fine I dont think they are that rare. As always check what jumper settings/CPU comparability beforehand if possible.
I would think newer PCI cards may offer a slight benefit over the final generation of VLB cards, someone did do a benchmark here but I cant remember/find it now!

Either way the difference would be marginal, the CPU would be the limiting factor unless were talking pure benchmarks.

If you can't decide to go VLB or PCI you might want to try to find an ASUS PVI-486SP3:

If you have a VLB that supports 3v and 5v CPU’s then you might be able to use an original AMD 5x86-133-P75 CPU.
You just need to set the voltage for 3v and the multiplier up for 3x33mhz which is still only going to give you 100mhz total CPU speed.
Most VLB motherboards do not support 4x33mhz. Or 5x or 6x.
But Newer PCI socket 3 motherboard usually do.
So you can run that AMD 5x86 at 133mhz or 166mhz.

If you have an old VLB motherboard that only supports up to 50mhz or 66mhz CPU’s you will need one of these modified chips with a 5v interposer.

This thread wasn't about those CPUs. I already know about all that.
The question was about video cards. Useful information would be like if would I get big difference in something like doom benchmark if for example I would use newer pci video card like for example Trio64 or a virge card compared to my vlb card with 133Mhz cpu that I mentioned.

I don't have a pci motherboard, so basically trying to find out if I should build the pc now with the parts I already have or if there would be big difference and I should wait.

Data Expert EXP8046 is another motherboard you could try for VLB vs PCI testing. It's one of the boards I'm considering for doing a Go-To Daily Driver build with.. My intention is to go with an ATI AIW Pro PCI card, though.

As for your question; depends on the motherboard.

I have asked the same question not long ago on Vogons and you can find the thread here and it has apparently been asked over and over and over and over (you get the idea) before.

There's also thisvideo of HighTreason testing this question out on a specific Socket 3 motherboard and finding VLB to be faster. Which isn't too surprising because PCI implementations on 486 chipsets are likely not perfect.

I'd say use what you have first. Once you had enough do the PCI upgrade project 😀

There is a small benefit of using PCI over VLB cards. You can expect a small performance gain - 3-5 extra fps in DOOM - 39 fps instead of 34.5 fps when you compare fast PCI, like Mach64VTII or Matrox Mystique 220 with a decent VLB card (like my ET4000 w/32p). Or 8-10 points in 3D bench if lucky.

Price/performance point doesn't work at all for vintage tech.

High-end VLB boards tend to very very expensive. Easily over £100 a board for a top one on eBay. At the same time, put in a £30 Pentium 133 board with and you'll get double scores at everything.

It is really only what you want to use and not about any numbers.

The main advantage of going with a PCI card is that you can have S-Video and/or DVI out for easy DOS capture.

Intel486dx33 wrote:

If you have a VLB that supports 3v and 5v CPU’s then you might be able to use an original AMD 5x86-133-P75 CPU. You just need to […]
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If you have a VLB that supports 3v and 5v CPU’s then you might be able to use an original AMD 5x86-133-P75 CPU.
You just need to set the voltage for 3v and the multiplier up for 3x33mhz which is still only going to give you 100mhz total CPU speed.
Most VLB motherboards do not support 4x33mhz. Or 5x or 6x.
But Newer PCI socket 3 motherboard usually do.
So you can run that AMD 5x86 at 133mhz or 166mhz.

If you have an old VLB motherboard that only supports up to 50mhz or 66mhz CPU’s you will need one of these modified chips with a 5v interposer.

Like your other post: not correct.

I understand that it is your experience but it doesn't mean it can't work on a lot of other boards. I had an ACER VLB/isa board that did support the amd p75-133 @3v with the latest bios without any interposer. After the bios update it used the 2x multi as a 4x while before the update It only worked at 2x33 and 3x 33mhz.