red-ray wrote on 2023-02-10, 15:09:

Does anyone know if 533 MHz FSB CPUs will work in an AOpen i855GMEm-LFS motherboard @ 533 MHz please?

Both the motherboard manual and Intel 82855GME chipset datasheet specify 400 MHz so I suspect not.

From an old review it looks like a mobile chipset and it only uses 400 FSB Pentium-M's. The review used a 1.6ghz Pentium M-725

red-ray wrote on 2023-02-10, 15:09:

Does anyone know if 533 MHz FSB CPUs will work in an AOpen i855GMEm-LFS motherboard @ 533 MHz please?

Both the motherboard manual and Intel 82855GME chipset datasheet specify 400 MHz so I suspect not.

Yes they will. You cannot manually set the FSB, but if you load the optimized defaults it will set the FSB to 533. I have a Pentium M Model 780 SL7VB 2.26 in mine - I bought it because it was relatively affordable and allowed me to have the fastest CPU that the board can use; try and do that with a Pentium 4 and it gets crazy expensive.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-02-10, 19:43:

if you load the optimized defaults it will set the FSB to 533

Thank you, I hoped this might be the case.

As you also have an AOpen i855GMEm-LFS do you know if BIOS R1.08 03/17/2005 is the latest please?

red-ray wrote on 2023-02-10, 21:54:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-02-10, 19:43:

if you load the optimized defaults it will set the FSB to 533

Thank you, I hoped this might be the case.

As you also have an AOpen i855GMEm-LFS do you know if BIOS R1.08 03/17/2005 is the latest please?

I'm not sure if this BIOS is newer than that. Probably not, but the added "bn" and the date are confusing.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-02-10, 23:22:

I'm not sure if this BIOS is newer than that. Probably not, but the added "bn" and the date are confusing.

Thank you and I suspect it is, where did it come from and do you know what it fixes please? Maybe it's needed for 533 MHz FSB support.

What does my SIV utility report as the BIOS version please? What OS is installed?, it needs to be Windows NT 3.51 or later, not 9X.

Here you go.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-02-11, 01:33:

Here you go.

Thank you, definitely a different and newer BIOS to the one I have. Please will you make it available to me so I can update my board?

Does SIV report the X800 clock speeds correctly? If not and you post Menu->Machine->GPU Info I should be able to fix it.

BTW SIV32X works better/is a tad faster on Windows XP and later.

It didn't like Uniflash and locked up after loading the screen, but Awardflash worked okay. I wasn't sure how to just save the BIOS with Awardflash, but I made up a name for the BIOS and hit enter, and it then asked me if I wanted to save the old BIOS - it saved it, then said "File not found" and stopped, and I was done.

I can't remember if I updated to this BIOS, or if it had this BIOS when I bought it two years ago; the Aopen Socket 775 P4 board that I bought at the same time I did update the BIOS.

This board had a 2.0/2M/533 760 when I bought it.

Don't know if it's the same as @Repo Man11 (1.08bn) but is the one on the BIOS history list - https://web.archive.org/web/20051226011046/ht … lish&WebSite=GL

Download from - https://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php … driverid=685329

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2023-02-11, 06:15:

Don't know if it's the same as @Repo Man11 (1.08bn)

Thank you for the link, but the latest it lists is R1.08 3/25/2005 which is what I currently have and about a year older than the R1.08bn that Repo Man11's board has.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-02-11, 02:42:

It didn't like Uniflash and locked up after loading the screen, but Awardflash worked okay. I wasn't sure how to just save the BIOS with Awardflash, but I made up a name for the BIOS and hit enter, and it then asked me if I wanted to save the old BIOS - it saved it, then said "File not found" and stopped, and I was done.

I just tried to flash the .BIN file after renaming, but the AOpen WI85108 flash tool did not like it so please will you generate a backup of your BIOS using it?

I noticed WI85108 runs a program that uses 100% of the CPU and stays there when I exited it so I needed to abort it.

Google failed to find it, but I did find https://silentpcreview.com/pentium-m-for-the- … dfi-855gme-mgf/ which makes me suspect the i85108bn BIOS is needed for 533 MHz support.

That Winflash program is quite picky. It won't open without a BIOS file in the folder, then it would only open if the BIOS file was named i85108.bin (the other names I tried wouldn't work). I was finally able to open it once I renamed the original saved BIOS to its liking, and I then saved the BIOS as the programs default backup.bin.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-02-11, 16:58:

That Winflash program is quite picky.

Thank you and I felt the same. It won't load it's own backup file either and gives the same error as before, further when did a backup on the R1.08 BIOS and tried to use that it reported a checksum error!

I will try and see if I can find a R1.08bm BIOS + matching flash tool to download.

When I compared the two files they are almost the same.

This compatibility list (July 2005), linked from here - https://web.archive.org/web/20071016204640/ht … 855gmemlfs.html - already shows support for 533 MHz FSB CPUs

Here's what you have to look forward to. The P4P 800 has the advantage of dual channel memory but the i855 still delivers a higher 3D Mark score with the same card.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-02-11, 23:13:

P4P 800 has the advantage of dual channel memory but the i855 still delivers a higher 3D Mark score with the same card.

This is what I half expected as the Pentium M went on to become the Core Duo (Yonah) then Core 2 Duo (Conroe) and the netburst CPUs went away.

I wonder if the P4P 800 would do better with hyperthreading disabled (I assume you can do this in the BIOS), have you tried this?

red-ray wrote on 2023-02-12, 00:04:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-02-11, 23:13:

P4P 800 has the advantage of dual channel memory but the i855 still delivers a higher 3D Mark score with the same card.

This is what I half expected as the Pentium M went on to become the Core Duo (Yonah) then Core 2 Duo (Conroe) and the netburst CPUs went away.

I wonder if the P4P 800 would do better with hyperthreading disabled (I assume you can do this in the BIOS), have you tried this?

You can disable Hyper-threading, but I've only ever done it to install Windows 98; it never occurred to me that disabling it might raise a benchmark score, so I've never tried it when doing so. Maybe I'll swap the card back in and try it at some point.

There's a member of Vogons who has a P4P 800 with a Socket 479 adapter, and I'd love to try one of those myself. But I was lucky enough to pick up this board as part of a lot of four motherboards for $30.00 three years ago, and I turned a very tidy profit by selling two of them on Ebay, so I cannot complain. And I scored the P4P800 for free, so again I have nothing to complain about.

I looked at Pentium M prices and feel the premium on a 780 is not worth it so have ordered a 770 for $12 all in.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-02-12, 01:28:

it never occurred to me that disabling it might raise a benchmark score, so I've never tried it when doing so.

I felt I should try it on one of my systems so used the one that is closest to your P4 system. I felt having two CPUs might help so added a /ONECPU boot.ini selection and tried that. I also wondered how busy the CPUs + GPU would be so left SIV running so I could see the plots.

As I suspected with HT off the score is slightly better. I expect the CPUs would be running @ 3.63 GHz when the benchmark was running.

I have never really used 3DMark2001 before and wonder, does it give meaningful numbers for modernish systems?

I could not easily get get Dual Xeon to do HT with one chip so I used a different system and also wondered how W7 would do