chinny22 wrote on 2022-05-10, 12:54:
I guess the Apollo 133 is the better. Intel never really succeeded with pushing RD RAM. Real world performance SD RAM could keep up or even outperform RD Ram based systems so the extra cost was never justified.
These days though where cost/performance isn't rally an issue (just get a faster PC if needed) a RD based system is much more interesting.
The ApolloPro133 was a slug of a performer, with features more reminiscent of the old i440BX, like AGP 2x. i820 (and indeed the i440BX) would run rings around it. If you mean the ApolloPro133A, performance is much better and feature-comparable to i820, but still slower in terms of memory access. In fact the i820 was competitive with i440BX in terms of performance, it just didn't actually beat it - and back in the day the price delta was eye-watering.
But... take a look at that paper diagram in the second pic of the motherboard. There's a big square between the CPU slot and the RAM slots - and then another smaller one.
That smaller square is almost certainly the 82805AA Memory Translator Hub (MTH), that let you use cheap SDRAM memory in a modern i820 motherboard. Just two problems:
1) even conceptually, the MTH gave you the lower bandwith of PC100 SDRAM combined with the higher latency of the RDRAM interface, with a bit of extra translation latency added. Memory performance with it was awful.
2) regardless of memory performance, it was unstable as hell. Intel had to do an incredibly expensive recall of i820 boards with MTH and SDRAM, replacing them with i820 boards without MTH and with same amount of RDRAM.
This is an Intel CC820 Cape Cod board that slipped through the net in May 2000. Here's an article about the board - and the pictures match:
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-cape-cod-disaster/
So this board is a curiosity and an abomination, one that Intel tried to make us all forget 22 years ago. And yes, an old Via ApolloPro133 board *would* have been faster than this one, and more stable.
Bottom line: extremely interesting find, but very, very unsuitable for an inexperienced "New guy". It's unstable by design, unsupported since recall and at best it would be outperformed by pretty much anything else you could put the same components on.
Tbh, I'd find someone with more experience who is curious about this oddity and would happily swap it for a more mainstream, reliable option.