VOGONS


Rarest CPUs?

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Reply 200 of 442, by Sphere478

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NostalgicAslinger wrote on 2022-05-27, 18:18:

I have this Cyrix MIIv in my collection, should be rare today?

Not terribly rare, sought after or valuable. 30$ probably. Some dreamers put them for 50 on ebay but I don’t think they sell at that price. I’ve seen similar chips going for 20 or so recently also.

A 433gp can go for 300$ though

Sphere's PCB projects.
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Sphere’s socket 5/7 cpu collection.
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SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod
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Tyan S1564S to S1564D single to dual processor conversion (also s1563 and s1562)

Reply 201 of 442, by Anonymous Coward

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MIIv isn't any particular model. They're just regular MIIs made for VIA.
The silver top ones are pretty interesting. They're .18u, and said to overclock to 300MHz without much hassle.
The strange thing is that I'd never seen a single silver top MII until a few years ago, then suddenly a whole boatload appeared.
I guess a large lot of SBCs or portable PC was scrapped and these silver tops were inside.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 202 of 442, by rmay635703

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Anonymous Coward wrote on 2022-05-29, 00:29:

I guess a large lot of SBCs or portable PC was scrapped and these silver tops were inside.

My silver top pr433 came in the tray circa 2003, wish I knew where it went

I was tempted to dig it out and test the IBM labeled SIS540 motherboard I obtained at the same time to see if I could determine why it was perpetually unstable, if I could have gotten it fixed I would have loved to test the 166mhz FSB settings shown in cpu cool

Reply 203 of 442, by Sphere478

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https://www.ebay.com/itm/393986256415

There are 300gp and 266gp 2.2v models on ebay right now. Basically the same chip as a 433gp if anyone wants to do some overclocking 350mhz is sometimes possible on these

Sphere's PCB projects.
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Sphere’s socket 5/7 cpu collection.
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SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod
-
Tyan S1564S to S1564D single to dual processor conversion (also s1563 and s1562)

Reply 204 of 442, by Anonymous Coward

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There is a 433gp silver top? That must be worth something, I’ve never seen one.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 205 of 442, by PARKE

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Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-28, 18:57:

My chips are regular coppermines, not the "coppermine-T". No IHS. https://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/SL/SL5B2.html
The coppermine T is the SL5QK: https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentium-III/In … 33PZ006256.html They have an IHS installed like Tualatin chips.

Ok, but then there are two versions:
https://www.techpowerup.com/cpu-specs/pentium … 3.c1290#gallery

Reply 206 of 442, by Sphere478

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elianda wrote on 2017-12-18, 08:00:
I actually meant the Nx686: […]
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I actually meant the Nx686:

Interesting, it seems to use socket 462 but without the missing pins amd used on athalon no doubt making it incompatible. Also was a long time before the athalon

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2022-05-29, 03:25:

There is a 433gp silver top? That must be worth something, I’ve never seen one.

I’m not aware of one.

Far as I gather it’s just flip chip vs gold top ceramic traditional package but same/similar core. I think anyway. If I had one I could investigate further. There are rumors of some of the IBM chips getting better binning or manufacturing quality though In fact These silver/black top flip chips may have been IBMs doing I’m guessing anyway, because the last IBM chips only got as fast as the fastest flip chips I’ve seen.

I’m really fuzzy on the exact history here. I’ve seen conflicting reports. You try to look up even the manufacturing process of these chips and sources online seem to be all over the map

Sphere's PCB projects.
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Sphere’s socket 5/7 cpu collection.
-
SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod
-
Tyan S1564S to S1564D single to dual processor conversion (also s1563 and s1562)

Reply 207 of 442, by Socket3

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PARKE wrote on 2022-05-29, 04:09:
Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-28, 18:57:

My chips are regular coppermines, not the "coppermine-T". No IHS. https://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/SL/SL5B2.html
The coppermine T is the SL5QK: https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentium-III/In … 33PZ006256.html They have an IHS installed like Tualatin chips.

Ok, but then there are two versions:
https://www.techpowerup.com/cpu-specs/pentium … 3.c1290#gallery

I see. Cpu-Z says "coppermine" and like I said, no IHS. Interesting nevertheless!

Reply 208 of 442, by Tetrium

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Anonymous Coward wrote on 2022-05-29, 03:25:

There is a 433gp silver top? That must be worth something, I’ve never seen one.

I never even heard of one. I'm familiar only with the 333GP 4*66MHz silver topped ones.

I've always wondered what the deal was with these silver topped MIIs anyway and also the black topped ones. The heatspreader design is somewhat odd.
The silver ones being flip chip ones seems interesting to me, though then why didn't VIA continue with the flip chip design after they had taken over if the knowledge was there?
Or was the knowledge with IBM or whoever made it? Didn't IBM split with Cyrix before MII happened?

But at any rate, these Cyrix CPUs are so weird sometimes, it's almost as if these kept making changes with every single batch of chips they ordered, trying out all kinds of different things, but didn't always bother to make a modelling scheme that made sense to people not familiar with Cyrix internals.

Would be really cool to learn from someone who actually worked at Cyrix at the time what the deal was with all these different designs! 😀

Perhaps the silver topped CPUs were embedded versions or something? In such a case, it would put them in a similar role to the various AMD embedded K6* chips

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!

Reply 209 of 442, by Sphere478

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I wanna know if anyone still has any jedi core engineering prototypes…

I so wanna play with a cyrix with onboard L2

Sphere's PCB projects.
-
Sphere’s socket 5/7 cpu collection.
-
SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod
-
Tyan S1564S to S1564D single to dual processor conversion (also s1563 and s1562)

Reply 211 of 442, by PARKE

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Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-29, 06:39:
PARKE wrote on 2022-05-29, 04:09:
Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-28, 18:57:

My chips are regular coppermines, not the "coppermine-T". No IHS. https://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/SL/SL5B2.html
The coppermine T is the SL5QK: https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentium-III/In … 33PZ006256.html They have an IHS installed like Tualatin chips.

Ok, but then there are two versions:
https://www.techpowerup.com/cpu-specs/pentium … 3.c1290#gallery

I see. Cpu-Z says "coppermine" and like I said, no IHS. Interesting nevertheless!

Intel lists it as FCPGA2 - page 16, fourth from bottom:
http://datasheets.chipdb.org/Intel/x86/Pentiu … te/24445358.pdf

Reply 212 of 442, by TrashPanda

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386SX wrote on 2022-05-29, 09:43:

The Intel Core2 E8700 has been produced or simply never even done as a prototype?

Never released to production so it’s possible there may be qualifying es chips out there.

Never seen one myself.

Reply 213 of 442, by Anonymous Coward

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Tetrium wrote on 2022-05-29, 08:45:
I never even heard of one. I'm familiar only with the 333GP 4*66MHz silver topped ones. […]
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I never even heard of one. I'm familiar only with the 333GP 4*66MHz silver topped ones.

I've always wondered what the deal was with these silver topped MIIs anyway and also the black topped ones. The heatspreader design is somewhat odd.
The silver ones being flip chip ones seems interesting to me, though then why didn't VIA continue with the flip chip design after they had taken over if the knowledge was there?
Or was the knowledge with IBM or whoever made it? Didn't IBM split with Cyrix before MII happened?

But at any rate, these Cyrix CPUs are so weird sometimes, it's almost as if these kept making changes with every single batch of chips they ordered, trying out all kinds of different things, but didn't always bother to make a modelling scheme that made sense to people not familiar with Cyrix internals.

Would be really cool to learn from someone who actually worked at Cyrix at the time what the deal was with all these different designs! 😀

Perhaps the silver topped CPUs were embedded versions or something? In such a case, it would put them in a similar role to the various AMD embedded K6* chips

There are 300MHz versions of the silver top that run at 3.5 x 66MHz. Those ones are less common though, and I've seen several different versions of the silk screen. Some of them even proclaimed to be a "mobile" version. I guess it's entirely possible that other higher and lower speed grades exist, but they would be collector's items. Perhaps 333 was the fastest though, because I don't think IBM made 686MX faster than that.

I think I read on CPU-World that the flip chip packaging used on the MII was also used on some of their other products (I think it was PowerPC or some other RISC based product). So it would have been exclusive to CPUs manufactured by IBM . VIA didn't renew the contract with IBM, but supposedly IBM had to fulfill obligations made to either cyrix or natsemi, and a limited number of MIIs were made after the VIA acquisition.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 214 of 442, by Tetrium

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Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-28, 18:57:
Cool, didn't know they were talking about a Slot 1 version. […]
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PARKE wrote on 2022-05-28, 16:13:
Socket3 wrote on 2022-05-27, 19:45:

Wait these are rare??? I bought a couple of them (SL5B2) off aliexpress for next to nothing in 2015!!! I have them in an MSI 694D Pro Dual that's been sitting around for the last couple of years, unused...
[EDIT] - it seems these CPUs had stability issues. This is interesting (at least to me). I'll take the two chips I own off the MSI 694D where they ran on winXP SP3 and test them individually. If even one is unstable I'll make a thread about my findings.
Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-ad … ii-1,235-3.html

The PIII 1.13 Coppermine that was unstable and subsequently called back by Intel per august 2000 was a Slot 1 CPU. Rumour has it that some 200 were issued and some 20 never made it back - very rare thus.
Your SL5B2 is an FCPGA Coppermine-T version that was issued somewhere in summer 2001 and that edition worked fine and is not extremely rare.

Cool, didn't know they were talking about a Slot 1 version.

My chips are regular coppermines, not the "coppermine-T". No IHS. https://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/SL/SL5B2.html

The coppermine T is the SL5QK: https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentium-III/In … 33PZ006256.html They have an IHS installed like Tualatin chips.

Your link mentions FC-PGA2 and not FC-PGA.
https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentium-III/In … 26PZ006256.html
Your P3 CPU apparently should come with the IHS. If yours is missing then they were apparently removed by a prior owner?

Could you upload a pic of your chip including the full part number?

At the bottom of the link I included someone added a pic of your CPU and it includes an IHS.

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!

Reply 215 of 442, by Tetrium

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Anonymous Coward wrote on 2022-05-29, 14:09:
Tetrium wrote on 2022-05-29, 08:45:
I never even heard of one. I'm familiar only with the 333GP 4*66MHz silver topped ones. […]
Show full quote

I never even heard of one. I'm familiar only with the 333GP 4*66MHz silver topped ones.

I've always wondered what the deal was with these silver topped MIIs anyway and also the black topped ones. The heatspreader design is somewhat odd.
The silver ones being flip chip ones seems interesting to me, though then why didn't VIA continue with the flip chip design after they had taken over if the knowledge was there?
Or was the knowledge with IBM or whoever made it? Didn't IBM split with Cyrix before MII happened?

But at any rate, these Cyrix CPUs are so weird sometimes, it's almost as if these kept making changes with every single batch of chips they ordered, trying out all kinds of different things, but didn't always bother to make a modelling scheme that made sense to people not familiar with Cyrix internals.

Would be really cool to learn from someone who actually worked at Cyrix at the time what the deal was with all these different designs! 😀

Perhaps the silver topped CPUs were embedded versions or something? In such a case, it would put them in a similar role to the various AMD embedded K6* chips

There are 300MHz versions of the silver top that run at 3.5 x 66MHz. Those ones are less common though, and I've seen several different versions of the silk screen. Some of them even proclaimed to be a "mobile" version. I guess it's entirely possible that other higher and lower speed grades exist, but they would be collector's items. Perhaps 333 was the fastest though, because I don't think IBM made 686MX faster than that.

I think I read on CPU-World that the flip chip packaging used on the MII was also used on some of their other products (I think it was PowerPC or some other RISC based product). So it would have been exclusive to CPUs manufactured by IBM . VIA didn't renew the contract with IBM, but supposedly IBM had to fulfill obligations made to either cyrix or natsemi, and a limited number of MIIs were made after the VIA acquisition.

This definitely seems plausible. Yes I remember seeing different prints on later Cyrix CPUs, including some with a somewhat larger or smaller font.
Whatever disadvantages these later Cyrix chips may have, at least they aren't visually boring 😜

I think I have some of the 333GP ones (silver top), probably because they were cheap and the higher clocked ones (the ones with gold top) were harder to find.

Personally I find these later Cyrix CPUs rather good looking 😋

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!

Reply 216 of 442, by Anonymous Coward

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Definitely the best looking socket 7 CPU.
Cyrix really had the market cornered when it came to making their CPUs look awesome.
Strangely the IBM branded Cyrix chips were pretty lame...only the 5x86C was decent, and only because of the blue heatsink.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 217 of 442, by Tetrium

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Anonymous Coward wrote on 2022-05-29, 14:25:

Definitely the best looking socket 7 CPU.
Cyrix really had the market cornered when it came to making their CPUs look awesome.
Strangely the IBM branded Cyrix chips were pretty lame...only the 5x86C was decent, and only because of the blue heatsink.

Tbf I find the Cyrix branded 5x86 (the ones without the green chipset-like heatsink) looking rather dull as well 😜
For some reason I am liking the looks of the PPGA Pentiums and Mendocinos (I guess I do like the black + silver looks of these particular CPUs). Nehemiah also looks pretty good in my book as does the Pentium MMX Overdrive (even though I don't like the glued on heatsinks, I do find them visually pleasing).
The prettiest ceramic CPU imho is perhaps the TI 486DX4 with the large green print and the windows logo, even though I think I don't even have any in my own stash? 😜

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!

Reply 218 of 442, by Anonymous Coward

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I was going to mention that TI486DX4. Too bad they gave up on the full colour graphic and went to some boring white silkscreen for the later ones. I don't have one of those in my collection either...but I'm thinking about it.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 219 of 442, by 386SX

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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-05-29, 13:05:
386SX wrote on 2022-05-29, 09:43:

The Intel Core2 E8700 has been produced or simply never even done as a prototype?

Never released to production so it’s possible there may be qualifying es chips out there.

Never seen one myself.

Thanks, it'd be nice to find the official fastest clocked version even if the E8600 already is quite capable to reach those freqs even if I don't usually like overclocking old components anyway. 😉