swaaye wrote:

So, who likes to mess around with PPro? These CPUs intrigued me from day one, because of that on-package cache and their impress […]
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So, who likes to mess around with PPro? These CPUs intrigued me from day one, because of that on-package cache and their impressive FPU performance that was untouchable by just about anything else (certainly nothing from AMD, Centaur or Cyrix.)

I picked up a nice Intel mobo, the VS440FX "Venus". This sucker is so very stable. The only thing I don't like about it is that it counts RAM somewhat slowly and I have 128MB EDO in it. That CPU is a Pentium Pro 200 with 1MB L2 cache, a $2500 chip during its day!!! It's overclocked to 233 MHz too. 😀 I replaced the pathetic little 50mm fan that it had with this lovely 70mm AMD OEM fan.

BIOS sees my 160GB drive as a 64GB. Used a partition program + a Silicon Image ATA133 card to partition it up and then the onboard IDE worked fine with the full 160GB size.

I usually load it up with a NV TNT, Voodoo2, 100BaseT, Vortex2, and some form of ISA audio.

Well...I like to "mess around" with Pentium Pro's 😁

Have a Soltek socket 8 system which use to have a P Pro 180mhz 256k L2 cache which I replaced with a 200mhz 1mb L2 cache model recently
Have to agree about the crappy cooling they often used on these CPU's....the heatsink has the right dimension but the fans were tiny!
My system had a 45x45mm fan on the CPU heatsink when I got the system
😳

The performance boost I got when I upgraded the CPU was quite big....some SVGA games almost run too fast now...like Nascar and Formula One Grand Prix 2
Windows 98SE really flies...thinking about trying Win2000 and see how it performs

Also fun to know you own a system no "mortal" could afford back then 😎

btw. you board looks really nice....awesome layout...looks like some Intel OEM board?

I also own a Socket 8 mobo and a Pentium PRO 200 MHz 1 MB Cache CPU, but I never had time to build a working system. What fans will work with Socket 8, because my CPU arrived without any heatsink?

PS. The 1MB Pentium PRO wins my award for being the sexy'iest CPU - the black package rocks!

Picture (although this one seems to be somehow faded).

GL1zdA wrote:

I also own a Socket 8 mobo and a Pentium PRO 200 MHz 1 MB Cache CPU, but I never had time to build a working system. What fans will work with Socket 8, because my CPU arrived without any heatsink?

I think only Socket 8 heatsinks fit it. Nothing else is shaped like Socket 8. As for the fan, I just screwed that 70mm fan right to the heatsink.

Amigaz wrote:

The performance boost I got when I upgraded the CPU was quite big....some SVGA games almost run too fast now...like Nascar and F […]
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The performance boost I got when I upgraded the CPU was quite big....some SVGA games almost run too fast now...like Nascar and Formula One Grand Prix 2
Windows 98SE really flies...thinking about trying Win2000 and see how it performs

Also fun to know you own a system no "mortal" could afford back then 😎

btw. you board looks really nice....awesome layout...looks like some Intel OEM board?

Yeah a $2500 CPU is neato. The 1meg PPro also doubles as a furnace. 😀 I'd love to be able to drop on one of my big copper Socket A coolers as I can with Socket 7, but Socket 8 is just the wrong shape.

My board is the Intel VS440FX, sometimes called Venus. It was a retail and an OEM board, with onboard sound as an option. Some might even have USB, but the 440FX chipset has very old USB support and probably doesn't work well. Gateway used lots of these boards apparently. I really like it because it has everything I need and is rock solid.
http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/vs440fx/

I actually ran Unreal on this system once. With a Voodoo3. That PPro 1meg @ 233 is a beast. BTW, I've found that CPU stepping SL259 seems to overclock better than SL25A, but that could just be in my case. I had 3 of these CPUs once and both SL259s could do 233, but the SL25A could not do it stably.

Here's my "monster"

Same CPU as Swaye but mine is not overclocked (yet)

ooooo pretty blue. and baby AT tooooo....

swaaye wrote:

ooooo pretty blue. and baby AT tooooo....

Hey, that rhymes 😁

You have more RAM slots! I am inferior!! And you have a header for the 440fx USB (hmmm...)

Yeah kick that into 233 MHz "high" gear and see how things go. The best way to test stability I found is to run Prime95 torture test and while it's going try loading other apps and see if they crash. Prime95 makes CPU instability much more obvious.

I wouldn't mind finding one of these:
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/S/SU … m-II-P6SKE.html

I had revision 2 of it back in '97-98, different only in that it lacked the Socket 8. Huge board. Some of them have SCSI onboard. P6SKS is that one. They are very rare now and some ebay sellers want $200+ for them (when they rarely appear) which is about what I paid for mine back when it was state of the art. Heh.

swaaye wrote:

You have more RAM slots! I am inferior!! And you have a header for the 440fx USB (hmmm...) […]
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You have more RAM slots! I am inferior!! And you have a header for the 440fx USB (hmmm...)

Yeah kick that into 233 MHz "high" gear and see how things go. The best way to test stability I found is to run Prime95 torture test and while it's going try loading other apps and see if they crash. Prime95 makes CPU instability much more obvious.

I wouldn't mind finding one of these:
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/S/SU … m-II-P6SKE.html

I had revision 2 of it back in '97-98, different only in that it lacked the Socket 8. Huge board. Some of them have SCSI onboard. P6SKS is that one. They are very rare now and some ebay sellers want $200+ for them (when they rarely appear) which is about what I paid for mine back when it was state of the art. Heh.

Plan to fill those two empty slots with 2x 32mb 60ns EDO Ram
Then install Win2k Pro and dual boot it with Win98SE

USB..yeah, haven't tried it yet since I don't think it will be very useful except for using a USB mouse which doesn't have any legacy support 😒

ohh...that mobo you show in those links look beefy, seems most sellers on Ebay still think it's 1996-97 when they sell these motherboards judging by the prices

I might be getting my hands on a Compaq Proliant 5000 Quad P Pro system...time has to tell if it finds it's way to me thru a friend from southern Sweden 😁
I guess it can be used as furniture tgoo 😉

Amigaz wrote:

ohh...that mobo you show in those links look beefy, seems most sellers on Ebay still think it's 1996-97 when they sell these motherboards judging by the prices

They probably sell it as replacement for people, who really need them (because the one in their critical server might be damaged), thats why the high price.

GL1zdA wrote:

Amigaz wrote:

ohh...that mobo you show in those links look beefy, seems most sellers on Ebay still think it's 1996-97 when they sell these motherboards judging by the prices

They probably sell it as replacement for people, who really need them (because the one in their critical server might be damaged), thats why the high price.

Yeah that's what I'm thinking too. Old hardware that is not necessarily very exciting is starting to be priced high just due to rarity, in hopes that someone or some company will want it badly enough.

ah the ppro. I have a great respect for this processor.. my first modern system was a k2 that i got in junior high had it about 1 year or 2.. one day I applied to too much voltage in a feeble o/c attempt and fried it. my then high school computer lab teacher was nice enough to give me one from the lab.. since people just dropped and donated stuff to school all of time. one day a guy came in with a bunch of hp vectra 6/200 something models.. most of the computers in the lab were whitebox p3s.. so they didn't really have a place. for some reason however i loved the way te case it came in looked.. and so it was mine.

it came with a ppro 200 /w 512 of cache... at matrox mystique and i think 128 of ram, with built in scsi and a 4 gig drive. i popped in my 13 gig IDE for storage. later i got a second processor and winXP for it. now even for even in the days of the p3 and early athlons it was still snappy and fast.. in my case for dos flight sims and desktop multi tasking. (web, music, schoolwork w/ office, and compression). I later found out about the ppro overdrive.. 333mhz.. full speed 512k cache.. got 2 of em.. and instantly saw a noticeable difference. i wanted so bad to get more memory for it.. this particular computer used FPM DIMMS.. which were so hard to find that i ended up buy in a new M/B for everything else that used EDO and maxed it out at 512. god i remember playing half life and quake in software mode and being impressed.. simply cause the games were still fliud.. albeit not looking very pretty.

but seriously that computer was my setup for quite a few years.. got into civ3.. at another point got a 18gig 10,000 rpm scsi disk and i was quite happy with it for that time. even after i got my p4 i still ran a linux server on it for grip.. till the (used) 10k disk started going bad. whether linux or XP.. the only time it would ever stop working was after a power outage.. and the occasional reboot in XP. I left it on ALL the time. i still have the whole board rigged up minus the cards in a static bag in storage... i should snap a pic of it it looks all fierce with the rams and procs full.

***edit***

i'd also like all you ppro cats to know i have 11 unneeded 128meg 50us DIMMs.. if there is an interest i'll put them ebay. i still have the two 200mhz chips before i got the overdrives... again thier only 512k units though

100% right - have you checked the price on 9 pin dot matrix printers?

So, as a ppro noob, I take it one such ppro 200 would have better performance then K6/3 500MHz?

no. It has the same performance as the "standard" pentium 2. Feiopia is working on a HUGE benchmark spreadsheet, and he can give actual benchmarks once its finished.

Nope, PPro is roughly equal to PII per MHz, but with rather abysmal 16 Bit performance, IIRC. So, I'd guess in general it would be comparabel to a K6-2/300.

luckybob wrote:

no. It has the same performance as the "standard" pentium 2. Feiopia is working on a HUGE benchmark spreadsheet, and he can give actual benchmarks once its finished.

But having no MMX is going to be a big drawback for gaming. For a gaming rig you'd be better off with a P-II. And the aforementioned lousy 16-bit performance means early apps and games that use 16-bit code will be worse on a PPro.

The 16-bit impact is a bit overblown but it would be slower than a PII at it. I could see a PPro 200 being similar to a K6 300 in 3D games.

I'd say a Ppro 200 is roughly similar to a P II 233, less mhz made up for by a huge on-die cache running at bus speed.

Running Zeus Master of Olympus properly on my 233MMX was a slide show, but a Ppro 200 can do it pretty well.