i have also the same Problem.

i couldnt source a working Motherboard for it.
Even if they state it supports VIA C3, most of them support only the Erza/Samuel Cores..

There was the VIA C3 verified motherboard list (a copy of it can be found on Vogonswiki here: http://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/VIA_C3_Ve … otherboard_List ), but this list also didn't mention which exact chips would be supported. My best guess is that Nehemiah is likely to be compatible with Tualatin boards and only the pre-Nehemias would work on a board not supporting Tualatin (this is only a guess though as, as has been mentioned, it's hard finding a big cache of info about these chips and the boards that support them).

I do know I've once tried running a 1.2GHz Nehemiah in a Coppermine board (probably an ASUS board, though can't remember exactly which model number it had) and it did work the first time I had it post (voltage seemed to be correctly applied) but I ran into some kind of issues and decided to focus on other projects.
This however did imply the Nehemias didn't need a pinmod to get them working in boards that don't support Tualatin (as you may know, Intel switched a couple pins around when they went from Coppermine to Tualatin to prevent the newer chips from working in older boards).

Ezra-T was also Tualatin protocol, but I'm not sure how compatibility was for putting a Tualatin-protocol C3 on an old board. I'd guess that the list of boards with actual C3 BIOS support is rather short, though, and even shorter for Nehemiah - by the time Nehemiah came out, VIA was really being pushed into the Mini-ITX niche.

bhtooefr wrote:

Ezra-T was also Tualatin protocol, but I'm not sure how compatibility was for putting a Tualatin-protocol C3 on an old board. I'd guess that the list of boards with actual C3 BIOS support is rather short, though, and even shorter for Nehemiah - by the time Nehemiah came out, VIA was really being pushed into the Mini-ITX niche.

It might be Ezra-T is to Nehemiah as Coppermine-T is to Tualatin, though frankly I don't really know as to why Intel even bothered creating Coppermine-T since afaik Tualatin boards would support ordinary Coppermines anyway. I never really bothered to figure this out as even back then info about C3 wasn't easy to find and also because I never owned any Ezra-Ts anyway 😜

In the case of Ezra-T, IIRC the split was on speed grades - the higher ones (933 and 1000) were only Ezra-T, and launched later. And, a reason to do it would be, the lower bus voltage would reduce power consumption, enabling the higher speed grades - VIA was desperate to get the slightest hint of performance out of ye olde Samuel 2/Ezra core, and pushing the clock was the only way to do it until Nehemiah was ready to replace it. (However, on Coppermines... I'm wondering if Coppermine-T existed so that Intel had silicon to test the Tualatin revision chipsets with, or something.)

However, looking at the Nehemiah datasheet, the CPU has two modes listed in the recommended DC operating conditions (page 4-12, PDF page 48) - Vtt for "legacy" Socket 370 boards of 1.365 to 1.635 V, and Vtt of 1.25 V ± 3% on "universal" Socket 370 boards. So, pre-Tualatin boards are explicitly supported.

From my experience with the C3 Ezra and Ezra-T (933MHz and 1GHz models, respectively), there seems to be no difference between the two aside from the Ezra-T having more multipliers to choose from (they're multiplier-locked, but if you use Gerwin's SETMUL utility, you can change the multiplier on C3 processors on-the-fly). What I will say is both CPUs don't overclock very well. I don't remember how far I was able to push the Ezra, but I couldn't get the Ezra-T to run stable past 1.2GHz. At 1.25GHz, the CPU became very unstable and at 1.3GHz or higher, it would lock up.

I would be interested in testing a C3 Nehemiah myself, but I'm not sure if the two motherboards I have with C3 support will be able to accept the CPU. I've got the C3 Ezra running on a Soyo SY-6BA+ through a slotket (I can't run the Ezra-T on here without the FSB locking itself to 66MHz) and the C3 Ezra-T running on a Gigabyte GA-6VXE7+.

Maybe its possible to inject the Microcode for the Nehemiah ?
I tried a few Boards and get a Picture but can't go to boot process..
And this boards are coppermine only..

has not philscomputerlab made a review C3 vs P3 ?
Maybe he can tell us which motherboard was used?
but i'm not sure about this??

Looks like microcode isn't the concern (the C5 family cores (Samuel (2)/Ezra(-T)/Nehemiah/Esther) don't appear to have a microcode update mechanism - that appears to have been introduced in the CN family cores (Isaiah)), it'll be CPU identification and speed setting that matters.

Below is from my own notes made in 2014. The Asus CUSL2 is mentioned. This in addition to my summary in the second post of the SetMul Topic. The MS6905 Master v2.3 Slotket is not Tualatin compatible, but I use it all the time with any VIA C3, Especially Nehemiah. On the other hand, I think that my non-tualatin VIA Apollo Pro 133A board required a Lin-Lin adapter in between the socket and the Ezra-T, not entirely sure...

VIA C3 Mainboard compatibility notes:

1Mainboard       C5A  C5B  C5N  C5XL  Notes
2My own tests (4x): 
3GA-6BXC         OK   OK   OK   OK    (i440BX, MS6905 Master v2.3 Slotket (Except C5B on Tekram slotket), Award 6.00PG Powerleap Bios)
4SOYO 6BA+III    OK   ?    ?    ?     (i440BX, MS6905 Master v2.3 Slotket)
5Shuttle HOT661  OK   ?    ?    ?     (i440BX, Forget to note slotket used) 
6Chaint.CT6AJA4  ?    ?    OK   ?     (IIRC with Lin-Lin adapter, This is a VIA Apollo Pro 133A board) 
7Internet info:
8Abit BX133      ?    ?    ?    OK    (post screen spotted, Award 6.00PG)
9MS-6309 VIA     OK   ?    ?    ?     (post screen spotted, AMI BIOS)
10Abit AB-BX6     NOT  ?    ?    ?     (Vogons user: gona, unknown slotket)
11Asus P3B-F      OK   ?    ?    ?     (Vogons user: gona, AA370TS slotket)
12EPoX EP-693A    OK   ?    ?    ?     (Vogons user: gona, socket 370 board)
13Asus CUSL2      NOT  OK   ?    OK    (internet post. doesn't support Tualatin)
14Above are private notes from me (gerwin), not official!

EDIT/UPDATE!: This Topic contains more compatibility testing that I did since.

VIA Cores for Socket 370(T) Desktop:

1Code Name Core  Voltage    F.M.S   Process     Speed MHz  Intro Date  Longhaul
2Joshua          2,20       6.5.0+  0.18u        350..450         N/A  N/A   Actual Cyrix core, 256kB L2. CANCELLED after pre-release.
3Samuel    C5A   1,8-2,0    6.6.0+  0.18u        466..733  11-22-1999  v1    Switched to Centaur 'Winchip 4' core, 2x64kB L1, no L2.
4Samuel2   C5B   1,5-1.65   6.7.0+  0.15u        600..800  07-12-2000  v1    64kB L2 cache added ('A' behind the MHz number).
5Ezra      C5C   1,35       6.7.8+  0.15u/0.13u  733..933  09-19-2000  v1    process change.
6Ezra-T    C5M   1,35/1,45  6.8.0+  0.15u/0.13u  800.1000  05-01-2001  v2    Tualatin socket rework, 'Nehemiah stopgap model'
7Ezra-T    C5N   1,35/1,45  6.8.8+  0.15u/0.13u  800.1000  10-23-2001  v2    Switch to copper interconnect.
8Nehemiah  C5XL  1,4/1,45   6.9.0+  0.13u       1000.1200  10-17-2002  v2    FPU now full speed, SSE instead of 3DNow, better MMX, cmov, 16-stage instead of 12.
9Nehemiah+ C5P   1,4/1,45   6.9.8+  0.13u       1000.1200  06-02-2003  v2    Added AES and second RNG (produced till 2006)
10C7 Esther C5J              6.10.9+                        05-20-2005   ?    probably not socket 370 compatible.
11Above are private notes from me (gerwin), not official!

Tested my C3 "ezra" 866MHz in the ASUS CUSL2 motherboard, it works just fine and recognizes the CPU correctly. So it looks as though it may well be OK with the nehemiah too. I have a EPIA motherboard on it's way with a nehemiah 1GHz CPU, it was actually cheaper than buying just the nehemiah socket 370 CPU by a pretty wide margin, so that will do fine for me at the moment to mess with nehemiah.

Best,
Chris

It's also worth noting that C5J definitely isn't Socket 370 compatible - it uses the VIA V4 bus, which is essentially the P4 bus modified enough to avoid infringing on Intel's patents. There were socketed C7s, but they were in a proprietary socket (IIRC mechanically identical to the Pentium M's µPGA479M, but not electrically identical).

Decided to buy a C3 Nehemiah for testing. Now I just hope my two C3-compatible motherboards don't puke on this thing.

Be interesting to see your results Ace. C3 866Mhz was slower than a mendocino Celeron 466MHz in my cusl2 with both final reality & Phil's ultimate VGA benchmark.

eBay seller excepted a low ball offer for a C3 1.2 GHz Nehemiah socket 370 CPU. so should have benchmarks and impressions soon-ish. The EPIA 100000 has still not arrived after 8 days despite being local 🙁

BSA Starfire wrote:

eBay seller excepted a low ball offer for a C3 1.2 GHz Nehemiah socket 370 CPU. so should have benchmarks and impressions soon-ish. The EPIA 100000 has still not arrived after 8 days despite being local 🙁

Did it even ship? Chances are that the seller either forgot or you got a scammed, be ready for the usual claim.

Yes, the EPIA motherboard did ship, Hermes has had it since Wednesday 2nd. Been at my local couriers since Sat 5th apparently. Got a book coming from same couriers too on same time frame........eventually.........

I'm going to chime in here and let you guys know that I'm going to test out the VIA C3 Nehemiah 1.2 GHz chip in my Biostar M6VLR, which has a PLE133T VIA chipset, capable of powering Tualatin Pentium III CPUs. I'll report back if I am successful or not.

I have a system built around the Nehemiah 1.2 GHz CPU. I run it at 1.4 GHz and stock voltage just fine. I am using an Asus TUSL2-C, which is based on the Intel 815EP chipset. I was really impressed with the web browsing performance of this combination, at least back in 2010. This has been considerable web bloat since then and the 512 MB limit of the Intel 815EP will likely be a problem.

It seems some boards have issues with cache initialization for Nehemiah CPUs. I was able to boot a C3 Nehemiah 1.2AGHz on my ASUS CUV4X out of box, but the board recognized it as "Pentium II 1200MHz" with no cache memory (Cache Memory: None). Without the cache memory the processor is fine under DOS but extremely sluggish under Windows. I'm currently on the latest BIOS (1010.003).

Also, the BIOS additionally complained about unable to update microcode for CPUID=0000069A (which stands for Nehemiah) during the boot process. Given Nehemiah doesn't have a microcode update mechanism, it seems to be just a warning that it couldn't properly identify the processor. The board (CUV4X) is VIA C3 Verified, but so far only C3 Samuel support was mentioned in one of the early official BIOSes.

So it seems that pre-Tualatin boards may boot with the C3 Nehemiah, but in certain cases like mine, without internal cache, making it too slow to be practically used.

EDIT: Just tried a Tualatin adapter over the 1.2A Nehemiah on CUV4X. The result is the same as without it, the cache is still not initialized (None). Guess it seriously depends on whether the BIOS of a given C3-capable board can properly init its cache or not for a Nehemiah to work at proper speed, despite it can boot regardless.