On my MSI 4144 (SiS 497/496) mobo, the POD 83 doesn't get any L2 cache according to Cachechk even though L2 is enabled. Gimps it pretty severely. FPU still rocks the house though, especially when it's running at 40/100MHz. Integer performance and general "feel" are slower than a 160 MHz 5x86 however, courtesy of the L2 being broken when running the POD. At least until you play a 3D game, and then the FPU is just night and day better compared to any 486 chip.

POD has 32K L1, which is unlike any other Pentium until you get to the PMMX chips. That probably helps a lot.

Which socket 3 motherboards will work with POD83 where the L2 is still usable?

I redid the test and here are the images. One test is at 83mhz and the other at 100mhz. I also did a cachechk test. It said that my L2 cache was active, but that I only had 16k of L1 cache.... Wierd.

I redid the pc player test at a 100mhz and the score was a 9.9

Also I agree that the pentium fpu is heads and shoulders above the 486 fpu's for 3d games. One of the reasons I tried the 83 POD was becuase as a 10th grader I was so frustrated that my dads 133mhz 486 could not really run any games that requred a 60 mhz pentium. With the Diamond Monster 3D card and the POD Jedi Knight runs very smoothly and is quite playable. I remember trying that game on my Dad's 486 (shudder).

So, that 10th grader 12 years ago is finally vindicated (chuckle)

😅

Pentium L1 is a split design. In the Pentiums with 32KB L1, you get 16K for data, 16K for instructions. So in this test you see the 16K half for data.

Older processors usually have a unified L1 so you see all of it in a test like this.

Looks like your L2 is working alright. Check out that massive disparity between the performance of the L1 and even the L2. Yikes.

Very nice scores you got there, 2Mourty!

Although the memory throughput is slower than on a typical high-end 486, the POD more than makes up for that with its fast L1 cache and superior FPU performance.

After reading many reports which attested abysmal performance for the POD, I'm impressed. I did not know the 83 MHz POD was able to run at 100 MHz. Nice work!

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Which socket 3 motherboards will work with POD83 where the L2 is still usable?

AFAIG the mainboard has to support L1 cache in write-back mode, either in BIOS or via jumper settings.

Quick update. I set the L2 cache to write-through instead of write-back and memory bandwith tripled. Wierd huh? Anybody have any idea why? Other scores went up a bit too.

2Mourty wrote:

Quick update. I set the L2 cache to write-through instead of write-back and memory bandwith tripled. Wierd huh? Anybody have any idea why? Other scores went up a bit too.

Weird...."welcome to the world of buggy'n'crappy socket 3 mobo's" 😵 😁

Well, on many other Socket3 boards L2 cache doesn't work at all with a POD installed, so you can consider yourself lucky 😉

@2Mourty: Can you measure a difference between WT and WB cache in other programs (like PCPBench)?

On my PVI-486SP3 the L1/L2 WT/WB settings in BIOS don't seem to change anything. The L1 cache always uses the same setting as determined by the JP23 jumper (2-3: WT, 3-4: WB).
Has anyone decoded the whole jumper block on this board? Some settings are obvious when you compare CPU features with the positions listed in the manual, but others may need some testing.

I ran the PC Player benchmark. With the L2 cache set to write-back I get a 7.9. With the L2 cache set to write-through I get a 9.4. I also tried my copy of Mechwarrior2 3DFX. On write-back I couldn't really play once fighting started, to jerky; On write-through I could play just fine. It made quite a difference. I'm glad I decided to randomly switch the setting. The performance boost makes no sense...... but I won't complain. All of my old Sierra and Lucasarts games still work great and I can run Mechwarrior 2 3DFX. 😉

To put this in perspective what is a median score for a socket 3 motherboard? Also I might try PCPlayer with my et6000 instead of the Virge/DX I have in there right now.

2Mourty wrote:

With the L2 cache set to write-back I get a 7.9. With the L2 cache set to write-through I get a 9.4.

I think the L2 cache on this board doesn't work at all when it is set to write-back mode and a POD is installed. Which is OK, as long as it works in write-through mode, you don't lose much.

2Mourty wrote:

To put this in perspective what is a median score for a socket 3 motherboard?

A good score would be ~8.5 for a 486 CPU on a PVI-486SP3 (at both 80 and 100 MHz).

Just a quick update to show the improved performance with L2 cache actually functioning. These 2 pictures are from Jedi Knight. The game is running with the Diamond Monster 3d Voodoo1 Card I have on this motherboard. I apologize for the pictures quality my little digital camera stinks.

The first shot is in the bar at the beginning of the game if you cant make out the fraps digits it says 22. The second is outside the bar and the digits are 30. Not bad for a socket 3 motherboard and a CPU going at 83 mhz! 😉

Hello, I'm new to VOGONS and am currently fooling around with some 486 / 386 era hardware to build me a couple of retro gaming boxes. Anyways 2Mourty, I have this exact same motherboard and have been fooling with it. Are you changing the L2 cache status in the BIOS? I have discovered so far that with the L2 cache set to write-through in the BIOS that cachechk7 will recognize all 128MB of 60ns FPMmemory I have installed with no non-cacheable areas. However if I set the L2 cache to write-back, then cachechk7 reports only 64MB memory cacheable and the throughput numbers are terrible. Speedsys is also much faster with it set to write-through, like your results. Will report more when I try an AMD 5x86 133MHz, and an Intel 486 100MHz Overdrive chip. This board seems pretty modern for a 486 board, it even allows my PCI SATA card to work perfectly and recognize a 160GB SATA hard drive. I have to refresh my Windows 9x skills though, as I'm not sure about SATA drivers for that old of an OS. Would be pretty crazy to have SATA hooked up to a 486 though!!

there would be no problem using a SATA controller in your pc 386DX40, it will just work like a normal SCSI controller of the era, but YOU NEED to provide windows with the appopriate drivers for your controller (like you would in case of a SCSI controller)
and the idea of a 160GB SATA disk on an older machine is fine, as long as the whole disk is recognised 😀 imagine all the isos you can store there and play games without slow/noisy cd-roms

keropi wrote:

there would be no problem using a SATA controller in your pc 386DX40, it will just work like a normal SCSI controller of the era, but YOU NEED to provide windows with the appopriate drivers for your controller (like you would in case of a SCSI controller)
and the idea of a 160GB SATA disk on an older machine is fine, as long as the whole disk is recognised 😀 imagine all the isos you can store there and play games without slow/noisy cd-roms

Will be lots of 2gig partitions with FAT16, lolololol 😁

why fat16? 386DX40 said he will be using windows, I assume 98SE? so he can easily do FAT32 partitions :p

keropi wrote:

why fat16? 386DX40 said he will be using windows, I assume 98SE? so he can easily do FAT32 partitions :p

Sure...would be fun to see how long that install would take...can imagine the install time left counter saying "estimated time left 12h 59mins when half way thru the install 😁

LOOOOOLLLLL
imagine 2GB partitions... the letters will be all used before the HD space 🤣

🤣, FAT16 would be crazy! Actually I am using 98lite, with the sleek install using the Windows 95 Explorer and IE removed. I have it installed in the system right now using a 20GB 7200rpm hard drive, using Ontrack's drive overlay. I am still experimenting with the Lucky Star boards's memory limitations. So far I have found my best results to be 96MB of memory with the CPU L1 set to write back cache, and the L2 on the board set to write though. If I remember correctly, when I set the L2 to write back with an 8 bit tag width, the board won't cache more than 32MB of system memory according to CTCM7. If I set the tag bit width to 7 bits, it will cache all 96MB, but the bandwidth is terrible and Windows crashes alot. So I have found write through L2 is best on this board, and if I install 128MB, it won't cache all of it, but will cache all 96MB of memory. I have tried a 5x86 133, a Pentium Overdrive 83MHz, and a 486 DX4 100 overdive CPU in this board. The 5x86 is fastest in Windows, but the 486 FPU is lousy for games like Quake 1 ( I have a Voodoo card too). I will probably go with the Pentium Overdrive as the final configuration. I'll try and post some screenshots of Speedsys soon! 😀

I'll have to look around to see if I have 96meg of memory and try it out to see if I can match your results. Good job experimenting with th 7bit 8bit settings!