I ran some benchmarks:

Speedsys v4.78

3dbench

Vidspeed

From what i can see in these, the evergreen upgrade appears to be working properly, cpu speed test shows it being a bit lower than a dx4/100. However all this seems a bit subpar, and video seems pretty crappy. I installed quake too, and i get like 4 fps in the small room at the begining of the first episode.

Unless someone has something to recommend i try before ill set up the other motherboard with the overdrive and ATI wonder and compare.

Something is WRONG with your memory throughput. Seriously. A memory bandwidth of ~14mb/s? That HORRID. here are 2 benchmarks I just measured, One is from my 386dx-40 with 256kb cache and the other from a cyrix 5x86 @ 100mhz with NO L2 cache.

There is some conflict somewhere. I'd try the other 486 board real quick and see if the numbers are the same.

edit:

My 3dbench scores are 16.6 for the 386 and 55.6 on the 486

are you using an isa video card on the 486 ?

no, its pci. But it doesnt matter for the 2 benchmarks I used.

luckybob wrote:

no, its pci. But it doesnt matter for the 2 benchmarks I used.

Even for 3dbench ?

Anyway its obvious looking at your results there is something wrong with my system, ill try with other board..

edit : btw last night i made a small test in quake and made the screen smaller and at the smallest its still choppy, doesnt improve frame rate all that much. This made my think that the ISA bus bottleneck is not an issue in the problem. I tried with another video card also, doesnt change anything.

Have you tried the turbo switch? It's possible when you reassembled the machine, you connected the switch backwards or something.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Have you tried the turbo switch? It's possible when you reassembled the machine, you connected the switch backwards or something.

Nah, when i put the turbo off, i go from 4 fps to 0.5 fps so its not the issue 😉

I made a small last test before trying other mobo. Switched the overdrive back to 486/33 cpu, removed 72 pins ram and used all 32mb of 30pin from other mobo : Same exact abysmal memory throughput. 13.8 mb sec.

Board 1, the rusty one that some of you seemed to consider a lost cause, runs like a sly old fox. Gets me like 58mb/s memory throughput, 3dbench is 34 fps, not much more than it was on the second board but still better.

Duke however flies like a bat in the night! Its pretty much the way i remembered it was. Not as smooth as on a pentium or something but still totally playable and pretty smooth most of the time. I dont know if i should have better results than that but at least its descent. Maybe some optimizations are possible.

I really wonder whats wrong with the other board...

Another thing i noted is that after 5 mins of duke3d, this evergreen gets too hot to touch! Ill have to mount a fan on the thing.

I wish i could compare my speedsys results with others from machines similiar to mine. Luckybob's 586 totaly leaves my rig in the dust in that benchmark but i suspect the mobo is a bit more modern.

Yea that 586 board is a pc chips i915. 4 pci slots, 256mb of ram, up to 1mb cache (LOL), and supports anything that fits into socket 3. Also, I re-tested this board with an isa video card and got 35 fps in 3d bench. so having a powerful pci card does make a big difference.

Well, among the things that piss me off about all this ( beside the fact that im still up at 3am ) is that i end up with the good board in the ugly case, putting these machines together take forever compared to an atx, i just dont feel like switching them.

Also, i have a board that performs like a slug and i dont know why... There are 2 mystery jumpers on the board according to that schematic Anonymous Coward found. This is kinda funny because all the paper says is :"Factory configured - do not alter. " . Sounds like an invitation to play with them LoL , what do you guys think ?

"usually" jumpers like that control features built into the motherboard. For example, setting #1 may tell the bios that the southbridge either X or Y.

I have a 486 board that requires a special jumper setting depending upon what BRAND the cache is! Go ahead and experiment! I can't imagine anything terrible will happen as long as you remember how to put it back.

I have not posted here in a while. But i felt like this topic needed a better closure.

First, A big thanks to all of you who helped me here, I learned much and ended up with a great 486 system. Computer performs very well, is stable and runs games of the Era splendidly. Here are some pictures of the finalized build.
Specs: Evergreen AM586x133mhz, 32mb ram, 64 kb cache, 6.4 gb fujitsu hdd, ATI vga wonder XL, MediaChips MAD16 sound card, Protec NE2000 compatible NIC adapter. I may yet swap the sound card for something else and/or add a mpu401 later.

The case is a bit plain and lacking the digital tubro display, but its clean and solid. Its also well buit in the inside. There is always room for modding if i want it more "blingy"

On this picture you can see how i attached a ball bearing fan to cool the evergreen overdrive chip. I used tie-wraps and some rubber to fix it right above the chip. The cpu used to be too hot too touch, now its barely warm and this fan is very quiet.

There you see the 6.4gb hd on the right, a good view of PSU and floppy drives. I have cleaned everything inside out, opened psu, inspected parts, dusted everything thoroughly, floppy drives heads have been carefully cleaned, Hard drive was surface scanned and found to be great. This 486 can also boot from CDs and can read pretty much anything thanks to this good quality Plextor CD-RW drive.

Now this system above had been disfigured by battery acid and some of you were very pessimistic, but it was actually still strong in the inside and it feels great now after a good cleaning and some fixing up. Was not as bad as it looked.
Really, this thread has been great, BUT IM NOT DONE YET!!!

I recently found a 486dx2 66 mhz. Complete system with VLB video card and stuff. But it suffered Extensive ACID damage due to damned NiCd battery leaking all over. This time it is MUCH worse than the above system was, it will not boot, traces are destroyed all over ... Stay tuned for my next potentially tragic 486 thread: " To save or not to save ... a 486 "