Opti Viper was by many accounts slower than FX even though it came out just a little bit earlier than 430VX/HX. It found some use in laptops and low-end IBM Aptivas, but otherwise it was the last nail into Opti's chipset business. I believe the biggest problems with Opti were memory bandwidth and PCI implementation. To add insult to injury, your Intel Zappa board is one of the early 430FX boards that used 486-style async L2-cache - most 430FX boards that came after that actually had pipeline burst cache. Without PB cache 430FX effectively has performance of an earlier 430NX (Neptune) chipset. In Quake that would result in a difference of 5 FPS (about 15%) for the same amount of cache. A 430FX motherboard with 512KB PB cache would be about 20% faster in Quake compared to your Zappa. I don't have a Viper motherboard, but I have Socket 5 boards using three Opti Pentium chipsets that came before it and competed against 430NX and 430FX: 571/572, Cobra and Python, all of them VLB-based, PCI is only available via a bridge chip. Cobra and Python could only match Zappa in most of my tests under these conditions: - a lot of cache. My Python board supports up to 2MB of L2 cache which I think is not supported by any 430NX or 430FX board. My Cobra board supports up to 512KB - still double the amount Zappa has. In 1994-1995 I think 2MB of L2 cache would cost about $200 while Zappa itself would be around $250 :) - very tight timings for cache and memory (430FX doesn't allow user-defined timings at all). Opti had a habit of having very conservative BIOS defaults, but usually reacts to tweaks pretty well - but yeah, you do need pretty solid memory and cache chips for that. Fun fact: 430FX actually uses 4-3-3-3 timings for write cycles in async cache (3-1-1-1 in PB), which is often slower than just writing data to RAM. Because of that, 430FX without any cache would be faster in Quake and Doom than it is with async cache. Here's more info on that: dependency-injection.com/intel-430fx-triton-l2-cache/ - VLB videocard and IDE controller - because all of my Socket 5 Opti boards have PCI implementation in a form of a 82C822 bridge chip. That chip is essentially a VLB device and its job is to try and pass PCI requests whenever it can, making PCI a second class citizen in the system and adding latency to PCI cards. Viper is the first and only Opti chipset to have a native PCI implementation, but I'm not sure how good it is. For Quake at 320x200 I had 24.1 FPS with Zappa, 23.5 FPS with a Cobra board, 24.4 FPS with a Python board. PC Player at 320x200 gave me 25.7 FPS for Zappa, 25.5 for Cobra and 27 for Python. Pretty much the same dynamic was seen in Speedsys memory and cache tests: Cobra being a bit slower than 430FX, Python being a bit faster thanks to 4x the cache. Note that I used Ark Logic 1000VL on VLB boards and 2000PV on Zappa for my tests - those are among the fastest DOS videocards, but unfortunately I don't have a PCI 1000PV card. 2000 uses a 64 bit chip, 1000 is 32 bit, which is probably why at 640x480 Zappa was faster in both Quake and PCP. Bottom line: at the very least Opti Pentium chipsets had crappy memory architecture which you had to compensate with a lot of high-quality cache. Opti was a "budget" choice that didn't really save you money. In 1994 a Pentium 90 PC would cost at least $3000, so saving $50 on a motherboard and then buying $200 worth of cache and messing with BIOS settings certainly didn't make any sense at all. I suspect the same is true for your Viper board, so it would probably need a 512KB cache stick to match Zappa a bit closer. But it would still never match a full-featured 430FX board. Sorry for the long rant, hope it could be somewhat useful :)
Wow, no need to apologise for all that. I really found that to be an incredibly useful "rant". Please rant away! I must admit I would very much like to get one of these Ark Logic VLB boards, but they are so expensive nowadays. I have the PCI version, but it is crap in comparison. The scores you give for Zappa, Cobra and Python board do seem reasonably comparable to what I was getting. It has actually amazed me how crappy the Opti is. I could try another COAST module I guess, though I don't have one currently, I think. The memory should be ok though. I have some pretty reasonable chips based on other benchmarks I've done on Socket 3.
The "PBA" means "Printed Board Assembly", a typical label found on Intel-manufactured boards of the era. It basically denotes a particular product type and is often found accompanied by another similar-type label with "AA" at the start, the AA standing for "Altered Assembly", which indicates that it's a particular configuration of the main PBA. So, for example, if you had a PBA which had 3 different variants, say no cache, 256k cache, and 512k cache, each one would have the same PBA number, but different AA numbers. The 3- numbers after the dash is the specific revision of that PBA or AA. The yellow label in the upper left corner is the serial number for the specific board, and the letter at the start of that number denotes where the board was manufactured. If that number starts with a "K" or "U", it means it was manufactured in Ireland, although most of the boards I saw were K serial numbers. I don't remember the other codes very well these days 😆. So, you've got a genuine Intel-manufactured board there.
Back then, we would use Intel TX Boards for Socket 7, most boards with ALI, VIA or other chipsets performing worse. Unfortunately it does not support 100MHz FSB
People had a tendency to skip every other generations of PC's/CPU's because of fear and they were already invested in a PC. In other words, People did not invest in 8088's because they were new, but started to see their value, so they invested in the 80286 gen. Then the 80386's got ignored because people had just bought the 286's. Then when the 80486 rolled out, people were ready to invest in a new machine again. The same thing happened when the 1st Pentiums rolled out. It's true they were hot, but everyone already had a "fast" PC, so they waited for the 2nd gen Pentiums. Same thing happened with Windows. If you look back, it was every other version of Windows that was successful.
We had a school lab back around 1996/7 that had a mix of pentium and 486 pcs. We’d get into physical altercations when it came to lunchtime quake sessions.. lol
Back in the day, I found a discarded slim Pentium 1 machine, I upped the ram, installed a voodoo 2, and was able to carry it around to play multiplayer quake 3. Many games had CPU requirements, but running the game in glide always bypassed the checks.
For the little it's worth, I'm Canadian, and I'm even fluent in French, but in spite of at least three decades of effort to retrain myself, I'll still say "caysh" if I'm not careful.
your experience with early PCI boards reflect my own. i bought a asus PCI board and expected huge gains but instead was extremely disappointed when my vesa local bus system smoked the PCI board and i returned it next day.
It look like you have a very very early revision of the Intel Advanced/ZP (Zappa) motherboard with Triton chipset. The first revisions could only go to 100 MHz (90 Mhz officially supported). Later they pushed the support to 120, then 133 Mhz. The latest available BIOS is 1.00.11.BS0. You have the first BIOS (1.00.01.BS0). This motherboard was also distributed in the OEM channel such as Gateway 2000 (very very widely widespread).
Very interesting. Thanks for the information! It's interesting that there don't seem to be more of these out there now. I guess a lot of people just threw those Gateway's away. I quite like the board so far, but maybe when I try some better socket 7's my opinion will change.
The Intel Pentium actually went to 233MHz on socket 7 boards, but I happen to have a 266MHz socket 7 Intel which is an OEM CPU for Compaq computers installed in a "mid-range" socket 7 motherboard.
Right, but I was talking about second gen Pentiums. Pentium MMX is considered a major revision, and unless the source I used is incorrect (possible), there was no second gen Pentium 233. At least I didn't immediately see it on Wikipedia.
@@PCRetroTech Unfortunately, Wikipedia can be incomplete even with things and events that are well-known. For example (keeping with the vintage theme of your channel), look up the Speak and Spell. You'll see a reference to the Cheetah Girls there that I myself added, but it's been re-worded since my input. In case you're curious, the song title that I referenced is "Dig a Little Deeper" where the Speak and Spell was used to spell the word "dig".
@@JVHShack Wikipedia is indeed a strange place. A whole lot of stuff has been challenged for removal, and then not removed, whilst other entries are just degraded without challenge. Unfortunately that is just how such a crowdsourced repository of knowledge has to operate though, and it couldn't be otherwise or it wouldn't exist. In this case I did actually use a primary reference for my research. It's also easy to find authoritative statements to this effect on forums online by people who should know, e.g. administrators of the anand tech forums, though in this case I used an even more reputable source. If I got it wrong, so did a lot of other "experts" before me.
@@PCRetroTech CPU Galaxy talked about it in a video. There was actually MMX chips produced on socket 7 up to 266, and a kind of '' unofficial '' chinese Tilamook core clocked at 300 MHz, which was essentially a mobile version strapped into a socket 7 package. But 233 and 266 MHz chips were really not common, since it was at the end of life of the socket 7 (at that point, Intel was already producing Slot 1 CPUs at 233 MHz) The Tilamook core chips clocked at 300 MHz were mobile-only.
What I would be really curious is to see a Socket 6 board in action. They are freaking rare, as it was a kind a transition platform between the socket 5, 7 and 8.
When my Dad upgraded my gaming PC back in the day, from a 486DX4-100 to a Pentium 100, one of my friends also upgraded his machine soon after, but he got a Cyrix 5x86 clocked at 120. We were both surprised how much faster the Pentium really was. Quake wasn't really playable at 100MHz, even in 320x200 ... But even in games like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, my P100 easily outpaced his Cyrix. I was also surpised that my P100 overclocked to 133 and was still stabile as a rock. I didn't dare push it further. The cooler actually had an issue later on, and the motherboard would play für elise :D
I found a manual for my board, and I probably could try it at 133MHz. The only thing is my board revision is so early I'm not actually sure it is supported. I think the Pentium 100 is really one of the first Intel CPUs where you didn't feel at all limited by the hardware if you knew what you were doing as a programmer.
Retroraven - quake was playable on Pentium 100. it was even playable on pentium 75, it got around 20 fps, if I dont mistaken. For 1996 standard, it was still playable. most pentiums had large overclocking headroom. they were doing good and rock stable , and as intel was first in that time, and overconfident, they didnt have to push them to the edge. They rather choosen greater stability under all circumstances. That means only one for overclocker, large headroom. Usually pentium 120, could always do 133, and sometimes 150-166. 187-200 almost never.
@@PCRetroTech the board can go 133 for sure, if it supports pentium 120. because it has to have 66 mhz FSB and also 2 x multiplier. So it can be at least set by jumpers always.
I actually had a system with a Pentium 100 in it, but I always ran it at 133MHz because no matter what I tried I couldn't get it to run stably at 100MHz. Fun fact: with a passive heat sink!
Intel had an internal contest to "Name that processor!" instead of just calling it the 80586. When the winner, Pentium was announced, John Dvorak of PC Magazine said it sounded like a kind of toothpaste :) The early Pentiums were indeed extremely hot. I think the speed of the first release was 75MHz. The jump from a 386 to a 486 was enormous in terms of performance, not so much the 486 to the Pentium. There were so many releases at different clocks that people grew weary of it, and the 1st gen Pentiums are not remembered fondly. BTW this is the year the name is retired. From now on it's just "Intel Processor". Do a video on the infamous Pentium bug (FPU hardware error)!
Nah, the first releases of the Pentium were clocked at 60 MHz, then 66, and then 75. Those were the early models, kind of grey-ish with the golden heat spreader. Those were also the ones with the floating point error. And the difference in terms of performance was massive from one x86 CPU to another, ESPECIALLY from the 486 to the Pentium, because the Pentium was the first superscalar processor. The x86 line was not. As for the rest, you're correct. And in fact, Pentium means five in latin. So that makes sense that they name it Pentium instead of 586 :) And also, because it was to put an end per-se to the x86 family, because they were pushing the superscalar architecture with the Pentium.
This is my time to shine :D That board is a intel Advanced/ZP (aka zappa). Got one myself and it's horrible. Can't get it to work reliably with usb addin cards no matter which os (tried w95 r2, w98, linux etc). Another annoyance is its hdd drive support. Forget anything larger than 7-8 gigs :)
Oh, thanks very much for identifying the board! One would have thought something like that would be easy to track down, but for some reason I had trouble finding anything about this board after quite a lot of searching. I'm wondering now if Intel still have something about it on their site. I was impressed with the performance of the board, that's all I can say. But I haven't done too many Pentium motherboard experiments, so perhaps I'll eventually discover it wasn't as good as it initially seemed.
@@PCRetroTech My board has another label between the ISA slots, "PBA 638995-812", that identifies which model it is (it looks like they were supposed to be ordered in a processor-mobo bundle). The other labels near the edge were of no help to me either :)
@@PCRetroTech This is my only socket 5 board, so I would just identify it for you today, but it's too late. Christian was faster. :) Btw, it's easy to identify board today, just use Ultimate Retro project. You just enter socket type, format, number of PCI slots, ISA, AGP slots, and it will list all boards images. The bunch of enthusiastics works hard on this project everyday, and about 5-10 boards per day are added. I'm helping also a little bit, to bring them pictures, specifications, correct bugs. I'm sure, you'll find by this way also this board, even without knowing, it's Intel Zappa.
@@warrax111 I know about Ultimate Retro of course. I have mentioned it on the Channel. Actually they have requested a photo and BIOS dump of my board because they don't have the details of my particular revision.
Intel chipsets for socket 5/7 were pretty good, there's a reason why some of the chipset makers that thrived in the 386 and 486 era disappeared in the late 90s only for SiS, VIA and ALI to remain until the mid/late 2000's. To be honest, socket 7 doesn't bring much to the table by itself. It's like Socket 2 or 3 with 5V only over standard 486. They basically support the same CPUs so it doesn't really matter which socket you have, until you find a socket 3 board with 3.3V capability or a socket 7 with a split voltage capability (which can then run Pentium mmx, K6, 6x86mx, etc).
@@DxDeksor I don't quite understand. Obviously Intel continued to make chipsets and motherboards for many years. Do you mean that they were just gearing up for Pentium II or something? So this was their final Pentium motherboard? Only other manufacturers considered socket 7 worth investing in because of AMD chips like the K6 etc?
@@PCRetroTech I said that intel continued to support socket 7 until about 1997 with the i430TX. After that they were still making chips but they didn't make any more breaktrough. AGP appeared only on VIA, SiS and ALi chipsets. There's no intel chipset with AGP for socket 7 and since they didn't release anything new by 1998 for this platform, I believe they considered it as a dead-end.
From a non-techincal standpoint(the technical stuff seems to be well covered), I was always under the impression that PC Chips was very much a "budget" board back then and problems were not unexpected. So, again, non-technically, I would not be surprised that the older intel board would outperform it. My memory from back then isn't the greatest, so I don't recall if I did a build with that brand or not. Often if I did a build for someone else, tho, usually it was just a person who wanted something cheap that worked, not a "high performance" gaming machine.
Wow that is one EARLY Socket 5 board. 256K of Async cache. Most FX boards were supplied with 512K of pipeline burst cache. For that early board, I am wondering if you didn't have too much ram in it for it to cache.
Nope, most of FX boards did have 256KB. Many of them had COAST module option, to increase to 512KB. Or directly needed 512kb module. But to see 512KB built in cache board is rare. It was even rare for VX chipset. It become standard for HX and TX chipsets, where it could be said, most of boards had built-in 512kb.
we quite soon changed our 90mhz to run at 100mhz and it never had any problems from that. the mobo was a lot like that and I can't remember the brand(i never knew what the brand was I guess). edit: and yea the difference for 486 for some stuff was quite a lot. shoot the legs. increase resolution for mw2. it's got a tactical view mode too and you need to target the enemies to get info about them. mw2 mercs is the best mw2 mech game, with longest campaign and buying stuff and everything like that.
Ah thanks for the info on MW2! I was mainly interested in how smooth it would run, but at some point I might try to play it a bit more to see what it is really like as a game.
@@PCRetroTech I think around p100 was what it was developed for. they're great games and play pretty much like a modern mechwarrior game. I think mw2:mercs needs a bit more, the levels are more complex in geometry, if i remember correctly it's a win95 only game though. we copied the base mw2 on floppies... interstate '76 is another great game on the same engine, just with cars and funk, but outfitting the car in that is same as mech in mw2 pretty much. also win95+ only though I think but if i recall correctly 100mhz pentium was enough.
In mechwarrior 2 you use the target key to select your targets. An info box will tell you what is targeted lol. The mech on the left was the enemy. Btw MW2 sux on an amd486 100, all graphics off at 320x200 to get usable frames
@@viniciusferrao Oh yes, now that you mention it, I did notice this. I think the only logical explanation is that when this board was made there were 36 hours in a day and that we have simply been forced to fit everything into a 24 hour day now for so long that we have all forgotten.
The Opti Viper chipset was complete...trash, as soon as I saw it, I knew what the result would be. For the non MMX Pentiums, the Intel HX Chipset was king.
The only difference I can imagine from socket 5 to 7 is the voltage, which on socket 7 can be much lower. You would have to use a multimeter to check what voltage the processor is being fed, and also check if the capacitors on the board are within the expected values (mainly ESR).
Socket 7 boards certainly support later chips which have dual voltage, but they still support the earlier chips. Of course the chipset is also different between the boards.
@@PCRetroTech Socket 5 was 5V-only, like the socket 3 and 4. You were lucky to run a second gen Pentium on that Socket 5 board without frying the CPU. The fact it was 5V only was the exact reason why it ran so hot. The design of the CPU wasn't made in the first place to run at 5V, but hey, that was the technology at the time. That was essentially a design defect. That is most often what happens with first generation stuff. Lots of flaws, heat problems, etc. The real first generation Pentium was clocked at 60 MHz, than 66 and then 75 MHz, on Socket 5, that were grey-ish with the golden heat spreader. Those were also the infamous first gen Pentiums with the floating point error. They then switched to the full on ceramic top, 66 MHz and up. That being said, I don't remember there was real Pentiums (not ODP CPUs) that were made on Socket 4. ODP were not technically Pentiums, but a kind of hybrid between the Pentium and the 486. Keep also in mind the Pentium was the first ever superscalar processor (outside the x64 DEC Alpha, because yes, DEC already had RISC x64 CPUs as early as 1989, already running at speeds twice if not more than the other manufacturers on the market at the time) Earlier Socket 7 was rated at 3.3V, no dual voltage. Dual voltage only came out later with the Pentium MMX and the AMD K6.
@@PCRetroTech I'd say that there some you can take, and some you can leave. But even nowadays, Intel official documentation on those CPUs are not that hard to find. Necroware, for instance, uses some of that official documentation in his " upgrading socket 7 board beyond the limits " video series. I just know about all that because I spent literally my early teenage years in my room building retro builds like those. Some of them were beyond success, and some others... well... I failed miserably and fried something. Prime example, running a Socket 7 Pentium into a Socket 5 board. They both technically fit in one another ( Socket 5 Socket 7) despite the sockets fhemselves having 320 pins (Socket 5) and the other having 321 pins. Though I guess the CPUs both seem to only use 320 pins, the last one on the socket 7 had another purpose (that I don't know in details). But the voltage isn't the same at all. Much like the Slot 1 (Intel) and Slot A (AMD). Physically compatible (if you remove the standing brackets), but electrically, absolutely not.
I actually thought I did look it up there, but didn't see it. But now I know what it is (another viewer recognised it), I should be able to identify it.
Search for Zappa I have the gateway version of this board and uploaded pictures of it I also tried a dozen times to leave a comment and it would get deleted over and over
The 430FX Triton I (1995) is a typical chipset for the first generation of Socket 7 boards. It is possible to use it for Socket 5 as well, but if we want to research technologies from the time when the first 3V Pentium P54C (75-100MHz) were introduced to the market (1994), then it would be better to use the chipset from that time, i.e. 430NX (1994).
The full 800x600 super EGA resolution could perhaps be set by multiplying the the horizontal and vertical sync by the amount of screen images you’re seeing? (H: x6.5 & V: x9.5) Does each screen image have a delay compared to the previous one? Just thinking out loud here. Rubber duck!
I'm not sure about the delay. That would be interesting to check. But simply multiplying the figures by 6.5 and 9.5 won't work. I didn't show it in the video but it starts off with about 2x2 tiles, then it increases the number of tiles until it reaches the number that you see. In other words it is a function of the adapter to go looking for settings that work. When it doesn't find any it just stops. So it is something else that causes it to not display correctly.
@@PCRetroTech Maybe. Either way, what you just said is probably a much safer reply to an admitted risqué comment. Not as risky as bringing in-laws to an internecine fight, but still.
Your motherboard is an Intel Advanced/ZED ! Could you please send a picture to Ultimateretro so we can add it to the page and also dump its bios ? Thanks :)
It's my understanding that Pentium era Intel Chipsets were quite solid and generally performed better than their third-party counterparts. It's unsurprising to me that the Socket 5 Intel chipset performed better than the Opti Viper chipset. I'd be curious to know how an early Intel Socket 7 chipset compares to the Socket 5 and the Opti Viper to confirm.
early Intel socket 7 chipset? That is VX or HX I mean... because FX chipset were used both on socket 5 and socket 7 boards. It would not make any differance on same CPU. No matter if you use socket 5 or socket 7, it's only connection type. But I think I saw also socket 5 VX chipset. Anyway, early Intel socket 7 chipset, doesn't have sense. Because in case of FX, there's not change, and in case VX or HX, it's just very weird to call it early socket 7 chipset, because, there is only one more from Intel, and that is TX. So I don't see any sense of using "early socket 7 intel chipset". Just used one of the four right terms: FX, VX, HX, TX. TX is not early . But VX and HX eighter. It is middle one. So last one is FX. But that's not early socket 7 chipset, because, it was introduced with socket 5. Only later, it was still used as old (low budget) option for both socket 5 and socket 7.
It wasn't a surprise to me. I worked in a small computer shop were we built custom machines, and we knew from benchmarks that OPTI was slower and/or less stable. As a tech, I always rolled my eyes and sighed when a customer had chosen a cheap motherboard and more expensive on everything else.
Most people skipped the first Pentium I skipped 486... My Pentium 60 had VLB, I exchanged it under warranty (+$$) for a Pentium 90 as it had the FDIV bug what a shame I didn't knew about the socket 4 overdrive it would had been fun to have a 133MHz Pentium with VLB. 😁
It's pretty easy to look back nowadays and wish we'd known more back then. It's one of the things I like about retrocomputing. We can experience things and push hardware further than we could back then. If only we'd had the internet back then, hey!
I thought as much. I'm amazed they rushed things to market like that. It can't have helped their reputation. On the other hand, Pentium ended up doing astonishingly well, so maybe they just thought of it as advertising.
@@PCRetroTech Yeah, and even those weren't worth it. Most Socket 4 boards had a chipset that was rather incapable of letting the 120 or 133 perform anywhere near what they would on newer Pentium board.
1:56 Sorry for nitpicking but I don’t think the 100Mhz Pentium was actually available for sale along with the 90Mhz. Sure, it was *announced* alongside it, but this is very different. After all, the Pentium Pro was only available at 150Mhz in November 1995, with 200Mhz parts only coming out in January 1996 or thereabouts. Looking at magazine scans from the likes of PC Mag and Infoworld from the first half of 1994 gives the impression that it took around a couple of extra months before you could find any system rated at 100Mhz as a home consumer. It wasn’t until the 2nd generation of Pentium II that Intel started getting better at delivering higher-clocked and lower-clocked parts simultaneously out the door.
The release date in both case was March 7 1994. In the video I said "Released". I did not say there were consumer systems based on them at the same time.
I think the RGB2HDMI can only do up to 10 bit colour depth and most of the modes you are trying to do are higher. I could be wrong on this as I do not have a RGB2HDMI at the moment.
These are 16/64 colour modes which requires 6 bit. The RGB2HDMI certainly handles that. I am fairly sure that's not the issue here. This is SuperEGA not SuperVGA.
FPU is not that much better on Pentium compared to 486. Quake uses the fact that Pentium can do FPU calculations in parallel with non-FPU calculations. Almost like having 2 cores. 486 couldn't do that, and that's why quake gets such a different result.
I'd read that Pentium had a fast multiplier which is what made it faster. It didn't use CORDIC algorithms to make up for not having a fast multiplier. Also if I look at the instruction timings for the floating point operations on the Pentium, they are typically a half or a third of the cycles of the FPU in the 486. That seems like it would be sufficient to explain the difference.
In fact I looked this up and I think the story is a bit more complicated. Michael Abrash has an article that states that while an fdiv is running, one can run some integer arithmetic at the same time on the Pentium. This has led some people to say that the Pentium could run FPU and CPU instructions at the same time. The thing is, the 486 could as well. The issue is that in the 486, many FPU instructions require the CPU for parts of the computation. In the Pentium there are two independent pipelines, called the u- and v-pipelines. Not all instructions can be paired, but some can, giving the Pentium an additional advantage over the 486. What Abrash is getting at is that a long-running instruction such as fdiv ties up the CPU for most of its execution time on the 486, so the Pentium has a very distinct advantage in code that uses this particular instruction, so long as it is paired with the correct instructions.
Have you tried flash the MR BIOS to this motherboard? I have the same board with MR BIOS and Pentium 200MHz (with a small BF1 modification). The biggest weakness of this board is the L2 cache. When it is disabled the computer runs faster.
Fascinating video on this second generation Pentium CPU! I didn’t know that the first generation Pentiums ran hot-Pentium 4s are more well known for their heat. What graphics card were you using in the motherboard with that Pentium?
Yep, I had some stability issues with my 60, opened the case and put my hand near the heatsink it was kind of hot, just touched it and the heatsink fins burned my skin instantly... The 80mm case fan that should had been blowing air was strangely seized, the computer was pretty much new and clean, never knew why that fan was like that but after moving the blades with my finger and connect/disconnect from power several times it started and never had any issue with it.
you should have removed the coast module and seen what kind of impact it would have had - the paradox thing sometimes can be, that the benchmarks run better without the module installed. but as others pointed out, opti is not that fast of a chipset. thank you for the video, i hope you dont mind my late response!
Compared to the Sk3 board in your "One of the BEST 486 Motherboards Ever Made" video; this Sk5 mobo's CACHE (although it's rated 5ns slower), somehow runs TWICE AS FAST in cachechk benchmark!!... (That might also have a lot to do with the higher score in Quake.) But why does the onboard cache run faster though?!?!
@@PCRetroTech This is just speculation, but i think it might have to do with the FSB speed. In the 486 video, you only showed CACHECHK using the DX4-100 with a 33MHz BUS. And here, we have a 66MHz BUS. Also, I just checked, and the RAM runs almost twice as fast too. Anyway, it would have been interesting if you had a picture of CACHECHK for the AMD 5x86 w/ OC'd BUS, and be able to compare. Coz if the bottleneck truly is the BUS, and not the memory/cache chips; than it would seem pointless to generally look for fast-specked chips/ram to put in 486 :)
@@B24Fox I personally think it is pointless. My observations so far is that the cache spec is irrelevant and the RAM spec is not so important as the silicon quality. I have fast spec RAM which is much worse in practice for overclocking that slower spec RAM. So far I've not observed any differences whatsoever in cache chips.
I believe you did it the other way around, I believe you increased FSB and decreased multiplier, that would explain lower latency on the onboard cache memory, the other way around not so much.
you shot your team mate... the red dot on the radar was a good clue. He was green... now the poor bastard is dead. on the tech side, your rig is running quiet well for an ISA video card? i still recall running quake on a 486dx2-66... with a half size screen.
@@PCRetroTech good sense of humour ... as an aussie it's good to follow fellow aussies. BTW, any chance you could do a review of a fully decked out dx2-66 of the 93-94 era? VLB 2mb video card, vlb hd controller 32 megs of ram 256cache. or maybe cryrix chips? 6x86 233 to 300 compared to p1 166-200mmx? that era is just nostalgic to me as it was when i was studying at tafe and begun my programming years.
@@davidsantiagoalonso Sounds like a nice machine. I'm not sure if I actually have a DDX2-66 chip or not. I have done a few videos on DX4-100 machines and I think I did an SX-33.
@@PCRetroTech as I am new to your channel, I'll watch through your play list on the way to work. I'm glad to have been blessed by the TH-cam algorithum gods. If you ever come across PC's like what I mentioned, I'd be most pleased to watch (sort of like pc galaxy - another content creator who does comparisons every now and again). Your content is much more in depth and I am able to feel a better connection [enjoy and resonate] with what you are trying to deliver. I hope you stay the course and deliver more content that we of that era grew up with and have such a deep nostalgic connection with. Thanks mate, if you are from south West Sydney, I'll happily shout you a drink at a local pub one day.
@@davidsantiagoalonso Thanks for the nice feedback. I'm originally from Sydney but living in the UK these days. I hope to return one day, if I can ever afford to live in Australia again! I used to live in Kingsgrove, but that was many, many years ago.
EGA output is not compatible with VGA. One is a 9 pin connector, the other 15 pin. I have a monitor with DVI and VGA inputs, but that wouldn't have helped here.
Right. And I mention this in the video of course. Socket 4 was first generation. In this video I am only talking about second generation, as I mentioned in the introduction.
@@PCRetroTech it must pass my atention span or you simply didn't word it clear enough for a foreigner :] anyway 5V chip would be a power generator for sure and i am kind of curious how well it would stack against 3.3v variant found on the socket 5/7 i had socket 3 and 7 , my friend had socket 4 and put cpu packward :] even though it was only one bent pin cpu was trashed and so was entire pc because it was just an old typewriter at that point
Cycle Through All Targets T Previous Target R Target Nearest Enemy E Target Friendly (Starmate) F Target Object Underneath Reticle Q Inspect Targeted Object I
its quite annoying how many people even dont know anything about games, which they show to us, here for example you didnt even open web browser to type there an MechWarrior 2 Controls to see how to play it, or just to open a manual, oh, or once i saw, that somebody thinks, that insterstate 76 is about racing, that guy even didnt know, that his car can shoot
Opti Viper was by many accounts slower than FX even though it came out just a little bit earlier than 430VX/HX. It found some use in laptops and low-end IBM Aptivas, but otherwise it was the last nail into Opti's chipset business. I believe the biggest problems with Opti were memory bandwidth and PCI implementation.
To add insult to injury, your Intel Zappa board is one of the early 430FX boards that used 486-style async L2-cache - most 430FX boards that came after that actually had pipeline burst cache. Without PB cache 430FX effectively has performance of an earlier 430NX (Neptune) chipset. In Quake that would result in a difference of 5 FPS (about 15%) for the same amount of cache. A 430FX motherboard with 512KB PB cache would be about 20% faster in Quake compared to your Zappa.
I don't have a Viper motherboard, but I have Socket 5 boards using three Opti Pentium chipsets that came before it and competed against 430NX and 430FX: 571/572, Cobra and Python, all of them VLB-based, PCI is only available via a bridge chip. Cobra and Python could only match Zappa in most of my tests under these conditions:
- a lot of cache. My Python board supports up to 2MB of L2 cache which I think is not supported by any 430NX or 430FX board. My Cobra board supports up to 512KB - still double the amount Zappa has. In 1994-1995 I think 2MB of L2 cache would cost about $200 while Zappa itself would be around $250 :)
- very tight timings for cache and memory (430FX doesn't allow user-defined timings at all). Opti had a habit of having very conservative BIOS defaults, but usually reacts to tweaks pretty well - but yeah, you do need pretty solid memory and cache chips for that. Fun fact: 430FX actually uses 4-3-3-3 timings for write cycles in async cache (3-1-1-1 in PB), which is often slower than just writing data to RAM. Because of that, 430FX without any cache would be faster in Quake and Doom than it is with async cache. Here's more info on that: dependency-injection.com/intel-430fx-triton-l2-cache/
- VLB videocard and IDE controller - because all of my Socket 5 Opti boards have PCI implementation in a form of a 82C822 bridge chip. That chip is essentially a VLB device and its job is to try and pass PCI requests whenever it can, making PCI a second class citizen in the system and adding latency to PCI cards. Viper is the first and only Opti chipset to have a native PCI implementation, but I'm not sure how good it is.
For Quake at 320x200 I had 24.1 FPS with Zappa, 23.5 FPS with a Cobra board, 24.4 FPS with a Python board. PC Player at 320x200 gave me 25.7 FPS for Zappa, 25.5 for Cobra and 27 for Python. Pretty much the same dynamic was seen in Speedsys memory and cache tests: Cobra being a bit slower than 430FX, Python being a bit faster thanks to 4x the cache.
Note that I used Ark Logic 1000VL on VLB boards and 2000PV on Zappa for my tests - those are among the fastest DOS videocards, but unfortunately I don't have a PCI 1000PV card. 2000 uses a 64 bit chip, 1000 is 32 bit, which is probably why at 640x480 Zappa was faster in both Quake and PCP.
Bottom line: at the very least Opti Pentium chipsets had crappy memory architecture which you had to compensate with a lot of high-quality cache. Opti was a "budget" choice that didn't really save you money. In 1994 a Pentium 90 PC would cost at least $3000, so saving $50 on a motherboard and then buying $200 worth of cache and messing with BIOS settings certainly didn't make any sense at all. I suspect the same is true for your Viper board, so it would probably need a 512KB cache stick to match Zappa a bit closer. But it would still never match a full-featured 430FX board.
Sorry for the long rant, hope it could be somewhat useful :)
Wow, no need to apologise for all that. I really found that to be an incredibly useful "rant". Please rant away!
I must admit I would very much like to get one of these Ark Logic VLB boards, but they are so expensive nowadays. I have the PCI version, but it is crap in comparison.
The scores you give for Zappa, Cobra and Python board do seem reasonably comparable to what I was getting.
It has actually amazed me how crappy the Opti is. I could try another COAST module I guess, though I don't have one currently, I think. The memory should be ok though. I have some pretty reasonable chips based on other benchmarks I've done on Socket 3.
The "PBA" means "Printed Board Assembly", a typical label found on Intel-manufactured boards of the era. It basically denotes a particular product type and is often found accompanied by another similar-type label with "AA" at the start, the AA standing for "Altered Assembly", which indicates that it's a particular configuration of the main PBA. So, for example, if you had a PBA which had 3 different variants, say no cache, 256k cache, and 512k cache, each one would have the same PBA number, but different AA numbers. The 3- numbers after the dash is the specific revision of that PBA or AA.
The yellow label in the upper left corner is the serial number for the specific board, and the letter at the start of that number denotes where the board was manufactured. If that number starts with a "K" or "U", it means it was manufactured in Ireland, although most of the boards I saw were K serial numbers. I don't remember the other codes very well these days 😆.
So, you've got a genuine Intel-manufactured board there.
That's super cool. Thanks for the detailed rundown. Hopefully I get around to showing this board again and I can update everyone on the channel.
Back then, we would use Intel TX Boards for Socket 7, most boards with ALI, VIA or other chipsets performing worse.
Unfortunately it does not support 100MHz FSB
People had a tendency to skip every other generations of PC's/CPU's because of fear and they were already invested in a PC. In other words, People did not invest in 8088's because they were new, but started to see their value, so they invested in the 80286 gen. Then the 80386's got ignored because people had just bought the 286's. Then when the 80486 rolled out, people were ready to invest in a new machine again. The same thing happened when the 1st Pentiums rolled out. It's true they were hot, but everyone already had a "fast" PC, so they waited for the 2nd gen Pentiums. Same thing happened with Windows. If you look back, it was every other version of Windows that was successful.
We had a school lab back around 1996/7 that had a mix of pentium and 486 pcs. We’d get into physical altercations when it came to lunchtime quake sessions.. lol
Back in the day, I found a discarded slim Pentium 1 machine, I upped the ram, installed a voodoo 2, and was able to carry it around to play multiplayer quake 3. Many games had CPU requirements, but running the game in glide always bypassed the checks.
I’ve done the same but with Pentium MMX 233Mhz and voodoo2, was suprised that the game even runs, but performance wasn’t good.
Messing around with Pentiums is always fun! Thanks for continuing to make interesting videos
For the little it's worth, I'm Canadian, and I'm even fluent in French, but in spite of at least three decades of effort to retrain myself, I'll still say "caysh" if I'm not careful.
3:40 - Socket 5 CPUs had 2 multiplier selector pins, for socket 7 it was 3 of them - x2 was repurposed for x6 by AMD.
Thanks for another amazing video. Love the thorough research!
Thanks.
I guess back then with the memory prices coast modules where cash on a stick.
your experience with early PCI boards reflect my own. i bought a asus PCI board and expected huge gains but instead was extremely disappointed when my vesa local bus system smoked the PCI board and i returned it next day.
Yes, it's surprising isn't it.
I startet at 8088 later V20 EuroPC, 386-DX33, Pentium 75. The P75 was a lot faster than a DX4/100 some of my friends had back in the day.
It look like you have a very very early revision of the Intel Advanced/ZP (Zappa) motherboard with Triton chipset. The first revisions could only go to 100 MHz (90 Mhz officially supported). Later they pushed the support to 120, then 133 Mhz. The latest available BIOS is 1.00.11.BS0. You have the first BIOS (1.00.01.BS0). This motherboard was also distributed in the OEM channel such as Gateway 2000 (very very widely widespread).
Very interesting. Thanks for the information! It's interesting that there don't seem to be more of these out there now. I guess a lot of people just threw those Gateway's away. I quite like the board so far, but maybe when I try some better socket 7's my opinion will change.
The Intel Pentium actually went to 233MHz on socket 7 boards, but I happen to have a 266MHz socket 7 Intel which is an OEM CPU for Compaq computers installed in a "mid-range" socket 7 motherboard.
Right, but I was talking about second gen Pentiums. Pentium MMX is considered a major revision, and unless the source I used is incorrect (possible), there was no second gen Pentium 233. At least I didn't immediately see it on Wikipedia.
@@PCRetroTech Unfortunately, Wikipedia can be incomplete even with things and events that are well-known. For example (keeping with the vintage theme of your channel), look up the Speak and Spell. You'll see a reference to the Cheetah Girls there that I myself added, but it's been re-worded since my input. In case you're curious, the song title that I referenced is "Dig a Little Deeper" where the Speak and Spell was used to spell the word "dig".
@@JVHShack Wikipedia is indeed a strange place. A whole lot of stuff has been challenged for removal, and then not removed, whilst other entries are just degraded without challenge. Unfortunately that is just how such a crowdsourced repository of knowledge has to operate though, and it couldn't be otherwise or it wouldn't exist.
In this case I did actually use a primary reference for my research. It's also easy to find authoritative statements to this effect on forums online by people who should know, e.g. administrators of the anand tech forums, though in this case I used an even more reputable source. If I got it wrong, so did a lot of other "experts" before me.
@@PCRetroTech CPU Galaxy talked about it in a video. There was actually MMX chips produced on socket 7 up to 266, and a kind of '' unofficial '' chinese Tilamook core clocked at 300 MHz, which was essentially a mobile version strapped into a socket 7 package. But 233 and 266 MHz chips were really not common, since it was at the end of life of the socket 7 (at that point, Intel was already producing Slot 1 CPUs at 233 MHz) The Tilamook core chips clocked at 300 MHz were mobile-only.
What I would be really curious is to see a Socket 6 board in action. They are freaking rare, as it was a kind a transition platform between the socket 5, 7 and 8.
When my Dad upgraded my gaming PC back in the day, from a 486DX4-100 to a Pentium 100, one of my friends also upgraded his machine soon after, but he got a Cyrix 5x86 clocked at 120.
We were both surprised how much faster the Pentium really was. Quake wasn't really playable at 100MHz, even in 320x200 ...
But even in games like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, my P100 easily outpaced his Cyrix.
I was also surpised that my P100 overclocked to 133 and was still stabile as a rock. I didn't dare push it further.
The cooler actually had an issue later on, and the motherboard would play für elise :D
I found a manual for my board, and I probably could try it at 133MHz. The only thing is my board revision is so early I'm not actually sure it is supported.
I think the Pentium 100 is really one of the first Intel CPUs where you didn't feel at all limited by the hardware if you knew what you were doing as a programmer.
Retroraven - quake was playable on Pentium 100. it was even playable on pentium 75, it got around 20 fps, if I dont mistaken. For 1996 standard, it was still playable.
most pentiums had large overclocking headroom. they were doing good and rock stable , and as intel was first in that time, and overconfident, they didnt have to push them to the edge. They rather choosen greater stability under all circumstances. That means only one for overclocker, large headroom.
Usually pentium 120, could always do 133, and sometimes 150-166. 187-200 almost never.
@@PCRetroTech the board can go 133 for sure, if it supports pentium 120. because it has to have 66 mhz FSB and also 2 x multiplier.
So it can be at least set by jumpers always.
The difference a good FPU makes vs the integer favored Cyrix.
I actually had a system with a Pentium 100 in it, but I always ran it at 133MHz because no matter what I tried I couldn't get it to run stably at 100MHz. Fun fact: with a passive heat sink!
Thanks for the vídeo !
Intel had an internal contest to "Name that processor!" instead of just calling it the 80586. When the winner, Pentium was announced, John Dvorak of PC Magazine said it sounded like a kind of toothpaste :) The early Pentiums were indeed extremely hot. I think the speed of the first release was 75MHz. The jump from a 386 to a 486 was enormous in terms of performance, not so much the 486 to the Pentium. There were so many releases at different clocks that people grew weary of it, and the 1st gen Pentiums are not remembered fondly. BTW this is the year the name is retired. From now on it's just "Intel Processor". Do a video on the infamous Pentium bug (FPU hardware error)!
I didn'r know about the name competition, thanks!
Nah, the first releases of the Pentium were clocked at 60 MHz, then 66, and then 75. Those were the early models, kind of grey-ish with the golden heat spreader. Those were also the ones with the floating point error. And the difference in terms of performance was massive from one x86 CPU to another, ESPECIALLY from the 486 to the Pentium, because the Pentium was the first superscalar processor. The x86 line was not.
As for the rest, you're correct. And in fact, Pentium means five in latin. So that makes sense that they name it Pentium instead of 586 :) And also, because it was to put an end per-se to the x86 family, because they were pushing the superscalar architecture with the Pentium.
That looks like the Intel Zappa board, Gateway along with many other companies used it.
If you want the "instant gratification" kill in MK2, use mouse aiming and zoom to aim a precision gauss slug into the enemy's cockpit.
Oh but I like instant gratification where I don't have to be smart. :-)
We are Pentium of Borg. Division is futile. You will be approximated.
This is my time to shine :D
That board is a intel Advanced/ZP (aka zappa). Got one myself and it's horrible. Can't get it to work reliably with usb addin cards no matter which os (tried w95 r2, w98, linux etc).
Another annoyance is its hdd drive support. Forget anything larger than 7-8 gigs :)
Oh, thanks very much for identifying the board! One would have thought something like that would be easy to track down, but for some reason I had trouble finding anything about this board after quite a lot of searching. I'm wondering now if Intel still have something about it on their site.
I was impressed with the performance of the board, that's all I can say. But I haven't done too many Pentium motherboard experiments, so perhaps I'll eventually discover it wasn't as good as it initially seemed.
@@PCRetroTech My board has another label between the ISA slots, "PBA 638995-812", that identifies which model it is (it looks like they were supposed to be ordered in a processor-mobo bundle). The other labels near the edge were of no help to me either :)
@@Chriva Interesting. I figured it would be a serial number or something after I couldn't find mention of it as a model number.
@@PCRetroTech This is my only socket 5 board, so I would just identify it for you today, but it's too late. Christian was faster. :)
Btw, it's easy to identify board today, just use Ultimate Retro project.
You just enter socket type, format, number of PCI slots, ISA, AGP slots, and it will list all boards images. The bunch of enthusiastics works hard on this project everyday, and about 5-10 boards per day are added. I'm helping also a little bit, to bring them pictures, specifications, correct bugs.
I'm sure, you'll find by this way also this board, even without knowing, it's Intel Zappa.
@@warrax111 I know about Ultimate Retro of course. I have mentioned it on the Channel. Actually they have requested a photo and BIOS dump of my board because they don't have the details of my particular revision.
Intel chipsets for socket 5/7 were pretty good, there's a reason why some of the chipset makers that thrived in the 386 and 486 era disappeared in the late 90s only for SiS, VIA and ALI to remain until the mid/late 2000's.
To be honest, socket 7 doesn't bring much to the table by itself. It's like Socket 2 or 3 with 5V only over standard 486. They basically support the same CPUs so it doesn't really matter which socket you have, until you find a socket 3 board with 3.3V capability or a socket 7 with a split voltage capability (which can then run Pentium mmx, K6, 6x86mx, etc).
Yes it's my impression Socket 7 is basically just more flexible, at least when they started to have AGP.
@@PCRetroTech well at this point it was basically EOL for intel. All their chipset are PCI only, they reserved AGP for slot 1
@@DxDeksor I don't quite understand. Obviously Intel continued to make chipsets and motherboards for many years. Do you mean that they were just gearing up for Pentium II or something? So this was their final Pentium motherboard? Only other manufacturers considered socket 7 worth investing in because of AMD chips like the K6 etc?
@@PCRetroTech I said that intel continued to support socket 7 until about 1997 with the i430TX. After that they were still making chips but they didn't make any more breaktrough. AGP appeared only on VIA, SiS and ALi chipsets. There's no intel chipset with AGP for socket 7 and since they didn't release anything new by 1998 for this platform, I believe they considered it as a dead-end.
@@DxDeksor Ah, ok. This board was 1994 I think. But yes I see, Intel didn't make any AGP ones. That makes sense.
From a non-techincal standpoint(the technical stuff seems to be well covered), I was always under the impression that PC Chips was very much a "budget" board back then and problems were not unexpected. So, again, non-technically, I would not be surprised that the older intel board would outperform it.
My memory from back then isn't the greatest, so I don't recall if I did a build with that brand or not. Often if I did a build for someone else, tho, usually it was just a person who wanted something cheap that worked, not a "high performance" gaming machine.
Ah the days of ceramic cpu's MC68060/pentum.
Wow that is one EARLY Socket 5 board. 256K of Async cache. Most FX boards were supplied with 512K of pipeline burst cache. For that early board, I am wondering if you didn't have too much ram in it for it to cache.
Entirely possible I guess.
Possible, actually. For FX chipset the max cacheable RAM is 64MB, but for 256KB L2 cache in writeback the limit would be 32MB, not sure about async.
Nope, most of FX boards did have 256KB.
Many of them had COAST module option, to increase to 512KB. Or directly needed 512kb module.
But to see 512KB built in cache board is rare.
It was even rare for VX chipset.
It become standard for HX and TX chipsets, where it could be said, most of boards had built-in 512kb.
@@warrax111 I personally saw motherboards with OPTI chipsets with fake cache chips on the board (they were plastic).
@@TurboXray the speech was about 512KB being common on Intel 430FX. Which is not true.
This is a intel board. Reference model AA socket 5
we quite soon changed our 90mhz to run at 100mhz and it never had any problems from that. the mobo was a lot like that and I can't remember the brand(i never knew what the brand was I guess).
edit: and yea the difference for 486 for some stuff was quite a lot. shoot the legs. increase resolution for mw2. it's got a tactical view mode too and you need to target the enemies to get info about them. mw2 mercs is the best mw2 mech game, with longest campaign and buying stuff and everything like that.
Ah thanks for the info on MW2! I was mainly interested in how smooth it would run, but at some point I might try to play it a bit more to see what it is really like as a game.
@@PCRetroTech I think around p100 was what it was developed for. they're great games and play pretty much like a modern mechwarrior game.
I think mw2:mercs needs a bit more, the levels are more complex in geometry, if i remember correctly it's a win95 only game though.
we copied the base mw2 on floppies...
interstate '76 is another great game on the same engine, just with cars and funk, but outfitting the car in that is same as mech in mw2 pretty much. also win95+ only though I think but if i recall correctly 100mhz pentium was enough.
@@lasskinn474 I should check out Interstate '76. Car games are my favourite genre.
In mechwarrior 2 you use the target key to select your targets. An info box will tell you what is targeted lol. The mech on the left was the enemy. Btw MW2 sux on an amd486 100, all graphics off at 320x200 to get usable frames
Ha ha thanks for the info. This is the disadvantage of not having original manuals for games. I'm often playing stuff blind.
@@PCRetroTech Googles your friend. Search for MW2 keyboard layout.
Love how the time is 30:47:55
I’m really curious about that.
Me too. Where did you see this?
@@PCRetroTech at 4:31 on BIOS.
@@PCRetroTech @4:12
@@viniciusferrao Oh yes, now that you mention it, I did notice this.
I think the only logical explanation is that when this board was made there were 36 hours in a day and that we have simply been forced to fit everything into a 24 hour day now for so long that we have all forgotten.
The first Pentium I had was a p90. It ran like a dog.
The Opti Viper chipset was complete...trash, as soon as I saw it, I knew what the result would be. For the non MMX Pentiums, the Intel HX Chipset was king.
It surprised me. With a name like that it sounded really fast. Apparently not!
The only difference I can imagine from socket 5 to 7 is the voltage, which on socket 7 can be much lower. You would have to use a multimeter to check what voltage the processor is being fed, and also check if the capacitors on the board are within the expected values (mainly ESR).
Socket 7 boards certainly support later chips which have dual voltage, but they still support the earlier chips. Of course the chipset is also different between the boards.
@@PCRetroTech Socket 5 was 5V-only, like the socket 3 and 4. You were lucky to run a second gen Pentium on that Socket 5 board without frying the CPU. The fact it was 5V only was the exact reason why it ran so hot. The design of the CPU wasn't made in the first place to run at 5V, but hey, that was the technology at the time. That was essentially a design defect. That is most often what happens with first generation stuff. Lots of flaws, heat problems, etc. The real first generation Pentium was clocked at 60 MHz, than 66 and then 75 MHz, on Socket 5, that were grey-ish with the golden heat spreader. Those were also the infamous first gen Pentiums with the floating point error. They then switched to the full on ceramic top, 66 MHz and up. That being said, I don't remember there was real Pentiums (not ODP CPUs) that were made on Socket 4. ODP were not technically Pentiums, but a kind of hybrid between the Pentium and the 486.
Keep also in mind the Pentium was the first ever superscalar processor (outside the x64 DEC Alpha, because yes, DEC already had RISC x64 CPUs as early as 1989, already running at speeds twice if not more than the other manufacturers on the market at the time)
Earlier Socket 7 was rated at 3.3V, no dual voltage. Dual voltage only came out later with the Pentium MMX and the AMD K6.
@@EternalxFrost Well that shows you can't trust Wikipedia or the Intel documentation they cite.
@@PCRetroTech I'd say that there some you can take, and some you can leave. But even nowadays, Intel official documentation on those CPUs are not that hard to find.
Necroware, for instance, uses some of that official documentation in his " upgrading socket 7 board beyond the limits " video series.
I just know about all that because I spent literally my early teenage years in my room building retro builds like those. Some of them were beyond success, and some others... well... I failed miserably and fried something. Prime example, running a Socket 7 Pentium into a Socket 5 board. They both technically fit in one another ( Socket 5 Socket 7) despite the sockets fhemselves having 320 pins (Socket 5) and the other having 321 pins. Though I guess the CPUs both seem to only use 320 pins, the last one on the socket 7 had another purpose (that I don't know in details).
But the voltage isn't the same at all. Much like the Slot 1 (Intel) and Slot A (AMD). Physically compatible (if you remove the standing brackets), but electrically, absolutely not.
@@EternalxFrost Apparently the motherboard manual is wrong too then. It says 3.3v CPUs.
look up your board on Ultimate Retro they have a bios update and manual, also they probably would like a dump of your old version
I actually thought I did look it up there, but didn't see it. But now I know what it is (another viewer recognised it), I should be able to identify it.
Search for Zappa I have the gateway version of this board and uploaded pictures of it I also tried a dozen times to leave a comment and it would get deleted over and over
@@PCRetroTech searching for Zappa and selecting Intel Advanced ZP (Zappa) the board number is 3136 in the url
@@gecryan2996 Yes, that's an annoying feature of TH-cam. One would think they don't actually want comments or something.
@@gecryan2996 Thanks. I found it now of course.
The 430FX Triton I (1995) is a typical chipset for the first generation of Socket 7 boards. It is possible to use it for Socket 5 as well, but if we want to research technologies from the time when the first 3V Pentium P54C (75-100MHz) were introduced to the market (1994), then it would be better to use the chipset from that time, i.e. 430NX (1994).
The full 800x600 super EGA resolution could perhaps be set by multiplying the the horizontal and vertical sync by the amount of screen images you’re seeing? (H: x6.5 & V: x9.5)
Does each screen image have a delay compared to the previous one?
Just thinking out loud here. Rubber duck!
I'm not sure about the delay. That would be interesting to check. But simply multiplying the figures by 6.5 and 9.5 won't work. I didn't show it in the video but it starts off with about 2x2 tiles, then it increases the number of tiles until it reaches the number that you see. In other words it is a function of the adapter to go looking for settings that work. When it doesn't find any it just stops. So it is something else that causes it to not display correctly.
great video
Thanks!
@@PCRetroTech thanks too
9:56: "Now the only real problem I have with this game is, it's a little bit hard to distinguish what's the enemy and what's not."
I probably just didn't know how to play the game well. To someone with the manual it was probably all very logical.
@@PCRetroTech Maybe. Either way, what you just said is probably a much safer reply to an admitted risqué comment. Not as risky as bringing in-laws to an internecine fight, but still.
Your motherboard is an Intel Advanced/ZED !
Could you please send a picture to Ultimateretro so we can add it to the page and also dump its bios ? Thanks :)
It's already have！(・∀・)
It's Intel Advanced/ZP (Zappa)
www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/3136
Sure, I can do that.
@@PCRetroTech I believe there is a Mr. BIOS floating around for that board as well.
@@RodBeauvex I will look out for it.
It's my understanding that Pentium era Intel Chipsets were quite solid and generally performed better than their third-party counterparts. It's unsurprising to me that the Socket 5 Intel chipset performed better than the Opti Viper chipset. I'd be curious to know how an early Intel Socket 7 chipset compares to the Socket 5 and the Opti Viper to confirm.
Yes, that would be an interesting test indeed.
early Intel socket 7 chipset? That is VX or HX I mean... because FX chipset were used both on socket 5 and socket 7 boards. It would not make any differance on same CPU. No matter if you use socket 5 or socket 7, it's only connection type.
But I think I saw also socket 5 VX chipset.
Anyway, early Intel socket 7 chipset, doesn't have sense.
Because in case of FX, there's not change, and in case VX or HX, it's just very weird to call it early socket 7 chipset, because, there is only one more from Intel, and that is TX. So I don't see any sense of using "early socket 7 intel chipset".
Just used one of the four right terms: FX, VX, HX, TX. TX is not early . But VX and HX eighter. It is middle one.
So last one is FX. But that's not early socket 7 chipset, because, it was introduced with socket 5. Only later, it was still used as old (low budget) option for both socket 5 and socket 7.
@@warrax111 Good point.
It wasn't a surprise to me. I worked in a small computer shop were we built custom machines, and we knew from benchmarks that OPTI was slower and/or less stable. As a tech, I always rolled my eyes and sighed when a customer had chosen a cheap motherboard and more expensive on everything else.
@@TurboXray I wish I'd known before I bought that piece of...
Most people skipped the first Pentium I skipped 486... My Pentium 60 had VLB, I exchanged it under warranty (+$$) for a Pentium 90 as it had the FDIV bug what a shame I didn't knew about the socket 4 overdrive it would had been fun to have a 133MHz Pentium with VLB. 😁
It's pretty easy to look back nowadays and wish we'd known more back then. It's one of the things I like about retrocomputing. We can experience things and push hardware further than we could back then. If only we'd had the internet back then, hey!
I skipped the P60/66 and went AMD 5x86 overclocked to 150mhz (with a fan). I finally upgraded to the P-133 after that.
Socket 4, was a huge dead end. Intel released an overdrive that put a second gen 120 or 133 on them, but that was it.
I thought as much. I'm amazed they rushed things to market like that. It can't have helped their reputation. On the other hand, Pentium ended up doing astonishingly well, so maybe they just thought of it as advertising.
@@PCRetroTech Yeah, and even those weren't worth it. Most Socket 4 boards had a chipset that was rather incapable of letting the 120 or 133 perform anywhere near what they would on newer Pentium board.
1:56 Sorry for nitpicking but I don’t think the 100Mhz Pentium was actually available for sale along with the 90Mhz. Sure, it was *announced* alongside it, but this is very different. After all, the Pentium Pro was only available at 150Mhz in November 1995, with 200Mhz parts only coming out in January 1996 or thereabouts. Looking at magazine scans from the likes of PC Mag and Infoworld from the first half of 1994 gives the impression that it took around a couple of extra months before you could find any system rated at 100Mhz as a home consumer. It wasn’t until the 2nd generation of Pentium II that Intel started getting better at delivering higher-clocked and lower-clocked parts simultaneously out the door.
The release date in both case was March 7 1994. In the video I said "Released". I did not say there were consumer systems based on them at the same time.
@@PCRetroTech Fair enough. Did not mean to imply that you were lying or any such thing.
I think the RGB2HDMI can only do up to 10 bit colour depth and most of the modes you are trying to do are higher. I could be wrong on this as I do not have a RGB2HDMI at the moment.
These are 16/64 colour modes which requires 6 bit. The RGB2HDMI certainly handles that. I am fairly sure that's not the issue here. This is SuperEGA not SuperVGA.
FPU is not that much better on Pentium compared to 486. Quake uses the fact that Pentium can do FPU calculations in parallel with non-FPU calculations. Almost like having 2 cores. 486 couldn't do that, and that's why quake gets such a different result.
I'd read that Pentium had a fast multiplier which is what made it faster. It didn't use CORDIC algorithms to make up for not having a fast multiplier.
Also if I look at the instruction timings for the floating point operations on the Pentium, they are typically a half or a third of the cycles of the FPU in the 486. That seems like it would be sufficient to explain the difference.
In fact I looked this up and I think the story is a bit more complicated. Michael Abrash has an article that states that while an fdiv is running, one can run some integer arithmetic at the same time on the Pentium. This has led some people to say that the Pentium could run FPU and CPU instructions at the same time.
The thing is, the 486 could as well. The issue is that in the 486, many FPU instructions require the CPU for parts of the computation. In the Pentium there are two independent pipelines, called the u- and v-pipelines. Not all instructions can be paired, but some can, giving the Pentium an additional advantage over the 486.
What Abrash is getting at is that a long-running instruction such as fdiv ties up the CPU for most of its execution time on the 486, so the Pentium has a very distinct advantage in code that uses this particular instruction, so long as it is paired with the correct instructions.
Have you tried flash the MR BIOS to this motherboard? I have the same board with MR BIOS and Pentium 200MHz (with a small BF1 modification). The biggest weakness of this board is the L2 cache. When it is disabled the computer runs faster.
No, I should try both of those suggestions. It's amazing the cache slows it down. That's unusual.
@@PCRetroTech The latest version of MR BIOS is 3.46 - V097b50i on vogons repo
Yeah OPTI was crap/cheap chips sets for 486 and Pentium. In my experience, they were also less stable besides being slower.
Am I mis-remembering or have you changed to the more common pronunciation of cache? But not data...
For half the video I changed. Then I forgot and went back to the old pronunciation.
As for data, well both pronunciations are pretty common.
4:11 the hell is that RTC doing showing 30:47:54? Is that like australian time or something? xD
Not sure what was going on there. Perhaps the previous owner was Martian.
Fascinating video on this second generation Pentium CPU! I didn’t know that the first generation Pentiums ran hot-Pentium 4s are more well known for their heat. What graphics card were you using in the motherboard with that Pentium?
Oh I should have mentioned that. I was using a TsengLabs ET6000.
Yep, I had some stability issues with my 60, opened the case and put my hand near the heatsink it was kind of hot, just touched it and the heatsink fins burned my skin instantly... The 80mm case fan that should had been blowing air was strangely seized, the computer was pretty much new and clean, never knew why that fan was like that but after moving the blades with my finger and connect/disconnect from power several times it started and never had any issue with it.
@@RetroTinkerer Interesting. I wonder why it seized, then ran fine.
The OpTI viper REALLY is that slow. Its pretty bad.
you should have removed the coast module and seen what kind of impact it would have had - the paradox thing sometimes can be, that the benchmarks run better without the module installed. but as others pointed out, opti is not that fast of a chipset. thank you for the video, i hope you dont mind my late response!
Compared to the Sk3 board in your "One of the BEST 486 Motherboards Ever Made" video; this Sk5 mobo's CACHE (although it's rated 5ns slower), somehow runs TWICE AS FAST in cachechk benchmark!!... (That might also have a lot to do with the higher score in Quake.)
But why does the onboard cache run faster though?!?!
A very good question.
@@PCRetroTech This is just speculation, but i think it might have to do with the FSB speed.
In the 486 video, you only showed CACHECHK using the DX4-100 with a 33MHz BUS. And here, we have a 66MHz BUS. Also, I just checked, and the RAM runs almost twice as fast too.
Anyway, it would have been interesting if you had a picture of CACHECHK for the AMD 5x86 w/ OC'd BUS, and be able to compare.
Coz if the bottleneck truly is the BUS, and not the memory/cache chips; than it would seem pointless to generally look for fast-specked chips/ram to put in 486 :)
@@B24Fox I personally think it is pointless. My observations so far is that the cache spec is irrelevant and the RAM spec is not so important as the silicon quality. I have fast spec RAM which is much worse in practice for overclocking that slower spec RAM. So far I've not observed any differences whatsoever in cache chips.
I believe you did it the other way around, I believe you increased FSB and decreased multiplier, that would explain lower latency on the onboard cache memory, the other way around not so much.
Thanks :O)
i have 2 Pentium 233 Mhz. chips
you shot your team mate... the red dot on the radar was a good clue. He was green... now the poor bastard is dead.
on the tech side, your rig is running quiet well for an ISA video card? i still recall running quake on a 486dx2-66... with a half size screen.
Ha ha! Yeah, but he had it coming.
@@PCRetroTech good sense of humour ... as an aussie it's good to follow fellow aussies.
BTW, any chance you could do a review of a fully decked out dx2-66 of the 93-94 era? VLB 2mb video card, vlb hd controller 32 megs of ram 256cache. or maybe cryrix chips? 6x86 233 to 300 compared to p1 166-200mmx? that era is just nostalgic to me as it was when i was studying at tafe and begun my programming years.
@@davidsantiagoalonso Sounds like a nice machine. I'm not sure if I actually have a DDX2-66 chip or not. I have done a few videos on DX4-100 machines and I think I did an SX-33.
@@PCRetroTech as I am new to your channel, I'll watch through your play list on the way to work. I'm glad to have been blessed by the TH-cam algorithum gods. If you ever come across PC's like what I mentioned, I'd be most pleased to watch (sort of like pc galaxy - another content creator who does comparisons every now and again). Your content is much more in depth and I am able to feel a better connection [enjoy and resonate] with what you are trying to deliver.
I hope you stay the course and deliver more content that we of that era grew up with and have such a deep nostalgic connection with.
Thanks mate, if you are from south West Sydney, I'll happily shout you a drink at a local pub one day.
@@davidsantiagoalonso Thanks for the nice feedback. I'm originally from Sydney but living in the UK these days. I hope to return one day, if I can ever afford to live in Australia again! I used to live in Kingsgrove, but that was many, many years ago.
yup. it was...
Aint that a zappa motherboard?
I believe so, yes.
F00F, FDIV
Why 360p?
TH-cam takes a while to process the 1080p version. It is being a little slow tonight.
Just get a monitor with HDMI DVI and VGA they still make modern once you don't have to deal with this
EGA output is not compatible with VGA. One is a 9 pin connector, the other 15 pin. I have a monitor with DVI and VGA inputs, but that wouldn't have helped here.
I had a Scoket 7 motherboard with allso a Yellow barcode sticker and it is a Intel made motherboard maby this bord is allso made by Intel
17:01: _[blushes]_
I skipped the first gen Intel pentium and went with the cyrix instead
Me too I'm afraid. I was not at all rich back then. I only feel rich now because I can actually afford to buy one of these things.
i seen pentium in socket4! not 5 and those were the real first gen
try finding one of those today
Right. And I mention this in the video of course. Socket 4 was first generation. In this video I am only talking about second generation, as I mentioned in the introduction.
@@PCRetroTech it must pass my atention span or you simply didn't word it clear enough for a foreigner :] anyway 5V chip would be a power generator for sure and i am kind of curious how well it would stack against 3.3v variant found on the socket 5/7
i had socket 3 and 7 , my friend had socket 4 and put cpu packward :] even though it was only one bent pin cpu was trashed and so was entire pc because it was just an old typewriter at that point
@@kokodin5895 Oh dear, yeah those CPUs really need to be in the right way. What a shame your friend put it backwards!
Cycle Through All Targets T
Previous Target R
Target Nearest Enemy E
Target Friendly (Starmate) F
Target Object Underneath Reticle Q
Inspect Targeted Object I
its quite annoying how many people even dont know anything about games, which they show to us, here for example you didnt even open web browser to type there an MechWarrior 2 Controls to see how to play it, or just to open a manual, oh, or once i saw, that somebody thinks, that insterstate 76 is about racing, that guy even didnt know, that his car can shoot
and on an radar it was nicely visible, that you just make a team kill 🙂
cash on a stick 🤣
the problem is that chipset sucks