VOGONS


Reply 20 of 40, by Unknown_K

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aries-mu wrote on 2023-09-12, 19:53:
Unknown_K wrote on 2023-09-12, 18:22:

Quake had something to do with younger people dumping 486's for Pentiums. Another Issue was Windows 95 where people needed more RAM than what you could stuff in most older 30 pin SIMM based 486 systems. The 90's were a time period where computers were going obsolete very quickly (dumping ISA for VLB then PCI and finally AGP, 30 pin SIMMS to 72 pin FPM then EDO and finally SDRAM, needing bigger and bigger HDs) so people were buying complete systems every so many years. Some people did incremental upgrades but quite a few just purchased new machines.

For me I went for the 430HX chipset when I outgrew my 486/160.

486 .... 160??? 😳

OC 4x40 on a PCI motherboard. It was very common to do that on 486dx4/133's on PCI motherboards.

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Reply 21 of 40, by aries-mu

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Unknown_K wrote on 2023-09-12, 20:11:

OC 4x40 on a PCI motherboard. It was very common to do that on 486dx4/133's on PCI motherboards.

But but but... DX4 133 didn't exist! The maximum Intel DX4s reached was 100 (actually a 3x33 CPU).
AMD used to make the 486 DX3 120 (3x 40)

So, that's not just OC the bus, it's also bump up the CPU multiplier from x3 to x4... I'm surprised the CPU didn't get fried!

They said therefore to him: Who are you?
Jesus said to them: The beginning, who also speak unto you

Reply 23 of 40, by CharlieFoxtrot

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aries-mu wrote on 2023-09-12, 19:53:

486 .... 160??? 😳

You could even get some AMD 5x86 processors to 200MHz by using 50MHz bus. Not every MB can handle that and not all processors can probably do 200MHz, but it isn’t something totally out of ordinary either.

Reply 24 of 40, by appiah4

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aries-mu wrote on 2023-09-12, 20:17:
But but but... DX4 133 didn't exist! The maximum Intel DX4s reached was 100 (actually a 3x33 CPU). AMD used to make the 486 DX3 […]
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Unknown_K wrote on 2023-09-12, 20:11:

OC 4x40 on a PCI motherboard. It was very common to do that on 486dx4/133's on PCI motherboards.

But but but... DX4 133 didn't exist! The maximum Intel DX4s reached was 100 (actually a 3x33 CPU).
AMD used to make the 486 DX3 120 (3x 40)

So, that's not just OC the bus, it's also bump up the CPU multiplier from x3 to x4... I'm surprised the CPU didn't get fried!

There are DX4 133s, they are called AMD Am5x86-PR75.

Last edited by appiah4 on 2023-09-13, 06:18. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 26 of 40, by aries-mu

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Wow guys!

Too bad AMD didn't keep the "486...something" name on the chips. For a 486 purist like me, the latest and fastest 486 remains the AMD 486 DX4-120.

On the faster ones, it says 5x86, therefore, it doesn't feel like a 486.

They said therefore to him: Who are you?
Jesus said to them: The beginning, who also speak unto you

Reply 27 of 40, by appiah4

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aries-mu wrote on 2023-09-13, 08:54:

Wow guys!

Too bad AMD didn't keep the "486...something" name on the chips. For a 486 purist like me, the latest and fastest 486 remains the AMD 486 DX4-120.

On the faster ones, it says 5x86, therefore, it doesn't feel like a 486.

That's about as rational as saying the V30 is not an 8086 CPU..

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Reply 28 of 40, by Garrett W

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Yeah, the AMD 5x86 (not to be confused with Cyrix's 5x86 which is an entirely different beast) is essentially nothing more than a rebrand of the Enhanced Am486, in itself identical to the standard Am486 CPUs but with 16KB L1 Cache instead of 8KB (and WB instead of WT in some cases), to achieve parity with Intel's 486/DX4 (DX2 and previous had 8KB L1, DX4 had 16KB).
It is a 486.

Reply 29 of 40, by aries-mu

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appiah4 wrote on 2023-09-13, 09:16:
aries-mu wrote on 2023-09-13, 08:54:

Wow guys!

Too bad AMD didn't keep the "486...something" name on the chips. For a 486 purist like me, the latest and fastest 486 remains the AMD 486 DX4-120.

On the faster ones, it says 5x86, therefore, it doesn't feel like a 486.

That's about as rational as saying the V30 is not an 8086 CPU..

Yep!

Indeed, it's not a rational thing. It's an emotional attachment.

They said therefore to him: Who are you?
Jesus said to them: The beginning, who also speak unto you

Reply 30 of 40, by CharlieFoxtrot

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aries-mu wrote on 2023-09-14, 13:48:

Yep!

Indeed, it's not a rational thing. It's an emotional attachment.

Strange. I’d understand if someone would say that for example 486SLC is not true 486, but Am5x86 is just a marketing name, but here the architecture is identical to 486DX. It is so fully a regular 486 that it actually can’t be more than that.

Reply 31 of 40, by aries-mu

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CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2023-09-14, 14:56:
aries-mu wrote on 2023-09-14, 13:48:

Yep!

Indeed, it's not a rational thing. It's an emotional attachment.

Strange. I’d understand if someone would say that for example 486SLC is not true 486, but Am5x86 is just a marketing name, but here the architecture is identical to 486DX. It is so fully a regular 486 that it actually can’t be more than that.

Yes I hear you. You make a good point. But, emotions are irrational by nature. What can I say?

I was also EXTREMELY disappointed, as a kid, that the 586 (the one and only true 586) was called "Pentium".

For years, I was drooling and waiting and craving over the news I'd have found on the cover of magazines in the newsstands: "586 CPU released", or something like that.
That never came.
And it was "Pentium".
Blah!

So, yes. I'm obsessed with that little name stamped on the body of the chip 😅

They said therefore to him: Who are you?
Jesus said to them: The beginning, who also speak unto you

Reply 32 of 40, by rmay635703

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aries-mu wrote on 2023-09-13, 08:54:

Wow guys!

Too bad AMD didn't keep the "486...something" name on the chips. For a 486 purist like me, the latest and fastest 486 remains the AMD 486 DX4-120.

On the faster ones, it says 5x86, therefore, it doesn't feel like a 486.

If you want to be pedantic a chip that actually said 486 and 133mhz definitely exists

Those of us who bought early from the computer shopper when the chip released sometimes got one of these that lacked the 5x86 labeling

AMD 486DX5-133 why are they labeled differently?

Reply 33 of 40, by eisapc

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The only complete P60 system is a Proliant 1000 with the Prosignia 486 style case, not the one shown above.
In the beginning Proliant was only the disk storage while Prosignia was the name of the Servers.
The CPU of this system still has the FDIV-bug
Other Compaq S4 boards are a disfunctional Deskpro/M P60 processorboard and a set of three P60 CPU-boards from a Proliant 2000/4000 (Systempro/XL?) where some heatsinks are missing
There must be a disfunctional S4 Mylex PCI/EISA motherboard somewhere around at last.

Reply 34 of 40, by aries-mu

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eisapc wrote on 2023-09-15, 06:30:
The only complete P60 system is a Proliant 1000 with the Prosignia 486 style case, not the one shown above. In the beginning Pro […]
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The only complete P60 system is a Proliant 1000 with the Prosignia 486 style case, not the one shown above.
In the beginning Proliant was only the disk storage while Prosignia was the name of the Servers.
The CPU of this system still has the FDIV-bug
Other Compaq S4 boards are a disfunctional Deskpro/M P60 processorboard and a set of three P60 CPU-boards from a Proliant 2000/4000 (Systempro/XL?) where some heatsinks are missing
There must be a disfunctional S4 Mylex PCI/EISA motherboard somewhere around at last.

mmm... this surprises me...

I thought Proliant with that tall straight tower I showed were born as 486

They said therefore to him: Who are you?
Jesus said to them: The beginning, who also speak unto you

Reply 35 of 40, by maxtherabbit

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eisapc wrote on 2023-09-15, 06:30:

Other Compaq S4 boards are a disfunctional Deskpro/M P60 processorboard

What do you mean by this? Like the one you have is broken? Or that it was never designed properly?

Reply 36 of 40, by BitWrangler

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To iterate points already made, yeah you really need to get into P60/66 socket 4 systems as at least a board combo with motherboard, CPU and heatsink, because tracking everything down separately will take years, and you'll probably overpay for the last thing you get out of desperation.

By 1995, with fast 486es around, and faster Pentiums on the market, they definitely did not look good and that was an era of mass scrappage. They had an edge in CAD and Scientific work early on. But 16 bit windows and mass market games of 1993 and 1994 were not a "killer app" for them. However, if you clung on to one through late 1995 and into 1996, "everything was turning up Pentium" windows 95 runs great on mine, and while the hardcore gamer would not have been satisfied with their performance vs a Pentium 100, they did allow you to play true pentium instructions only games, albeit slower than anything but a POD 63. In relative terms they gained performance again when everything was 32 bit and would have made a bearable office/web/casual gamer box through the later 90s.

I got mine just before/around turn of the millennium, in the "grabbing anything that computes" phase to get more of the fam online and to "unload" mine and my wife's machines. Setup with a 56k modem, the P60 was capable of browsing while playing MP3s with winamp, which the top end 486es could not do... you could play an MP3 maybe, but doing anything else would stutter it, drop it out and make whatever else you were trying to do also painful. So Socket 4 would have turned into a reasonable long term buy, but it took the software catching up to take advantage of Pentium architecture before Pentium was ready for primetime and really pulled away from 486 cores and there was that few years where it looked like a complete turkey. On data available to me at the time, and disregarding the "it'll get better" promises, I went with fast 486 in the mid 90s. I could have scraped up enough for a P75 system maybe and that would have been a better choice. But I was put off by the trash talking of how lame the bus was at 50mhz on Pentiums... and was not aware at the time that P75s by the time they were mass market, would overclock A LOT. So I was fooled by the pentium "dead spot" also.

Edit: POD 63/83 for a "barely a pentium" choice do of course have the additional risk of badly coded check from the programmer that go "This is a 486 so I'm not even going to try to work" due to whatever parameter they looked at to define whether they were on a pentium machine or not.

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Reply 37 of 40, by amadeus777999

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Got my first Pentium60 system in February 1995 and now I have 4 - unfortunately all in generic cases, not a single one of the nicer OEM based ones of yesteryears.

If a gfx card does not cooperate in Win9x one has to reconfigure the irqs, which was, in my case, needed to get Matrox cards to work(I failed at this back in 95 when trying to run Win95 and a Mystique).
As for the IDE controller - I never had a problem with data corruption but I do not run the systems 24/7.

Only "bad" thing is that the standard 430LX boards do not provide many (BIOS) options for "tuning" performance. But... once you compare them with "better" boards, like the SI5PI AIO, it becomes obvious that these are only faster on paper(marginally in the real world). On top of that it's pretty cumbersome to tune a board like the SI5PI to full performance as many sram chips are needed(I used two 12ns tags to get it stable at the best settings). But, if one puts in the work these boards can be tuned to 2MiB of 2nd level cache which may render the platform in a pretty "exquisite" light.

User "mpe" modded and benched one of his boards in said fashion...
Upgrading Socket 4 L2 cache to 2048k (ECS SI5PI MB)
https://dependency-injection.com/elitegroup-s … -cache-upgrade/
https://dependency-injection.com/2mb-cache-benchmarks/

So, if you want a fancier board, you may look out for one with the SiS501/502/503 chipset(like the SI5PI or R512) but the real world performance won't be (that) much better - e.g. Quake demo3 runs at 16.5fps on the SiS chipset(512KiB cache) and 15.7fps on a standard Intel one(256KiB cache).
I do not know how many alternatives there are but Opti based boards seem to be pretty slow.

Reply 38 of 40, by eisapc

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maxtherabbit wrote on 2023-09-15, 13:41:
eisapc wrote on 2023-09-15, 06:30:

Other Compaq S4 boards are a disfunctional Deskpro/M P60 processorboard

What do you mean by this? Like the one you have is broken? Or that it was never designed properly?

It seems broken. A 486 equipped processor board works fine in the system, but the P60 refuses to boot.

Reply 39 of 40, by maxtherabbit

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eisapc wrote on 2023-09-18, 10:57:
maxtherabbit wrote on 2023-09-15, 13:41:
eisapc wrote on 2023-09-15, 06:30:

Other Compaq S4 boards are a disfunctional Deskpro/M P60 processorboard

What do you mean by this? Like the one you have is broken? Or that it was never designed properly?

It seems broken. A 486 equipped processor board works fine in the system, but the P60 refuses to boot.

Could you please post a picture of it? They're difficult to find