Continued

Discovered that Scitech Display Doctor allows me to run 320x400 in Duke 3D with this Cirrus Logic board which I find to be the perfect trade off in resolution and performance for faster 486 systems. I def get a boost in performance using VESA modes in Duke 3D but no gains in Quake, actually a slight decrease in fps.

Also upgrading from 1MB to 2MB of video memory made no performance difference. Was hoping maybe there was some memory interleaving action going to happen but nope. Note the picture shown was before the upgrade.

I also gave the Unisound driver a go for the first time and it found and configured my AWE32 PNP with no complaints. Sound and Music is working perfect in the couple games I’ve tried so far. What an excellent tool, just ran the executable from command line and that was it.

CL5429 can be dang fast though. Good ones. I can see you've got a short-arse one, that's promising, think all my best ones were the shorter ones.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-10-03, 23:56:

CL5429 can be dang fast though. Good ones. I can see you've got a short-arse one, that's promising, think all my best ones were the shorter ones.

That’s great to hear! The 29 did come out on top of Phils benchmarks, out of the Cirrus chipsets he had to test, so I’ve got some hope for it. The picture quality in Windows has some issues but I’m hoping it’s just a driver issue.

It will be interesting to see how close I can get to feipoa’s Quake score of 17.6 with the bios upgrade and extra cache.

I've seen your fps and they seem to be a bit too low, even with 256k cache.
How tight are your memory and cache timings?
Is your L2 in WB or WT?
The amount of RAM fits to your current L2 size.

Good thread. Will be watching it.
Also think that results are too low.
This board is badass, also CL5429 is not a snail by any means too.

In regard to the results,
it looks like the Am5x86 is running in L1 write-through (instead of write-back) mode.
Also, at least some Award BIOSes are known to program the SiS 471 in "always dirty" mode (hurts performance) for L2 write-back with no option in the BIOS to change it, even though the 471 chipset supports 7+1 configuration for the tag ram. It can be fixed using MODBIN. Re: Evolution of a Socket3 System to a POD @100MHz

You managed to get your hands on the fastest 486 board ever, currently trading for prices well over $200. And you're saving on the graphics card now?

The integrated RAMDAC of the CL542x chips gets blurry at resolutions from 800x600. There are also much faster graphics cards for DOS, especially for SVGA. On the other hand, the CL graphics cards are very unproblematic and compatible under DOS.

Just as problem-free, but faster (especially in SVGA and Windows) are graphics cards with the GD5434 (e.g. Orchid Kelvin 64) or with the S3 Vision and Trio chips (864, 868, Trio64 - e.g. Diamond Stealth 64). You can also use the GD5430 or a Trio32, they are similarly fast under DOS, but much slower under Windows. The Trident TGUI9440 is also a good and also cheap option.

The fastest option for DOS (VGA) is the ARK1000. But for the crown in SVGA it lacks the LFB. It doesn't feel comfortable under Windows either.

I did some tests with VLB graphic cards on the SV2GX4 with the Am5x86@160MHz and Phils DOSBench Suite.

The 4 points summary:
1. The best place for pre-Pentium DOS interactive graphics, if paired with ark1000vl or s3 trio64. But lacks behind in some other areas.
2. Best host for POD100.
3. With Promise 2300 Plus it takes pci UltraATA controller to outdo its disk i/o.
4. Too bad it's clock generator does not support 60 or 66 mhz. Still, at 4x50mhz it reaches the highest orbit with Doom at 75 fps and Quake 1 at 22 fps.

PC-Engineer wrote on 2021-10-04, 05:55:

You managed to get your hands on the fastest 486 board ever, currently trading for prices well over $200. And you're saving on the graphics card now?

The integrated RAMDAC of the CL542x chips gets blurry at resolutions from 800x600. There are also much faster graphics cards for DOS, especially for SVGA. On the other hand, the CL graphics cards are very unproblematic and compatible under DOS.

It's about 20% faster which is usually the threshold of "you wouldn't notice if you weren't told" between two systems. So I wouldn't qualify it with "much". A bit faster, a little faster, somewhat faster. If double the money doesn't get you double the speed, don't bother.

Replace "much" with "many", if it makes you happy.

That being said, there are actually many better alternatives to the GD5429 in every way, especially on this board with this CPU. If 20% doesn't matter, why does he have this top notch board and overclock the CPU? Discussing what is much for one and little for the other is splitting hairs. Back to the topic.

PC-Engineer wrote on 2021-10-04, 14:40:

That being said, there are actually many better alternatives to the GD5429 in every way, especially on this board with this CPU. If 20% doesn't matter, why does he have this top notch board and overclock the CPU? Discussing what is much for one and little for the other is splitting hairs. Back to the topic.

Any thoughts on the EFA 4DMS HL3G?
https://www.elhvb.com/webhq/models/486vlb3/4dms.htm
I've got one and it seems on par with this Asus board and not as pricey, though I should do some actual benchmarking.

I think this topic could fill another thread or you can add it to https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=70318 A comparison between this two boards would be very intersting.

The test above with the VLB cards was done with Phils Benchmark set and the system had 1024kB cache and all stable BIOS tweks.

Apologies guys, forgot to set the thread watch, catching up!

jakethompson1 wrote on 2021-10-04, 01:26:

In regard to the results,
it looks like the Am5x86 is running in L1 write-through (instead of write-back) mode.
Also, at least some Award BIOSes are known to program the SiS 471 in "always dirty" mode (hurts performance) for L2 write-back with no option in the BIOS to change it, even though the 471 chipset supports 7+1 configuration for the tag ram. It can be fixed using MODBIN. Re: Evolution of a Socket3 System to a POD @100MHz

Here's another experience: Re: 486 cache/ram speed issue with write-back

Disruptor wrote on 2021-10-04, 00:49:

I've seen your fps and they seem to be a bit too low, even with 256k cache. How tight are your memory and cache timings? Is your […]
Show full quote

I've seen your fps and they seem to be a bit too low, even with 256k cache.
How tight are your memory and cache timings?
Is your L2 in WB or WT?
The amount of RAM fits to your current L2 size.

Hi Disruptor, here are my current bios settings. One driving factor for sure is that I’m stuck in WT for the L1 cache until I get an EEPROM to flash a newer bios.

I picked up the 5429 for less than $40, it’s probably not the card I’ll keep on this board. I needed something quick to be sure I could get the board to post and wasn’t getting ripped off with a dead board. I would of used an ISA card but I didn’t have any of those lying around either.

I def want to get my scores up!

I’ve got the following on the way:

Diamond Stealth SE VLB (S3 Trio32)
Possibly an ARK1000VL, not 100% site is legit
Also talking to someone about a Trio64 based board.

PC-Engineer wrote on 2021-10-04, 05:55:

The fastest option for DOS (VGA) is the ARK1000. But for the crown in SVGA it lacks the LFB. It doesn't feel comfortable under Windows either.

I did some tests with VLB graphic cards on the SV2GX4 with the Am5x86@160MHz.

This is awesome, thanks for sharing! Which BIOS and settings?

What VLB card takes the Windows crown? Is there a good compromise between DOS and Windows performance? Which card are you currently settled on?

pshipkov wrote on 2021-10-04, 08:02:

3. With Promise 2300 Plus it takes pci UltraATA controller to outdo its disk i/o.
4. Too bad it's clock generator does not support 60 or 66 mhz. Still, at 4x50mhz it reaches the highest orbit with Doom at 75 fps and Quake 1 at 22 fps.

3. Curious if there are any settings you can share on the Promise controller to max out performance? I’m only seeing 2-3MB read speeds at the moment.

4. Agreed, would be cool to run the 5x86 at 180MHz. Have you been able to run one at 200MHz on this board?