Time for benchmarks! While running a 400Mhz K6-II (2x66), the board performs surprisingly well. The following system configuration was used:

AMD K6-2 400 running at 400MHz 6x66Mhz
128MB SDRAM PC100 (2x64MB) running at 66MHz CL2
ELSA S3 Virge GX 4MB
STB 3dfx Voodoo 2 12MB
Guillemot Maxi Sound 64 Game Theater (ES1868 + Dream 9250)

Results:

- Speedsys CPU score: 457.30 points
- Speedsys memory bandwith: 210.58 MB/s
- Speedsys memory throughput: 127.96 MB/s
- Speedsys L1 Cache: 1135.76 MB/s
- Speedsys L2 Cache: 181.73 MB/s
- 3D Bench: 196.4 FPS
- PC Player Benchmark 320x200: 72.2 FPS
- PC Player Benchmark 640x480 VESA mode 101: 27.2 FPS
- Quake 1.08 (DOS) 320x200: 59.9 FPS
- Quake 1.08 |(DOS) (640x480): 25.9 FPS
- GL_Quake 0.97 (640x480): 50.4 FPS

Now for the interesting part - benchmarking with a pentium CPU, using the 7.15MHz FSB option. I ran the tests with and without cache. I only ran speedsys, 3dbench and PCConfig, since running PCP or quake would have taken far too long.

Some quick notes before I list the benchmark results:
1. Counting ram takes forever - also, the machine will freeze when counting ram if more then 64MB of ram is used.
2. Everything slows down, including the beep when the PC posts, witch is now elongated. It also takes a 2-4 seconds for the machine to post, and another 1-2 to display the VGA bios.
3. PCI cards seem to run fine at 7.15MHz - I've had no issue with the virge. It also seems to slow the card to early XT 8bit ISA display adapter speeds
4. The K6-II 400 can only run at 17.8MHz as it's slowest speed since 2x is interpreted at 6x and 1.5x is interpreted as 3.5x - as such, 2.5x7.15 is the slowest configuration it will run at. For best results I decided to use a 166 Mhz Pentium (non-MMX).
5. BIOS incorrectly reports the CPU running at 50MHz.

Now for the results:

Part A - 10.73MHz (7.15x1.5), L1 and L2 cache enabled:

Speedsys CPU score - 8.08 points - 386 DX40 levels.
3DBench: 10.5 FPS
PCConfig Drystones: 7200
PCConfig Whetstones: 2626

Part B - 10.73Mhz, all cache DISABLED

Speedsys CPU score - 0.83 points (lol)
3DBench: 0.8 FPS (test took forever)
PCConfig Drystones: 0 (dunno why this benchmarks as 0)
PCConfig Whetstones: 289

kanecvr wrote:

Now for the interesting part - benchmarking with a pentium CPU, using the 7.15MHz FSB option. I ran the tests with and without c […]
Show full quote

Now for the interesting part - benchmarking with a pentium CPU, using the 7.15MHz FSB option. I ran the tests with and without cache. I only ran speedsys, 3dbench and PCConfig, since running PCP or quake would have taken far too long.

Some quick notes before I list the benchmark results:
1. Counting ram takes forever - also, the machine will freeze when counting ram if more then 64MB of ram is used.
2. Everything slows down, including the beep when the PC posts, witch is now elongated. It also takes a 2-4 seconds for the machine to post, and another 1-2 to display the VGA bios.
3. PCI cards seem to run fine at 7.15MHz - I've had no issue with the virge. It also seems to slow the card to early XT 8bit ISA display adapter speeds
4. The K6-II 400 can only run at 17.8MHz as it's slowest speed since 2x is interpreted at 6x and 1.5x is interpreted as 3.5x - as such, 2.5x7.15 is the slowest configuration it will run at. For best results I decided to use a 166 Mhz Pentium (non-MMX).
5. BIOS incorrectly reports the CPU running at 50MHz.

Now for the results:

Part A - 10.73MHz (7.15x1.5), L1 and L2 cache enabled:

To summarize:

Speedsys CPU score - 8.08 points - 386 DX40 levels.
3DBench: 10.5 FPS
PCConfig Drystones: 7200
PCConfig Whetstones: 2626

Part B - 10.73Mhz, all cache DISABLED

Speedsys CPU score - 0.83 points (lol)
3DBench: 0.8 FPS (test took forever)
PCConfig Drystones: 0 (dunno why this benchmarks as 0)
PCConfig Whetstones: 289

Interesting benchmarks. The last one looked like it was running at the XT speed or equivalent.

bjwil1991 wrote:

Interesting benchmarks. The last one looked like it was running at the XT speed or equivalent.

Thanks. I posted them since I tough people might find a pentium running at XT levels interesting. With cache disabled, the machine is comparable to a NEC V20 cpu running at 12MHz.

I tried Lode and Digger on it and they both ran great.

Cool to see a Socket 7 and an IA32 CPU run so slow. Do you have any Norton Sysinfo benches?

If you do, then this would be great when compared to some other IA32 slow benches in this thread:

The IBM XT challenge: How slow can you go with i386+ (IA-32) CPUs?

The slowest Norton SI achieved was 0.3, which is around Speedsys 0.1 - a third of a 4.77MHz Intel 8088 or so ~ 1.5 MHz.

j^aws wrote:

Cool to see a Socket 7 and an IA32 CPU run so slow. Do you have any Norton Sysinfo benches? […]
Show full quote

Cool to see a Socket 7 and an IA32 CPU run so slow. Do you have any Norton Sysinfo benches?

If you do, then this would be great when compared to some other IA32 slow benches in this thread:

The IBM XT challenge: How slow can you go with i386+ (IA-32) CPUs?

The slowest Norton SI achieved was 0.3, which is around Speedsys 0.1 - a third of a 4.77MHz Intel 8088 or so ~ 1.5 MHz.

Don't have any, but I'll run some the first chance I get.

Hi, what kind of hard drive did you use with this board?

I bought an AT29C010A EEPROM and successfully flashed the J3-006 BIOS, but the board won't detect either a 40GB or 20GB HDD.
Both autodetection and manually setting it to LBA or LARGE hangs on boot.
I also tried messing with the cylinders/heads/sectors. Setting it to 16383/16/63 didn't work.

Also, I'm having a problem with using more than one PCI card.
If I plug in any card in addition to the video card (Ethernet, USB 2.0), the system resets randomly during memory test.

Love it. Underclocking is the new overclocking!

It’s very cool that the motherboard has this capability but changing jumpers is such an awkward method for manipulating cpu speed especially if it’s something you want to do frequently. I’d have to do something like wire up a series of switches mounted on the front bezel.

How have I never heard of this?

This is amazing, are there any other boards that can do this?

Suggest installing a cyrix 366gp and using the 1x multiplier setting that those cpus have :p (other mII cpus have it also, in fact I think all socket 5/7 cyrix chips had it until they removed it on the 2.2v core chips

Btw,
Re: Socket 5/7 underclock! Aiming for the abyss!

Anyone have a better pic of that clockgen? Or a datasheet for it?

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-04-30, 06:45:

Anyone have a better pic of that clockgen? Or a datasheet for it?

I managed to find it, it's an ICS9169CJ-27.
https://www.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/pd … S9169CJ-27.html

I have a couple of these boards. Pretty common in my part of europe, but trying jumper settings not printed in the manual never occured to me. I'll have to give it a shot 😀

@kanecvr - could you please provide jumper settings? Turns out I have a similar if not identical board in my 66MHz fsb K6-2 build. I flashed the bios you linked and the board detected a 60GB drive with no issues, and now I'd like to try out the 8MHz fsb. I'm running a K6-2 475 in mine at 6x66Mhz with 128Mb of SDRAM.

I've had some problems with mine - had a voodoo 3 in it witch ran fine for a few months, then suddenly decided to crash whenever I ran a 3D accelerated game. Tested with a geforce 2 PCI and while that ran OK, performance was at pentium 166 levels (possible driver issue, the oldest diver I had at hand was 20 something).

Also mine came with a Winbond eeprom and had no problems updating the bios.

Socket3 wrote on 2022-04-30, 17:58:

@kanecvr - could you please provide jumper settings? Turns out I have a similar if not identical board in my 66MHz fsb K6-2 build. I flashed the bios you linked and the board detected a 60GB drive with no issues, and now I'd like to try out the 8MHz fsb. I'm running a K6-2 475 in mine at 6x66Mhz with 128Mb of SDRAM.

The FSB jumper settings are in the pdf manual: download/file.php?id=39375 and also here: https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/3486#downloads

janih wrote on 2022-04-30, 18:25:

Socket3 wrote on 2022-04-30, 17:58:

@kanecvr - could you please provide jumper settings? Turns out I have a similar if not identical board in my 66MHz fsb K6-2 build. I flashed the bios you linked and the board detected a 60GB drive with no issues, and now I'd like to try out the 8MHz fsb. I'm running a K6-2 475 in mine at 6x66Mhz with 128Mb of SDRAM.

The FSB jumper settings are in the pdf manual: download/file.php?id=39375 and also here: https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/3486#downloads

I'm talking about the undocumented jumper settings OP used to get the board to do 8Mhz FSB.

I use to see a lot of LuckyStar branded motherboards coming out of eastern europe ne Ebay. Was this particular brand especially popular over there or a generic worldwide budget label?

Socket3 wrote on 2022-04-30, 19:32:

I'm talking about the undocumented jumper settings OP used to get the board to do 8Mhz FSB.

Ah sorry about that, my mind read the 8Mhz as 83Mhz 😀

Btw. If someone here has English manual of Lucky Star 5V-2, that would be nice to find. 5V-2 seems to be similar to this 5V-1A.

PcBytes wrote on 2022-04-30, 07:33:

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-04-30, 06:45:

Anyone have a better pic of that clockgen? Or a datasheet for it?

I managed to find it, it's an ICS9169CJ-27.
https://www.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/pd … S9169CJ-27.html

Did you find a better pic? I don’t see a 7 mhz option there.