First post, by Tyrhus
This post is part a build showcase and a PC chips M918 appreciation thread.
I've been tweaking this build for several months, going through several CPUs and graphic cards but here are the final (for now)) specs:
-PC chips M918 rev 1.2a with original 7/21/1995 bios
-512kb of L2 cache
-Am586 x5 p-75 ADW running at 3.3v/160mhz
-32mb of EDO ram
-Ark 1000pv stingray 1mb PCI
-Yamaha audician 32+Roland sc55
I know PC Chips gets a bad reputation for cheap construction and Fake cache chips, but I see no problem with this m918. It's stable and is compatible with most if not all 486 CPUs.
I also begin to think it's one of the fastest late 486 board!
Indeed my benchmark results are much higher than what I can see online.
All the timings are at their lowest and this thing never crashes!!!!
Using Phil's benchmark suit:
-Sysinfo: 346.5
- Speedsys: 60.06 (245.28Mb/s memory bandwidth
L1 141.78/L2 59.78/M.T 54.78mb/s
In 3d bench I get a score of 105.2 and in Pc player 27.3.
My findings doing this build:
-You can run the am586 X5 without using a later bios contrary to what is said on some documents online. Mine runs fine but strangely L1 cache isn't activated by default, i need to use setmul in autoexec.bat to do so.
-Running the am586 results in distorted sound FX in some rare instance (nuclear logo in Duke Nukem 3D but not in game)
-the two cyrix related bios option result in tiny performance improvements.
All in all, this build is a real keeper, it's stupidly fast for a 486 while being stable as a rock. Quake is definitely playable, Duke Nukem 3d in 320x400 is butter smooth and so is Terminal Velocity.
I will go on with my quest of the ultimate late 486 with trying to set up my Cyrix 586 100gp later on and I will keep tring to get my hand on a Pod 83 at a good price.
Compared to the infamous m919, the m918 is much more easy to set up (no serial bug, no weird Vlb/soundcard interaction, no stupid PCI divider etc etc...) too so I can't recommend it enough !