The Intel Pentium Overdrive CPU for 486 Systems

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Back in 1995, Intel released a very special upgrade processor for owners of 486 systems. Despite having a very different architecture and external data bus, the Pentium Overdrive was able to drop right into an existing 486 system and provide next-gen performance. Was it a worth-while upgrade? Or was this heavily modified Pentium processor held back by the aging 486 platform?
In today’s video I’ll be restoring a badly neglected 83MHz Pentium Overdrive and will try to answer that very question.
**
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**
00:00 Introduction
00:35 A Bit of History
02:02 A Special Processor
03:49 A Closer Look at Processor
05:29 It’s Broken
08:23 Does it Work?
10:39 Slowest Pentium Ever?
11:31 Active Fan Monitoring
14:54 Included Software
16:23 A New Cooling Solution
22:46 Benchmarks
24:07 Can it Handle Quake?
25:05 Final Thoughts
26:56 Overdrive Installation Demo
As mentioned, the closing track is an original called “Prelude to Space” by Bertrand Guégan. You can find more of his work here:
/ bertrandguegan

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31 май 2024

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Комментарии : 346

@Edward135i Год назад

Absolutely insane to think that 4 years after this they'd go from 133mhz to 1ghz, man what a time for computing.

@snakeplissken1754 Год назад

Indeed the golden age for hardware enthusiasts.

@tallpaul9475 Год назад

The more insane part, it didn't really feel that long ago.

@raven4k998 Год назад

yeah, it's amazing how far they could go so quickly just by cranking the power into the CPU🤣🤣

@snakeplissken1754 Год назад

@@raven4k998 well, I'd say the shrinking process is far more impressive.

@paulmichaelfreedman8334 Год назад

Oh yeah, the 3 upgrades a year period. It was fun, but it raped your wallet!

@commodore71 Год назад

My family got a new 486 DX2 66 computer in 1995, less than a year later I convinced my father that we needed a Pentium computer for my school work (I wanted to play Quake). I showed him this processor and he bought it without hesitation, the POD 83 was about 5000 SEK and to exchange the almost new computer would cost atleast 10000 SEK. I was happy and he was content 😁

@raven4k998 Год назад

now days you can build your own amazing computer yourself if you want to not just upgrade the cpu but everything you like to your hearts content😊

@Vile-Flesh Год назад

"less than a year later I convinced my father that we needed a Pentium computer for my school work (I wanted to play Quake)" That is awesome as hell. I LOVE reading stuff like this. I remember suffering and watching a friend play Quake in late '96, at the time we had two 486sx25 desktops with 8megs of RAM that were barely able to play DOOM2. In January 1997 our father brought one of our 486 desktops to the local computer shop and they upgraded it to a Pentium 133 with 16megs of RAM. We were blown away with the jump in performance going from a 486sx25 to a Pentium 133 and we could finally play Quake and experience those amazing gibs with the blood trails. A few months later we discovered Quake Deathmatch and my brother somehow got a dialup program in DOS to work and HOLY CHIRST was the Quake Deathmatch fun as hell. We constantly had the phone line tied up for HOURS everyday for over a year on that Pentium 133.

@wowitsshit9734 10 месяцев назад

@@Vile-Flesh i know those feels

@infinity2z3r07 Год назад

I was just a little too young for 486 stuff in the day, but I do find the era to be really interesting. Definitely looking forward to a AMD/Cyrix comparison!

@robwebnoid5763 Год назад

Yes, those were interesting times. I am old enough to have gone through not only that time, but in the times before that, as my family bought Coleco & Atari (2600/VCS) consoles in the late 1970's & then a few years later I got into the Commodore 64. I still have all my Commodore stuff (hardware, software, papers), as well as Intel 8088's, 286/386/486's & Pentiums. And sometimes I wish I could have been born slightly a little earlier so that I could have also discovered 1970's computer stuff, such as mini-computers, mainframes & homebrew kits (Altair, KIM, Heathkits, etc). Today we take for granted the power & speed of modern computers, but none of that could have happened without the previous iterations, which also includes the invention of the silicon transistor by Bell Labs, not to mention the invention of the concept of zero in ancient India, which would help start the concept of digital/binary logic long before it was a concept itself.

@TheVanillatech Год назад

I had a Sega Megadrive, after giving my CPC 464 to a friend who had nothing, and played the hell out of Mercs, Sonic, Road Rash etc. Was very impressed for the entire two years I had the console. Then a friend of mine invited me over to see his "PC". He had a state of the art 486 DX2-80 with 8MB RAM. And he immediately loaded Alone In The Dark, and my jaw hit the floor. The fact I was controlling this 3D, realistic character and shooting purple monsters with a shotgun, it was unreal. After seeing that, he showed me Doom - and that was it. That did it. I mean it was brand new, and I'd never thought this was possible in games. So I took my entire £1400 post office account savings and bought a DX-33 system and my friend gave me copies of Doom, The Legacy, Alone In The Dark, Dune 2 etc. It was amazing, how fast things moved back then. And the potential was limitless. Never see those times again, from Doom and Alone in the Dark in 1993, to Quake and TombRaider and Carmageddon in 1996, to 3Dfx powered Screamer Rally and Dungeon Keeper 2 in 1999.

@DJSekuHusky Год назад

This chip would have released when I was 5. I didn't end up using a computer til I was 6 (my dad's Amiga 1000). Even the first PC I built when I was 11 had a K5 socket 100MHz Pentium (all built from Goodwill scraps), and it would later sport a 133MHz Pentium w/MMX, so yeah I still missed out on the 486 days as well.

@Vile-Flesh Год назад

@@TheVanillatech "he showed me Doom - and that was it" God damned right, I know that feeling all too well. Those were the best times ever.

@TheVanillatech Год назад

@@Vile-Flesh Ya know, that friend of mine had connections with a manager of an Escom shop in my town. The manager was stealing PC's from the shop out the back and passing them to my friend to fence, inventing paperwork to cover it up, and I was one of the victims cos I bought one. That's how my friend had so many brand new computers and games. The manager got sacked but was never arrested as far as I know. But I remember walking past that Escom shop one day, and in the window there were 3 computers all running the Doom demo, the £899 computer, £1299 computer, £1699 computer etc. That was probably the best ever move by any manager to sell PC's in 1993/4. There was always a crowd of people outside, and there was a 486 PC inside where you could walk up and play Doom! By then I already had my PC (which was, lets face it, probably stolen) but I still used to hang out in that shop, learning things about PC's. One of the guys in there taught me about conventional memory and all that stuff. It was the first shop in my town that focused on selling PC's for entertainment, rather than to offices for business. Just a few years later there would be Electronics Boutique, Tomorrows World, GameTech etc. But those Escom managers made an early killing (some of them more than others).

@ToddsNerdCave Год назад

Great video! I remember installing the DX2 66 Overdrive into my SX33 back in the day and how big an improvement it was. I would have passed out from this kind of performance back then. 😂

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks very much! Yeah I can imagine! Going from an SX/33 to a DX2/66 would have been a tremendous upgrade back then, that's for sure.

@borlibaer Год назад

@@vswitchzero well, I started wirh a AMI NEAT AT 386SX 40 MHz AFAIR, MFM 40 MB & Hercules clone with 14" paperwhite. I had to upgrase with a cyrix ? copro (I still have), a speedstar 24, and an EIZO 9080i. Yes, it was my first PC I bought to work with STRAKON CAD as a studend withe the money I worked for DiCAD. These days back I had been entiteled as "the CAD Pope" and "the one who walkes above water". 😁 An Intel Overdrive would had made me to the Lord of CAD himself for sure. 🫣

@paulmichaelfreedman8334 Год назад

I remember having a 12 MHz 286 machine and was visiting someone who had a brand new 486DX-33 and it zipped and unzipped files in a flash where my 286 would take minutes.

@borlibaer Год назад

@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 yes. Actually the PC era started with i386 protected mode. My first "Computer" was an Olivetti M10, our uncle ("the FACIT Man") acquired. M10 is still with me. Very helpful for my study. But the software I had to develop was already on a 486, where my study time was enlongued, because I already jobbed for DiCAD and later for Cvil Engineering Companies.

@AmstradExin Год назад

Did the board have Cache? Did the same back then without and it made it worse hehe.

@dennisp.2147 Год назад

I remember these when they were new. As I recall they were semi-vaporware. Hard to find and extremely expensive. Some people even suggested that the only reason Intel even bothered to make them in such limited numbers was to avoid a lawsuit over the "Overdrive Ready" sockets they'd been flogging for a couple of years. The cost of one was about the same as buying a new socket 3 motherboard and a Cyrix 5x86 combined. The early 90's 486 motherboards that could have used the speed boost didn't support the chip physically with their older socket, while the later machines that DID have an overdrive socket could also accept the much cheaper AMD and Cyrix 5x86 chips which were either close enough in the case of the AMD chip or arguably better, in the case of the Cyrix chip. The ones I have, I found in upgraded proprietary OEM machines (IBM, Compaq, Dell) that had been in either Government or Corporate service before being scrapped. I've never found one in a standard beige box PC.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Very interesting historical perspective, thanks for sharing! I wondered the same about the overdrive sockets. They were around for quite some time before a chip existed that could actually use them.

@dennisp.2147 Год назад

@@evergreengamer5767 Citation please. There's no evidence that I've ever seen that Intel used damaged/defective silicon for these. As for the rest of your comment, have you ever heard of the Latin phrase "non sequitur"?

@eleventy-seven Год назад

The Cyrix fell flat in gaming with the release of Quake being a unpleasant experience.

@dennisp.2147 Год назад

@@eleventy-seven You're thinking of the 6x86.

@andrewsuvorow6818 Год назад

There was even more rare and strange Pentium Overdrive - for the replacement of original Pentium 60 and 66, doubling its' clock. That CPU also had built-in voltage regulator (Socket 4 motherboards had no voltage options, as 486 mb did) and it had full-fledged 3.3 v "new Pentium" core clocked at 120 or 133 MHz.

@AllanAdamson Год назад

well I got a 486 back then & I knew about the pentiums but what I ended up doing was building my next machine, it was a 233 mmx in 97.. that's because I went from using my 486 at home to working at a computer store and after that 233 mmx I built machine after machine & I remember when the 1.33 ghz t-bird came out from AMD & I built a system on that.. of course I had a super socket 7 system, actually multiple, as well as slot A, and flip chip system, along with a dual slot 1 and dual socket 370.. ah I just kept having fun with it for years & even now I'm behind the latest hardware & it's just a matter of what you want to spend your money on and how many systems you have & over the years you begin to know what's going to fulfill your demands & don't really spend more unless you have to.. course monitors too now are crazy.. great video here I like stuff that brings back memories ... haha just remembered buying that 4.2GB bigfoot & thinking I'd have enough space lol oh man after that I built a raid array out of some fujitsu drives

@DSOImager Год назад

Awesome seeing this. I was one of those guys that purchased one of these. It was to squeeze out more performance. Definitely not worth it though. A few months after I purchased this cpu.. I learned out to build my own PC from scratch and put together a shuttle socket 7 system with an AMD k5. That whole build, including the case cost less than the Pentium Overdrive, lol.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks very much for your comment, that's interesting! From what I'm hearing, these chips were very overpriced and hard to obtain back then (selling above the $300 USD MSRP). Do you remember roughly how much you paid for it back then?

@DSOImager Год назад

@@vswitchzero I paid $500, give or take $50. I had to order it from a local PC shop. It took at least a couple weeks for it come in after placing the order. A couple of other things I remember from that cpu.. I put it in a packard bell with a 486sx @50mhz. The sound events in windows 3.1 were "accelerated". Was interesting but I rarely used win 3.1 so I ignored that, lol. My time with it was short lived.. around the time I ordered the Pentium overdrive I started reading one of those PC hardware Bible type books.. and I also discovered "Toms Hardware" online. It was only months later that I picked up that shuttle board.. the k5pr75 (for $32!), a trident video card, 8 or 16 megs of ram (think it was 2 8meg sticks) and a sound blaster. That build blew away the Pentium overdrive Packard Bell in performance. That said.. I do regret selling that system to this day because it was cool. :)

@cocoe68 4 месяца назад

In my first job, at beginning 1996 I have to upgrade a tower server from Compaq, a Prosignia VS with a 486DX2 and I selected a Pentium Overdrive 83MHz. It was an incredible upgrade for Novell 3.12 file server in an organization of around 50 office users. It was replaced in 1998 by a Pentium Pro 200MHz. I still have that old Prosignia server and start to hear that old SCSI hard disk and Novell console. So fast and powerful computer in that time but evolving so quickly, in very few years we were Xeon servers, ufff.

@tallpaul9475 Год назад

My first PC, bought from Electronic Avenue at Montgomery Wards, was a Packard Bell desktop. I think it was around late 1994. Windows for Workgroups 3.11, I eventually upgraded to Windows 95. Originally 486DX-2 66Mhz, I had the Pentium Overdrive @83Mhz that was bought at one of the many electronics businesses in Silicon Valley that eventually went out of business. It worked well for what it did. Learned a lot with that thing.

@ruxandy Год назад

23:30 The PCI S3 Virge is certainly not the bottleneck. If you put it on a fast socket 7 system, 3DBench 1.0C will easily reach 150+ FPS. The main bottleneck is most likely the slow bus speed and subpar memory performance of the 486 platform. Anyway, awesome video, keep it up! 😀

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks very much for your comment and for pointing that out! That definitely makes more sense. The more I see the Pentium, the more I realize just how bus limited the 486 platform was. I hope to start exploring some faster socket 7 based systems in the future and to look more into the Virge DX and Virge VX as well. Thanks again :)

@Shmbler Год назад

Indeed. Those S3 cards are among my fastest in DOS. But 33 vs. 40 MHz bus makes a huge difference in memory bandwidth (120 vs. 100MB/s in Speedsys from my experience).

@john_ace Год назад

You can often soften the heat conductive glue with ca-glue remover/debonder. Simple CA-glue is a good heat-conductive glue btw. You can heat the heatsink with a blowtorch a bit to loosen the CA-glue afterwards if needed.

@OzzFan1000 Год назад

This video is a great breakdown of the performance of the PODP83. Sadly though, all the trade magazines at the time suggested to avoid buying this as it was deemed overpriced compared to the DX4 or Am5x86-133. I don't think FPU performance was a major selling point at the time, and the general suggestion was that if you needed faster FPU, just get an actual Pentium system that isn't held back by an "outdated" 32bit bus. That being said, I wanted one of these so bad back in the day but my Socket 2 486 didn't have the extra row of pins necessary to support the PODP. It probably wouldn't have helped me much though as I was restricted to using ISA bus graphics.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks very much, Charlie! That's interesting. I wasn't very aware of the POD back in the day. We wound up getting a Pentium 100 system in late 1995 and kept the DX2/66 system we had before. I was always hogging the PC, so my parents were happy to take over the 486 and let me use the Pentium :) It's too bad they didn't make this chip work in a standard PGA-168 socket. I've never seen it, but I've heard people have done modifications to make it work. I'm not sure how essential the extra pins for power delivery really are. But I suppose for those earlier 486 systems, the DX4 overdrive or one of the 5V capable "turbo chip" alternatives were still great choices. Going from an SX or DX to a DX4 was a massive upgrade, that's for sure.

@OzzFan1000 Год назад

I ended up leapfrogging over the Pentium CPUs when I finally upgraded my 486 and went directly to a Pentium II 300 with AGP. But it's ok though. I have my PODP83 in my collection now, and comparing it to my Cx5x86 100 and AMD DX4 100, Intel DX4 100, and AMD 5x86 133 is quite interesting to say the least. All fun CPUs to have!

@snakeplissken1754 Год назад

True, i was coming from a dx4 100 which i at times replaced with a dx40 (some games just ran to fast otherwise). And when the pentium hit it was just to expensive and not really needed. The overdrive cpu looked nice but a big part of the pentium was the new PCI bus and just couldn't ever perform that great without. Heck i got a cyrix 5x86 133 with PCI bus board for a fraction of the price of a pentium. Sure the fpu performance wasn't good but I didn't really care that much. Kept that system going till they released the pentium ii.

@CommodoreFan64 Год назад

Great video, and I remember in mid 95 I still had a 486 DX2 at 66Mhz, but being a kid just getting into high school, I could not afford a new computer, but I got my mother to help me upgrade my 486 at the local PC repair shop with a Pentium Overdrive at 100Mhz, a 28.8K Modem(got a 33.6K later on) , 16MB of RAM(laster got it up to 32MB), and a 2GB HDD(don't remember the exact video card I had, but was enough to run DOS NES emulators like Nesticle) to run Windows 95 till a few years later when I got my first job, and was able to build my first system with an AMD K6-II @ 550Mhz on a FIC mainboard. So yeah I have some fond memories of the Pentium Overdrive chips, and I'm really thankful Intel made them back in the day for those of us on a limited budget.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks for your comment! Always interesting to hear from people who had these chips first hand back in the day.

@CommodoreFan64 Год назад

@@vswitchzero You're welcome 👍

@BadManiac Год назад

What I do with heatsinks like that, for example on my voodoo 1 and 2 cards, I use normal thermal paste, something like Arctic mx-4 or whatever in the center. And then add two SMALL drops of gel superglue on diagonal corners of the heatsink. Then I use some carpenters spring clamps to hold it on with some pressure until the glue sets. It works perfectly, holds really well, and cools perfectly. But all it takes is a bit of acetone to dissolve the superglue and you can remove it without a trace.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Great tip, thanks!

@LionWithTheLamb 3 месяца назад

I seen that method a long time ago on either ANANDTECH or TOMSHARDWARE for chipset / video adapter heatsinks.

@wisid Год назад

Great detail, thanks for sharing. resistor hack was amazing to fix the clock speed

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks very much! :)

@Guimhj Год назад

That boot beep hit me right in the heart

@Amigafur Год назад

I was born in 2007, the week after Intel finally discontinued the 486. They may be older than me, but I love and collect these computers :)

@thatonetimeatbandcamp Год назад

Back in the day I had a 486DX4 100Mhz with 16MB of ram. I remember when Winamp came out it cried that it needed MMX instructions, so I spent the money to upgrade to the Pentium 60mhz.. even though it was "40mhz slower", it included those MMX instructions that allowed me to run Winamp.. man I wish I kept both of those boards.

@cynic5581 Год назад

I love when RU-vid recommendation section hits a home run. All your content has been fantastic! Subscribed I had a 486sx2 at the time iirc. I do remember starring through the glass cabinet at the Pentium OD at CompUSA. The main incompatibility was the cost for my 14 yo self.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks so much for the kind words, it means a lot! :)

@BrassicGamer Год назад

Kinda wanna get one now simply because I know what to do if it's messed up. Nice work! Great to have this documented so succinctly. Seems like ages ago you were talking about this on Twitter, so I'm glad you got the video out. And that tutorial from Intel is absolute gold. Impressed by the performance in Quake - definitely acceptable performance.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks very much! .. Haha yeah, I love that intel demo - the VGA artwork is awesome. Yeah, you're right! it was many months ago that I got that chip. My backlog is definitely getting too large now :) I'll hopefully be doing some more mods on it and some overclocking in the future.

@fadingbeleifs Год назад

Every single one of these that I ever had had a heat sink and fan permanently mounted to the chip.. this is the first time I've ever seen one with it removed and not absolutely destroyed!

@bartceleron4092 Год назад

Nice to see an overclocked Pentium. I just have a 486 DX2. Thank you for vidéo.

@alexfinns6162 Год назад

20:44 When it cut to the scene with the sawI thought bewas cutting the cpu for a second lol

@maliggno4198 Год назад

Now I need that processor…

@wsmcke Год назад

I remember working at Computer City. We had a Pentium Overdrive in a small display mold for displaying it. I later asked if I could have the CPU displayed (we now had slot type Pentium II, so AMD and Cyrix CPUs could no longer fit) and got the broke the mold and took out the processor, being careful of the pins... It worked!!!

@vswitchzero Год назад

Haha that's an awesome story. I'm surprised it had a functional CPU inside too. Thanks for sharing :)

@DanielleWhite Год назад

I remember reviews at the time which usually weren't favorable, mostly because of views that the 486 platform was in it's endgame so it would not buy much time for many people. It was a spectator sport for me because I got a P54c 90MHz system (with the FDIV bug) in mid-94 as my graduation present, though I remember it having a few issues, particularly with the Reveal sound card that Insights included.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks for your comment! The FDIV bug was very interesting. My first Pentium was from 1995 (a P54c 100MHz model NEC system) but I'm pretty sure they had the FDIV situation sorted by that point.

@Vile-Flesh Год назад

I would have killed for any kind of Pentium in 1994. We suffered with a 486sx25 from '92 all the way to January 1997 when we got the Pentium 133. That 133 opened sooooo many doors for us and it was so FAST.

@utubeuser1024 Год назад

That was amazing! I had a Pentium Overdrive CPU I had no idea about the resistor mod to trick the CPU into thinking the fan was working! Thanks for the video!

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks very much! :)

@semloh1870 Год назад

Excellent video , as always but can you add a Voodoo 1 to this system and show us how Quake runs? In 1997 i had an AMD K5 120MHz with a Voodoo 1 and Quake was great.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Awesome. That's a great idea. I'll have to give that a try :)

@teknologyguy5638 Год назад

Thanks for taking me back, had the DX4-100, the Pentium Overdrive, and several others back in the day. I believe I still have the Overdrive and a Cyrix 6x86 somewhere and been thinking for a while about trying to piece them back together again as you have done here.

@WildRapier Год назад

That was the first CPU I bought...the upgrade (same socket) was 200 or 233 Mhz...the kicker was I bought a 16 MB Voodoo Banshee when I was running the 100 Mhz CPU...and the Banshee was clocked @ 105 Mhz. The last time my GPU clock surpassed my CPU clock!

@BigBadBench Год назад

Great stuff! Love the heatsink mod. (The original fan is really annoying)

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks! That's interesting, I've heard a similar story about the OEM fan from others too. If it's anything like the retail box pentium coolers, they are pretty loud and don't age particularly well :)

@paulmichaelfreedman8334 Год назад

Ahhh the pentium days...I had a 100 OC to 120 or 133. Later I managed to overclock the 75 MHz version to 150, and it ran quake 3 with 40 fps with a voodoo 2 card.

@TechnoGuille Год назад

i used one of those overdrives in 1996, come from 486 DX and like you said was a huge difference, imagine double the speed with a simple upgrade in 90s, awesome, all friends stick in home playing DOS games and doom

@chuizune Год назад

That was a great video! Now my itch to build a Pentium Overdrive system has returned… but oh Lord the prices… socket 3 PCI boards got expensive; not to mention the processor itself. Gotta keep trying the recycle center I guess. Keep up the good work!

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks very much! Yeah, the prices for the pentium overdrive chips these days are pretty ridiculous. Best of luck! I hope you find one :)

@Shmbler Год назад

I was looking for two years on a good deal and catched a Compaq branded LPX form factor UM8881/8886 board with 5x86 installed for ~25€. No other bids even though it was placed correctly. Seems people don't like those LPX form factor boards.

@micb3rd Год назад

Great video, this brings back nostalgic memories of gaming on early 8088- to 486 computers that friends had... we finally got a Intel Pentium 120 (54C) 120Mhz computer in 1996 and it was a monster.

@framebuffer.10 Год назад

I have always found these Overdrive CPUs very fascinating, thanks for this great video! Is there any chance for overclocking?

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks very much! It is possible to try with a 40MHz bus speed for a 100MHz total clock. From what I've seen online, these chips don't overclock well at all. Not so much because of the core, but the power regulator on the chip can't provide enough current for it to work reliably at that clock speed. There are some mods that can be done to it to squeeze a bit more out of it, but I'll probably just leave it as-is :)

@mashk Год назад

I bought a Pentium Overdrive 63mhz chip back in the day to upgrade my 486 DX2 running at 50mhz. To tell you the truth I didn't see much of a difference although I convinced myself otherwise back then to justify not wasting my money. I sold the system soon after and bought a proper Pentium.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks for your comment! It's really great to hear some first-hand experience with these chips from back in the day.

@oleo007 Год назад

My first build PC is a Pentium MMX 233MHz with motherboard Asus Off-board,it's a Itautec from Brazil,it's a great PC,running windows 2000,good times! The overdrive is a huge improvement.

@FriedEgg101 Год назад

I just found your channel and it's really interesting. I remember my dad upgrading our vtech 486 SX25 to a DX2 50, and him talking about the maths co-processor. I was 13 at the time, and even though now I've been building my own PCs for years, that still sounds like witchcraft to me today. Lemmings ran so smooth, that's all I cared about. I also remember lusting after a voodoo 3 in my late teens.

@cocusar Год назад

something died inside me when I saw you soldered to the gold pins. I thought you wete going to leave the kapton tape with a piece of wire, just for perfectionist sake. but in any case, really cool video and project!

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks very much! Haha yeah, to be honest it felt wrong soldering the gold pads. The tape and wire mod was too flaky though, unfortunately. I had the multiplier change a couple of times during testing.

@KuntalGhosh Год назад

u should immediately replace all of those ceramic caps , ceramic caps when damaged can go short circuit and explode like tantalums which will really damage the soldering area and also short the voltage regulator to ground and as the supply to cpu is unregulated the psu will continue pumping current into shorted voltage regulator and so that ic will explode as well.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks for your comment and for the tips. I may do some further modification to the chip and will look into replacing the chipped caps.

@TrueThanny Год назад

That Noctua 40x20mm fan has a 5V version. Don't know if the CPU package could provide enough power, but it would be pretty cool to have it soldered on and self-contained like that. I also have what looks to be the same thermal tape. I got it to attach small heat sinks to some servos, and was surprised how well the stuff holds.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks for your comment! I actually have the 40x10mm 5V version from Noctua. I think the OEM fan is actually quite a bit heftier and probably uses more power so I assume it would be okay to be powered from the gold pads.

@GigAHerZ64 Год назад

25:00 most of the effect does *not* come from the FPU performance itself, but from the architecture difference between 486 and pentium. How pentium worked, was that FPU was able to process its data in parallel with the rest of the CPU. It was almost like you had 2 cores on a CPU. And in quake they made heavy use of this "dual-core behavior". 486 couldn't process integer and floating point calculations in parallel and most of the performance is lost on that part.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Very interesting, thanks for sharing! I still have a lot to learn about the Pentium architecture :)

@0LoneTech Год назад

I'd love to see a reference on this! As far as I knew, the 486 was available with an on-die FPU, but the FPU remained a distinct coprocessor until MMX and SSE started coupling it closer to the CPU. FWAIT was used to synchronize with the FPU, and you could absolutely do other work on the CPU before that. The Pentium had some FPU operations run in fewer cycles (including the infamously buggy FDIV), but its main improvement was in instructions per cycle on the integer side, which they termed a superscalar pipeline.

@GeckonCZ Год назад

It's a combination of multiple factors. Mainly the superscalar integer pipeline, pipelined FPU, FDIV overlap, and FXCH parallelism. The original software renderer was hand-optimized by Abrash with these specific architectural details in mind. Check out Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book if you want to learn how exactly it all fits together on a per-instruction level.

@0LoneTech Год назад

@@GeckonCZ Thanks, I think I may. :)

@franciscotoledo0007 Год назад

Cool, we needed this video 30 years ago :-). I need to videotape it and send it to myself back in time.

@StarlancerAstro Год назад

My first upgrade over my 486 was a Pentium Pro, which I still had it, seem rare nowadays

@vswitchzero Год назад

The Pentium Pro was legendary. I remember wanting one so badly back in the day. I'll hopefully do a video on it one of these days :)

@bigalexg Год назад

This is top notch retro coverage in every way! Love the deep knowledge and the way you quickly work in so many relevant facts about each thing. I did all this stuff back in the 90's but quite a bit more superficially - fascinating to see all the stuff I was wondering about then so lovingly explained after all these years - of course all we had back then was the lore you picked up from friends. It was so difficult to get basic information before the Internet got well populated.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks so much, I really appreciate it! :)

@jamiehav0k62 Год назад

With the 83 mhz overdrive chip. You could run most games well in 96, by 97 it was still pretty much obsolete tho lol. Still extended the life of your 486 for a year or so.

@timschonherr7674 Год назад

Nice Video! I literally did the same with a 100 MHz Overdrive, the 83 MHz Pentium Overdrive and the 200 MHz w MMX Pentium Overdrive. Love those CPUs…but now have Socket 5 Interposer that allows me to run AMD K6-2 with 400MHz on a former Pentium 90. So cool what was possible back then….

@markskonecki2050 Год назад

the good ole 486 that was my first processor. boy how times have changed.

@l337pwnage Год назад

Sparkle was a great PSU back in the day. Not sure if they are still around. I also had a modified one that was labeled "Glitchmaster". They put a giant stiffening cap in it(about 1" dia X 4" long) and some surge protection circuitry in it. It would run the PC for about 5 seconds after you hit the power switch. Enough to ride out an OCR(that thing that makes your lights flicker in a thunder storm). I had a DX4/120, but I guess I don't remember how smooth it ran quake, I just remember I could play it.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Very interesting! I'll have to look into that PSU. I've been really happy with this one. It's got really solid voltage regulation, lots of +3.3/5V amperage and even has a -5V rail. I use it on my test bench for all of my older AT based systems and earlier ATX systems.

@l337pwnage Год назад

@@vswitchzero Sparkle was made overseas, at least I think they were(are?). Glitchmaster modified them in Colorado somewhere, IIRC, so it's a pretty good bet they aren't still around. It would be cool to see someone find an old one and do a review of it, tho. Unfortunately, I got rid of mine, and all my AT stuff, before I even thought there might be a demand for it again. Back then I couldn't afford a PC so I mostly took whatever anyone else I knew threw away and I'd piece something together. So I had so much stuff there was no way I could keep it all. I'm sure I bought that power supply new, tho, and for that DX4/120. That was given to me by a friend of the original owner. He assembled his own stuff and I got that when he upgraded. It was just a bunch of parts in a box. I had to get a PSU, find a case, and stuff for it. Later I bought a Promise controller card for it to overcome the 500mb(?) limit of the mother board. In theory, I could have up to four 8.4 gb HDD's on that card, which would have been crazy back then. I think I eventually had a used 1.6 gb HDD on it at that PC's peak. It's a shame you just can't keep everything you ever had, lol, or, at least I couldn't. ;)

@vswitchzero Год назад

@@l337pwnage I know the feeling! I kept almost nothing from my older days of PC building. I'm not sure what became of my original 486 and Pentium, but one I stared building my own systems I was constantly selling parts to raise the funds to buy new ones so I rarely kept anything I wasn't actively using. Over the years I've purchased quite a bit of the nostalgic stuff I had back then. Not always the exact parts but close :)

@scottgfx Год назад

Back in the day, I had a DEC Starion with (probably) a 60mhz Pentium. I bought the Intel Overdrive chip for it. Jumpered the bus speed and I was then running the Overdrive at 133Mhz. Nice upgrade. My first PC after many years with an Amiga.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Nice! Those socket 4 overdrive chips are SUPER rare these days.

@scottgfx Год назад

@@vswitchzero I sold the system to a coworker and never saw it again. :(

@kwikdahl Год назад

My first computer had a DX2/66, thinking about it makes me nostalgic. I remember reading about the "overdrive" in a magazine and dreaming about upgrading to it.

@shagstars Год назад

Since late 2009 we finally escaped the pc upgrade every 2-3 years issue. Amd hd 5000 series introduced dx11 which is used 13 years later and those 12/13 year old cards can still boot new games. I did say boot not play well.

@lemagreengreen Год назад

I was aware of these but never saw one in the wild, the final generation of fast 486's from AMD etc held most people off until Quake in 1996 finally cemented the need for a Pentium. Had absolutely no idea this chip could throttle itself, that definitely has to be the first example of CPU self preservation tech, something most chips that followed until the mid 00's didn't do.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks for your comment! Yeah I'm not aware of any earlier CPUs that would throttle like this. It was definitely a unique feature at that time, that's for sure.

@TurboBass Год назад

The outro video is unlocking core memories here!

@bigmango202 3 месяца назад

its actually pretty cool how most of the times silicon is either completely broken or completely fine in my experience

@angieandretti Год назад

Neat, I have an Intel "SnapIn 386" upgrade CPU for the IBM 5170 and it has software that looks visually identical despite being a much older-generation CPU! No FPU test of course, although I've also got that separately in the software for my 287xl coprocessor - but I think the software I have for that chip is text-based.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Those snap-in upgrade chips are really something. I always wondered how well they hold on to the old processor. Very interesting about the software similarities too. Thanks for sharing!

@Obie327 Год назад

Pretty cool to see the old tech again.. I didn't have option for the Pentium Overdrive but did have 586 133 overdrive chip back in the day. I do have an overdrive Intel chip of lesser speed (DX 100 or less) I should check my old chip collection to see what I have. Thanks for the Retro spec review and looking forward to other reviews of this vintage. Fun times back then.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks very much! :)

@robwebnoid5763 Год назад

I bought a few drop-in speed replacements back in the days of the mid 1990's. And those were a 286-to-486 (to 25mhz) & a 486-to-586 (to 100mhz). Both were from Evergreen Technologies (now since defunct). The 486-to-586 is put into the Pentium Overdrive socket of a 486 motherboard that might have that additional socket. My 486 did have that socket so I was able to enjoy a boost from the original motherboard 25mhz to the new 100mhz, because the new cpu is an AMD 5x86 (up to 133mhz). I still have all 3 of these boost cpu's, but one of them got so overclocked that it had since gotten rendered nearly braindead & unstable due to thermal electromigration, i.e. I did not put enough heatsinking & cooling into it, back then in the late 1990's. The x586 is still being used on one of my 486's today & it is still useful, although as useful as a sped-up 486 100mhz is going to be, relative to today, of course. However, long before any of that, I did buy a boost cpu for my Commodore 64 in 1990, which boosted the speed of my C64 up to 4 times faster & that made a huge difference in some games & also in programming & productivity apps. And I still have all my C64 stuff, which includes peripherals, disks, magazines, manuals & that boost cpu.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks very much for your comment. It's always awesome to hear some first-hand experiences with these upgrade chips. I remember the Evergreen chips well. They were very popular back then.

@robwebnoid5763 Год назад

@@vswitchzero ... I will likely further tinker with that boosted 486, if free time permitting. I have been wishing to change out the mainboard oscillator so as to jump speed from 100 mhz to 133 mhz overall, to take advantage of the 5x86 133 mhz. I am unsure of any potential issues though, which jumping from 100 to 133 may be within official tolerance for the 5x86 cpu, yet it may not be for the motherboard components, but I would still like to try. That was one of the exciting things that came out of the 1990's, wasn't it, i.e. cpu/mainboard overclocking? Nowadays, AMD & Intel have since put the inclusion of automatic software overclocking in their modern processors, when ironically both companies condemned it inappropriate for end users to overclock their cpu's back then or else suffer voidable warranties, heh.

@vswitchzero Год назад

@@robwebnoid5763 So true. The big gains (sometimes 50-100% or more) that could be had on old hardware like this is just no longer possible these days. Intel and AMD have become so good at squeezing ever bit of performance from the chips they make through use of boosting, thermal throttling and other technologies it seems. I may be wrong, but it feels to me like the Core2Duo was the last truly great overclockable chip.

@robwebnoid5763 Год назад

@@vswitchzero ... Hmm, I don't think I have a C2D, but I'll have to check. Well, at least I know the ones I've bought over the years didn't have a Duo. I had acquired some used laptops at the recycler a few years ago that others have tossed & I will take a look at their processors. Free is a very good price, heh. I believe I may have repaired a friend's laptop over a decade ago that may have been a Duo. Or maybe it was one of my sister's machines. A lot of my older CPU's are still set overclocked on whatever motherboard they are on right now, notably my AMD K6-III+ overclocked from 450 to 600mhz. There was a bit of a disappointment when Intel took away experimental end-user overclocking & then made it their own, when Intel/AMD did not even really make overclocking a part of their business in the first place. It feels as though they stole that idea from the users & are now making money off it. But it is what it is, it's their product & we customers toyed & abused it for as long as we could, to save money, heh. People crave the latest higher number-crunching graphical games & high speed videography editing, so we're still going to want to buy the latest cpu's anyway from Intel/AMD, along with graphics gpu's, because we can't help it that technology keeps moving forward. I am sure people still further overclock the latest crop of cpu's from the past decade or so of cpu's developed, but the gains are now smaller, much like what you said about gains, that of which Intel/AMD "stole" that thunder of gains away from past overclockers.

@RetroFill Год назад

Found and subbed to your channel; love the hardware reviews! Also hello fellow Canadian; those CAD prices are indeed ugh.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks so much! Always awesome to meet another fellow Canadian who's into retro PCs :)

@BSzili Год назад

That's one hell of a cooling tower for the Pentium Overdrive.

@sandmanxo Год назад

Awesome video. One thing I'd like to see is an AMD 5x86-133 running at 150 and/or 160mhz on the same board to compare performance. I ran mine at 150mhz back in the day after benchmarking and seeing the mhz bus more than made up for the 10mhz frequently loss. I guess I just got lucky that my Diamond Stealth 32 VLB video card had zero issues with it. I did always wonder back then though if I had an overdrive chip how it would perform in integer performance. Even Quake ran around what a p55-90 would output though, so I wonder how that would compare too.

@sandmanxo Год назад

I commented before the end of the video and saw that 160mhz was tested. Was 150 mhz tested though? The extra bus clock really helped, and I have no idea how my i/o card and crap 30 pin simms handled it.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks for your comment. I'll be doing another video comparing the AM5x86, Cyrix 5x86 and the POD. I will be including overclocking results in that one.

@EmirCesan Год назад

I remember that time, I had 486DX2 and that Pentium Overdrive was than like a dream upgrade. Good old times ❣️

@BalancedSpirit79 Год назад

This was a very interesting video. Back in the day I had a Compaq Presario CDS 924 with a 486 DX2/66. I was looking to upgrade it because, like you said, it ran Quake terribly. I opted for the Evergreen "586" 133 Mhz chip, since it was cheaper and gave me more Mhz. It actually powered up my Compaq quite well and it ran Quake and other games very nicely, but then someone told me that it was just an OCed 486 and it lacked the special Pentium instructions that would allow it to, say, boot Windows XP. I was peeved, but the chip still tided me over until I got a true gaming rig.

@rodhester2166 Год назад

such a great video,, the info on that cpu was awesome.

@PCartCast Год назад

My first computer was a 233mmx, so, a little ahead of these overdrives. I only wiched intel still produced overdive cpu's, the new alder lake e-cores would be such an upgrade for so many old plataforms.

@GraveUypo Год назад

it's basically the same as i did with my am4 recently. landed a 5800x3D on the system i originally bought for a r7 2700 (non-x), and the improvement over that is vast. in games, it might be 3 times as fast.

@PCartCast Год назад

@@GraveUypo AMD is so much better then Intel on upgrades, the single fact they keep the same socket for several generations is a plus.

@rubyvolt Год назад

I bought Tandy 3100 and 3200 back in the day. 486/33s with 4MB, no sound or CD. Still have them fully loaded. The 3100 had only the "new" zif socket and could take up to a DX4/100 or the Gainberry 586/133 which is what is in the 3100 now. The 3200 has the Pentium OD socket. The Gainberry smokes that Pentium and the DX4 is right there with it.

@eizomonitor6003 Год назад

I had amd 386 DX 40 Mhz cpu in a mobo which was upgradeable to 486 :D Also you could massively overclock the 386 DX 40 Mhz to 80 Mhz. To achieve 50 MHz was realive easy. Anything over 50 Mhz was not as easy as now days.

@ProDigit80 Год назад

1- heatsink is overkill. The black one would have been sufficient, if used in a clean (non smoker) environment. 2- The fan is overkill. You could have easily used a 12V fan, using the 5V pins. It would have given you enough airflow. 3- the cooling efficient of the tape you use on the cpu, is about the same as standard dual sided, plastic scotch tape.

@paulmoffat9306 Год назад

I was once at a hamfest in Pensacola around 1998, where one person had a severely overclocked Intel 286 CPU, normally ran at 25 Mhz, but this one was running at 1.1 Ghz! The heatsink was cooled with liquid Nitrogen. Seemed to run fine, although admittedly, the core was idling most of the time as the rest of the I/O could not keep up.

@cpu_duke 7 месяцев назад

Thanks for this great video! I don’t have a ODP in my collection but will certainly look into this…

@vswitchzero 6 месяцев назад

Thanks very much! It is a very unique processor, that's for sure.

@hotswapster Год назад

Hey! Loving you vids. Just a query on the CPU fan direction, I noticed that you had it blowing down...would it not be better sucking up instead? This is a learning opportunity for me, not a criticism.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks very much! That's a great question. In theory, it should work both ways to cool the heatsink, but I seem to recall that pushing air into a heatsink's fins is a bit more efficient. There is also the benefit of providing airflow to other components around the socket when its facing downward (like VRM components on the motherboard, or in the case of the POD, the VRM components on the CPU itself). Tower-style heatsinks are a different story though.

@NaoPb Год назад

Great work on the video.

@alunroberts1439 Год назад

I had a 486DX 4 100 with 256MB and 8meg gfx card for get the card do think is was sort of matrix. Also 32bit sound blaster it did play quake and doom very well. Also used on ham radio for decoding morse and sending telex. Then moved to a P2 the P4 never did own a P3 until years later. Had external liquid cooling. Do miss the old stuff worked so well.

@DougieFresh1970 Год назад

Way back in the days my 1st computer was a Gateway 2000 4DX2-66 It was so slow. Even with the Evergreen Pentium Overdrive CPU Upgrade the system had bottlenecks. It wouldn't even play mp3s.

@KillBoyUK Год назад

Cool video , On the epoxy issue , I would of used some normal thermal paste than then 3-4 small spots of epoxy in the corners. That way you get the best of both worlds , the heatsink is secure but won't be a "female dog" to remove

@vswitchzero Год назад

Thanks for the great tip! I think that's definitely a good move and I'm sure the thermal paste will have better thermal transfer than if done with all epoxy too. I may actually be removing the heatsink to do some further mods to the chip, so if I do may give this a try.

@chaslinux Год назад

@vswitchzero did you try orange Goo Gone on the top of that chip? I find it's useful sometimes when isopropyl doesn't remove thermal paste. It does need about a minute to activate.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Good tip, thanks! I forgot about "Goo Gone". I remember using that stuff to remove sticker residue many years ago and it was quite good at it. I did try IPA on it but it seemed to have no effect at all. Hopefully I won't have to do this again :D

@Tonba1 Год назад

Update: keep finding these on ebay for 100> bucks 63 mhz was 70 bucks. Maybe in canada the prices for these listing are high but in the US they're pretty reasonably priced

@vswitchzero Год назад

Very interesting! Those prices are much more reasonable than what I’ve been seeing lately. It’s true that Canadians always seem to pay more for this kind of stuff. Especially considering the exchange rate, import tax etc.

@UCs6ktlulE5BEeb3vBBOu6DQ Год назад

I know very well how it sound but this is true. I was there. I saw it; A friend back in the days had a 486 with MMX. You could see the MMX logo with some writings at bios post kind of like a old video card post logo. I asked wtf was that, I want that on my pc and he said it was an ordeal and that worked ok but not as good as a real mmx cpu because it was software mmx.. Some stuff have been erased from history and only memories remain.

@joachimd.5915 Год назад

very cool to see the difference. I personally got the chance to upgrade from a 33mhz dx to a 100mhz dx4 overdrive long time ago and the difference was already impressive, but bad for games like a-train, which were just running too fast already on the dx4 😂

@wsmcke Год назад

I remember these and the 386 DX (32 bit) and SX (16 bit) chips.

@bengraham5699 Год назад

Acording to Wikipedia the Intel Pentium Overdrive CPU for 486 Systems was Introduced February 3, 1995. While the Pentium Processor (P5) was introduced 22. March 1993. Seems weird to not buy P5 in 1993 and instead buy a lower performance Pentium Overdrive CPU in 1995 🤔

@luheartswarm4573 11 месяцев назад

I grew up in the early pentium 4 era, but man I found early computing so fascinating!

@JesterEric 5 месяцев назад

I upgraded my dx2 50 with the 25mhz version of this. It was a noticeable improvement. My next computer was a p133 and i remember using a MMX overdrive on that

@camjohnson2004 5 дней назад

Love the content. For a crazy idea i'd like to see the Pentium Overdrive paired with a Voodoo 2 Accelerator, see if it helps Quake to run better?? Just curious

@joehorecny7835 Год назад

nice restoration!

@alansaladan Год назад

That song is sick!!!

@alexisg311 Год назад

Excelente trabajo, gracias.

@LionWithTheLamb Год назад

When I was right out of High School I had a Gateway 2000 desktop with the Intel Pentium Overdrive 125Mhz. It worked fine but sometimes would hang when you powered it on. It didn't do this with a 486 chip in it.

@GraveUypo Год назад

you could push this thing to be within 10% of an actual pentium 100mhz. it's a best of a cpu for the platform

@Turktien Год назад

I have a couple of 486 CPUs (one of which is AMD 5x). I've had such a rough time finding a good board for the AMD. I found one that supports it but I can NOT get the mouse to work on it at all. What board(s) do you recommend in terms of price to supporting features/compatibility? I prefer PCI for some specific silliness I have planned rather than an ISA/VLB-only board.

@vswitchzero Год назад

It's getting harder and harder to find good 486 boards these days, unfortunately. The prices also vary wildly on eBay. I personally like the 486 boards based on the UMC 8881/8886 PCI chipset, like the Shuttle HOT-433 I used in this video but there are other good ones out there too. The Lucky Star ls486e is a popular one based on the SiS 85C496/497 chipset. The ls486e is known for being a potent overclocker, and because of this the price can be high. There are others that can be found more cheaply based on the same PCI chipset that may be a good choice. Sticking with the latest 486 PCI chipsets will help to ensure you'll have working L1 write-back cache capability too. Many earlier boards have broken WB implementations. Best of luck in your search and let me know what you find!

@Turktien Год назад

@@vswitchzero Thanks for your thoughts!

@abzzeus Год назад

I world on a project where they had a bunch of stress calculations to be run virtually constantly as they iterated the design. The guys were using 486sx cpus and these were slow - dropping in the 486Dx2 chips dramatically reduced the time it took, a 10x speed up wasn't uncommon.

@primus711 Год назад

All you had to do was soak it in alcohol it will come right off i would let it sit for at least a day Just put it in a container with a lid And knowing that i would use epoxy i would never trust tape after many heating and cooling expansion

@uncrunch398 Год назад

I wonder if it would work in what came with a Cyrix 486DX2 66MHz. I'll never find out though.

@Nordlicht05 Год назад

On my raspberry I always use some Standart superglue for heatsinks. Did peal them off from time to time. A screwdriver + a little push and they come off. But I never used it for CPU's . There I always did it how it should be done.

@Ammothief41 Год назад

Those intel overdrives were the only chips were getting. Had a 486dx33 and tried an offbrand "overdrive" chip but it was trash. Returned it and got an intel brand overdrive dx4 and it was night and day better.

@internetguy1260 Год назад

Very cool vid and very cool song

@boblister6174 Год назад

You are very lucky to have a socket 4 board been looking for one for some time (within my price range) I have 2 5volt cpus just no board. Rare is an understatement last one I seen went above 400cdn. I actually had one of these back in 96 definitely a big improvement over a DX-2 lasted me tell I got a slot one system.

@vswitchzero Год назад

Indeed! I was very lucky to find this one on eBay for a reasonable price. The seller’s description was vague so it probably went under the radar. I think I paid about $80 for it including the P60. Best of luck finding one!