You can achieve better framerates with S3D accelerated Tomb Raider patch. I've got minimum 12 FPS (in more complex areas) with Cyrix 5x86/100 with all features enabled (in 640x480) with overclocked S3 Virge DX (by mclk tool). BTW. Washed black with S3 Virge is a software problem. You can overcome this by using video bios 2.01.07 (or 2.01.08). Anyway great content as usual :)
Nice! I will try a new BIOS on this card then. I spent no time investigating the issue - I guess I was looking for a reason to finally upgrade the Tseng cards :D And I will also try the S3D patch in the future - but probably in a single video. This series must finish with 3Dfx 😊
It would be nice if we had an interview from a former Cyrix employee to tell us WHY these features were disabled and details about the production of thee chip in general . Good job on the video glad you will check the cpu's with a voodoo1 .
I guess the chip was rushed to market. If they had time, they would probably fix the stability problems and enable those features by default. Ha, that would be great to have someone from Cyrix shed some more light into the development and the 5x86 CPU in general.
Watching you painstakingly straighten each pin on a CPU or re-soldering a broken pin on a socketed chip is amazing. It's great to see someone spending so much time and care on these old things. They'd definitely be thrown out otherwise, and you can't replace that once it's in a landfill. Great work too, the pins on those CPUs you worked on in this video looked almost factory condition when you were done!
Love this videos series! So much retro fun. And the additional sequences with the setup around the chips are awesome! Looking forward to the bending pin AMD adventure!
@@bitsundbolts I like also the educational part! Thanks to you I bougth a defect VooDoo 1 to improve my soldering skills. Unfortunatly this card worked! But just in older systems. Do you maybe know why Voodoo 1 (and 2) wont work on more modern boards? I have try it on an Intel 965-Board (with P4 Northwood) and also on an AMD64-939-Board (because these boards will run Win98 and i was trying to build an powerful time capsule).
I think it's because of the faster bus speeds / CPU speeds of those "modern" retro PCs. There are topics on vogons that discuss your issue. Voodoo 1 sometimes may not like anything past 500 MHz. I could run a Voodoo 1 in a Pentium III 1GHz system though - without facing issues. I need to try faster systems and see this issue myself
@@bitsundbolts Good Idea (have to create an account on vogons for all my strange retro problems)! Maybe an Athlon 64 with 1GHz (or less) will work. Hope my Abit-Board will do this. I will try this tomorrow. I have also no problems with my Pentium III rig. Retro hardware is a neverending story full of secrets, curiosity and magic! THANK YOU!
thank you for the video. I've used Cyrix 5x86, 6x86 and then ultimately MII. It's not fast in gaming but it gave me wonderful memories and also gotten me interested in pc gaming till today. Been using AMDs since the sad demise of Cyrix.
You're welcome! I never had Cyrix CPUs before. I do have a FasMath floating point coprocessor on my 386 board, but that's about it. They're very interesting CPUs and helped diversify the market! Competition helped push innovation. Doesn't matter what we had back then, we all survived this great area of the rise of PCs in every home 😀
Coole Geschichte, dass zwei 5X86 wieder leben und auf jeden Fall nicht beim Recycler landen. Eigentlich schade, dass Cyrix damals die guten Funktionen deaktiviert hat, was dem 5x86 einen schlechten Ruf brachte. Deine Fähigkeiten sind echt top!
This is a big walk on memory lane watching this video. Started to build computers using first Intel 386 then 486. Started using the Cyrix 586 when it was first released because it was a lot cheaper than the Intel equivalent plus on some of the motherboards you can play with the jumper settings to get more speed. Did build x686 after. It was great times.
The image quality issue on the S3 sounds like a capacitor issue of some sort on the RGB pins. I'd try replacing those caps or decreasing the capacitance. It's a similar story to that of the SCART cables for PS1 vs PS2 where the PS2 cables have caps on them. When you use a mismatched set of cables, you end up with wrong brightness on the image in general. EDIT: just read another comment saying it's a VBIOS issue lol
@@sucaNaitoraven951Yep. Go look it up, it's a thing. I also just realized I mixed em up - PS2 ones have caps and PS1 ones don't. Caps in general bring the image down.
Nice! I installed some of those sockets when I still didn't have tweezers and a microscope. Wasn't funny :) For the pins, an engineer friend of mine recommended to warm up the metal before bending it. There are less chances of breaking it! Good luck! I also say zero :)
I would melt half the socket if I wouldn't have access to a microscope. I can imagine that your experience must have been frustrating! Hm, regarding heating the pins - I am really not convinced that it would help. I heated the donor AMD 486 in my previous video where I tried to harvest a pin. But those pins didn't feel any different. All I did was burn the wooden protector on the microscope base. I really doubt that 200 degrees makes any difference when bending those pins, but I might be wrong. I'm just afraid to constantly keep the temperature up, burn my fingers all the time, and prolong the process. If I would break off pins constantly, I would definitely try heating them, but so far, I don't see the need for it.
Super nice! Maybe you could explain the turbo mode a bit better since this usually depends on more on the motherboard. Which strategy is followed be the MoBo? Cache L2 Cache disabling or frequency reduction?
I agree. I think Necroware recently made a video about the different implementation methods. I have no clue yet and would have to make my own research first. But I knew that there is a difference between the cache strategies when using the turbo feature. Some day, I may make my own video about this - or reference the one from Necroware 😂
@Tombraider: Is it the CPU slowing it down though? I remember putting a Diamond Monster 3D in my System and playing Tomb Raider (with the 3DFx Patch) soooooooo smooooth. ... on a Cyris 120mhz though. Also can you bent pins better by heating them up before? Like 60c or so?
Now I can't wait to get the Voodoo done and test it. I really hope the 486 CPUs will have enough compute to push 20 to 25 fps at 640x480. That would be really amazing! I tried heating the pins, but I didn't feel any difference.
I`ve played it on 486 DX 33 on Grayscale monitor (despite some puzzles required color to be solved ) , and without 3D acceleration. I`ve finished it in around 31 hours making pauses for food and toilet It was fantastic and absolutely playable. During big areas, to improve framerate , i`ve used "-" button to shrink image to a size of 5x5 cm or something. Now it sounds like some crazy stuff, but in 1996 this game was WAAAY ahead of everything on the market, so I just could not stop ! Actually , those times 3D accelerated card costed like another PC, so i did not know anyone who actually had it.
That was quite a step up from the previous CPU. Please see if it overclocks to 120 MHz and how well it scales with frequency! If Peter's results over at CPU Galaxy are any indication, the 5x86 with special features enabled should give the X5 quite a run for its money! They're almost evenly matched in Quake and both have the potential to overclock by about 20%.
Great soldering work, how is that possible to solder the sockets through the spaces? You're the master of pin's straightening! I bet you can do it without breaking any of the Am5x86 😁
Thank you! For the socket, I used the smallest soldering tip I have for the FNIRSI HS-01 soldering iron. The problem with the smaller tip is that not much heat is transferred to the pads and pins. You need good timing and a good angle to let the solder flow to both. But it's doable. Yeah, I enjoy it very much when one of those CPUs is restored and you almost won't be able to tell that the pins were in bad condition before. Thanks for watching and commenting!
The sockets were quite cheap. I found them on AliExpress for about 6.5 USD on AliExpress. The memory chips were more expensive. If I remember correctly, they were 25 USD for the 3 chips.
Black level issue on s3 cards can be fixed with bios update or with utility. I wrote such utility by myself but I couldn't find it. If I remember correctly there was a discussion on this topic on Vogons.
Tombraider is certainly needs fair bit of CPU for the time. I ran it on a Pentium 120 in software render and also with a Realvision Deltron Flash 3D 4 Megabyte Voodoo 1 card. It was mostly ok but I had to reduce windows size in some of the larger areas due to the CPU. When I upgraded to a Intel Pentium 200 MMX it made big difference and the game ran far smoother.
I hope the game will run much better when I add a Voodoo 1 card. My AMD runs stable at 160 MHz - so, maybe there is a chance to get half way decent frame rates on a 486 system
I had a Cyrix 5x86 100mhz (Escom build) which was cheaper than the P75. Sadly over time it really strugged. I ended upgrading to a P150mhz on a gigabyte hx
Hmm, weird - I'm pretty sure I played Tomb Raider 1 under my 486DX4/100 pretty smoothly at 320x200 😅 Maybe I didn't went too far in the game as a kid (although I definitely remember dinosaurs!) or perception of "smoothness" wasn't the same as today. It's also possible that I played the game more after I upgraded the computer
I am intrigued if AmD 5x86 133 (or @160) is significantly better than the Cyrix. The frequency is much higher but on the other hand the core is less advanced...(?)
Great work! I don't know if it helps, but I always used a utility knife long blade to straighten pins and that used to do a very good job, as you couldn't "bend too much" and all pins would be in line. I would put the cutting side facing the processor and the not cutting side I could put my hands on. Maybe it helps in the future :)
@@bitsundbolts yes, definitely there are loads of methods that works well! I think I don’t have all the patience you have to do one by one, hence why I like to do many at once 😂
I had a 586 and a 686 I remember the 586 ran very hot, i may have overclocked it. The 686 was pretty good. My first ever pc was a 486 dx with tseng ET 4000 vesa local bus.
Nice! Guess what I pulled out of a pile of old electronics two weeks ago at the scrapyard? A Tseng ET4000 VLB! I'll make a video about all those VLB cards I found so far very soon.
What is your prefered flux? Like the fact that it is clear and gel like. Mine is almost like paste and goes slightly brown plus needs a lot of cleaning up otherwise it is still good quality flux.
I use Amtech labeled flux that I got from AliExpress some time ago. I found the link I bought it from. It's in the video description. I have never used anything else, but it's great and I have no complaints.
Lol I've been playing the Saturn version of this game and it pretty much slows down almost just as bad at the same areas you showed and it also is definitely running at a lower resolution.
Why put modern Lara in the thumbnail for a classic Tomb Raider? I see in other thumbnails you have done it before. The original Lara Croft is ICONIC. She needs respect.
I totally agree that the original Lara is iconic and needs respect. I used her original appearance in the thumbnail of the dedicated video I maybe about Tomb Raider. For this series, I am trying something new. Please forgive me when I use modern Lara for the next two videos.
The Cyrix 5x86 has a much faster FPU than the AMD 5x86. With 100MHz it scored 20% better in the Landmark FPU test than the AMD part at 133MHz and I remember a similar result with the CPU-Z benchmark in Windows 98. But these were the only benchmarks I found where the Cyrix was better at stock clocks. With the Vogons recommended CPU registers and at 120MHz the Cyrix chip was much faster than the stock AMD 5x86 in every single test I ran. Sadly my AM 5x86 didn't post at 160MHz, so that would probably swing the favour back to AMD. On the other hand the main goal of the series is to run a 3D game, so maybe the FPU is king.
I think I have to do a similar series with Quake... I have not overclocked any of the Cyrix 5x86 yet, but I hope I can manage to test this CPU at 120 and the AMD 133-ADY @ 160 MHz
Mosys chips with Polish stickers :D Polak potrafi!
9 месяцев назад
i did play the first tomb raider game on my 120 mhz 486, it ran fine. Tomb raider 2 was a no go, i don't remember if i couldn't launch it, or it was too slow to be playable tought.
my first CPU was slow as hell for windows game, but worked like a charm for DOS games e.g: Full Throttle (fast) Descent II (fast) KKND Xtreme (window) slow Screamer 2 (slow) Network RAC Rally (fast no particles enabled) any game more than pentium 75 was slow..
At that time I had the Cyrix 6x86 with 133Mhz. My uncle connected 2 pins with wire and the CPU ran stable at 233 MHz. Together with a Voodoo 2 I could play Tomb Raider 1-2 and Unreal, Unreal Tournament and POD Racer. How many fps did I get? I don't know, but I was so happy that the games were running.
I had a 6x86, and used the tweaking program, can't remember what it was like though. Also with WT/WB available for both L1 and L2 cache, how do they interact? is double writeback the best, or do the chickens come home to roost when those writebacks finally have to be resolved?
I think you will get the slowdown when a write happens to the L2 cache because then the system would wait until the content is also written to the main memory. Having both caches in write-back should result in the best performance
I might have to do the same testing on my Am5x86-P75. I went a different route in the video card department. I went with the MGA Millennium 2MB as it also has great DOS performance. The one thing I have to be on the lookout for is the 2MB RAM expansion module to expand on the video memory to 4MB.
I found something really interesting last time I went to the scrapyard, but I haven't tested it yet, nor do I know if it's really true. But I think I found TWO Matrox Millennium 2MB + 6MB memory expansion cards... There will be content about those soon!
I don't think so. The pins would just be hot and I would burn myself while working on them. I might be wrong, but you're definitely not the only person who asked this question. In the last video, when I tried to get a pin off the bromek AMD CPU, the ceramic and pin was so hot that I couldn't touch the CPU. The pin didn't budge nor did I feel any change while trying to rip it off the CPU. So, I don't think that heat will do anything - at least not at the temperatures I am willing to expose the CPU to.
@@bitsundbolts ah, I was thinking perhaps it would make the metal softer and more likely to not break. But perhaps it would have to be so hot that it would make this unfeasible and maybe even damage the chip.
I remember running Tomb Eaider on my Acer Aspire’s Citrix-based IBM P-150 CPU back in 1996. It wasn’t pretty but I considered it playable after turning the screen size WAY down.
Yeah, I think branch prediction may cause issues at 120Mhz. There is more info on vogons, but I couldn't dig through everything yet. Maybe in the future.
heat up the pins to bend them back, but those pins are not just bent once they are bent in multiple areas which makes it really hard to get them at the same z height needed. maybe you can resolder new ones on there,.
I'll be curious if the AMD with the chipped ceramic works! I've only had a couple come through with chipped ceramic, but neither worked and I'm curious if there's any correlation there!
In terms of video quality, the matrox lineup should also be a very good candidate! They are available for cheap with all common interface types. There are 2 lineups, one with integrated ramdac and one with external. btw: i had good luck soldering those plasticsockets with hotair. You only have to be patient and use as little heat as possible to not melt the socket. Afterwards it looks like factory.
I assume you used solder paste on those sockets. I'm afraid to melt the plastic, but I haven't tried it yet. I didn't want to risk it on the Tseng cards... Maybe an old S3 Trio64V+ that doesn't work anymore will be a test subject for me. It has memory sockets that I could use for other stuff.
@@bitsundbolts no, i just used the pretin on the cards. It's older solder, so its not PB free and great after years. Just used flux and cleaned the oxidation of the socket-pins a bit with a fiber pen. I practiced on old 3com-pci-cards. Some of them were missing the bootrom socket. Or you can remove the old one, tin the pads again (no wick afterwards!), put some flux on it and then the socket. Try around 250°C hotair and give yourself and the board time to heat up, it takes a bit longer on this lower temperatures. If it's not working after 1-2 minutes, raise the temp by 5-10°C. You will soon see that the solder melts before the plastic and you can mount these sockets without a problem. It just takes a bit of practice and the right temperature (for your equipment, as most of our equipment isn't calibrated and has quite different characteristics)
Thank you for your detailed explanation! I'll definitely try that out. Unfortunately, I just soldered another four sockets in a third Tseng card for a future video. I still have two sockets left. Maybe I'll find another Tseng at the scrapyard 😂
Interesting look at this cpu. I knew it existed and it could be faster than the amd 5x86, but I never saw one for sale. I was probably better having the amd 5x86 at 150mhz anyways, since I doubt I would have known about the extra flags that needed to be set, at least at that time.
I think you did well with 150 MHz AMD and didn't miss much. Plus, the Cyrix may be unstable if you run windows using certain flags. I'll try my AMD at 160 MHz (4*40). but it may even be slower than yours at 150 (3*50).
Thanks, but I think I have one. I am not yet sure if it works though. I also have a Cyrix DX4-100... Uhm... More CPUs to test? Maybe better with the Voodoo card when we have a frame counter.
I think you are referring to the memory chips for the Tseng card. I used Google to search for the chips. It took me quite a while to find the correct chips - and then only 3 of them. I got the same chips, but as 120ns version which I didn't want to use on those cards. I check eBay, AliExpress, and local classified websites from time to time. But it most likely will require patience until you find what you are looking for.
Ahh the 5x86, also known as the disappointment which any kid who tried to run the demanding games of 1996 - Quake particularly - would tell you. This era was full of them, bold promises in magazines lured you in and in some limited scenarios maybe they were just as fast as Pentium... just not the scenarios you wanted. We also didn't know about the disabled features or at least I never met anyone who did, this kind of knowledge really wasn't so widespread back then. Despite this I owned a 5x86, a 6x86 and a K5... of them all the K5 was the most honest but still had its failings.
Somehow, I ditched all those disappointments. I went from a 486 to a Pentium II 350. But I can totally relate to high expectations and big letdowns - especially when it comes to graphic cards.
Yeah,I think the extra memory helps for higher resolution and color depth. Not sure if there are any other features that are available with more memory. I should check Tomb Raider shadows. Phil recently made a video using an S3 Virge and there were no shadows when using 2MB. They appeared after he upgraded the card to 4MB
That will probably be the final video. After the AMD CPU, the only other CPU left is the Pentium OverDrive. I am still waiting for the original fan though, which probably won't arrive before mid of February - so, I have to take a break before I can finalize this series .
In terms of bottlenecks with Tomb Raider I do recall the large room in The Cistern level, when full of water, reducing the frame rate to unplayable levels with period correct PC's and consoles.
I'd use 0.5mm or 0.7mm mechanical pens to straighten pins. Works 99% and it's way faster method imo. If I remember correctly Tomb Raider is _almost_ playable w/ 40MHz FSB. 120/40MHz and overclocked VGA-card like Cirrus or S3 helps a lot. But it ain't pretty w/o 3D-accelerator as we all know. I had Matrox Mystique and it was ok speedwise, but 3dfx looked way better of course.
That type of memory is 1.125 MB if I remember correctly. Not sure if it makes any difference, maybe one more page for multi-page framebuffer on some modes.
The 908 chips should have 1MB and the 909 chips 1.125 MB - which would give 2.25MB with two chips and 4.5MB with 4 chips. The last digit 9XX defines how many MEGABITS are available. So, for the 909 chips it would be: 9*1024*1024 / (8*1024*1024)=1.125. I have the 908 which is 1MB. Anything above 4MB seems to be wasted on the Tseng ET6000. My source is a writeup titled "ET6000 memory size facts and fiction" on xfree86.
I guess, from bending the pins, the gold plating got cracked, given its some hundreth mm thin, then moisture wicked under the gold and oxidised the tin.
Maybe. I don't know what is up with that CPU. The other one also had bent pins, but is completely fine. Maybe it was operated in very different environmental conditions.
@@bitsundbolts this is what i have figured out researching the 486es and their model numbers. The WB should be possible with ADW and if the suffix contains "B" instead of "T". (ex. -100NV8T vs -100SV8B) ADZ has only write-through capability while ADW can do both WT and WB. I'm not sure, how ADY behaves. Other tidbits i've found: Am486 (usually) have 8kB L1 cache, 5x86 have 16kB L1 cache. Usually. If the suffix contains "16", it has 16kB of L1 even if it is 486. (ex. -133V16BGC, -120NV8T)
Thanks for all the details! I'm curious now too and want to do some research. They did have quite a bit of model numbers back then - especially for 100-133 MHz models
It's possible to fix the S3 gamma bug. There's a thread on Vogons about that, but I can't post a link since RU-vid automatically deletes the entire comment.
I haven't spend time on investigation, but you could absolutely be right that this may be an issue with the BIOS of my card. I'll check it out. I will find the vogons thread - thanks!
BuB, hope in the future you;ll do an Athlon XP pin-mod for unlocking the multiplier, too.i rmbr doing it with a very very thin wire and i wasn't afraid of burning it (it ended up ok), i was afraid of my mother beating the hell out of me for ruining her accounting pc :))
Oh absolutely! I already did the research and saved some great sources. I also have plenty of Athlon XP CPUs. I can't promise when I am able to do this, but it is on the list! Ahaha :) Good that you didn't upset your mum - what a great time to be a kid!!
@@bitsundbolts mega! can't wait for it!! :) yes, wonderful times, i read about the mod in the CHIP magazine, it was the go to in regards to hardware, tests, etc, . strangely, when i see a kiosk on the sidewalk today, i stop and look at it, maybe i see a CHIP there. nostalgia :)
I have been greatly enjoying this series but I don't understand the purpose of presenting the scores with turbo disabled. It seems off-topic and unhelpful. Sorry for the negative comment, keep up the good work bro.
I read about a different behaviour of the turbo feature for write-through and write-back cache when I did research about both Intel DX2 CPUs. I guess I'll dial this section down in the next video and only show the interesting benchmarks (if there are any). The takeaway is, write-back delivers slower performance without turbo if you're looking to slow down your system for a certain task (e.g an old game). All comments are welcomed! Thanks for watching and commenting!
I found two Matrox cards the other day - I think both had the 6MB memory upgrade kit (2MB on the card itself). I will make a dedicated video about those cards very soon.
I would love that, have a Matrox card and are itching to get it up and running in a build. If you do the video, don't forget about the excellent game Screamer which has native Matrox support.@@bitsundbolts
A very unpleasant experience for you, I'm sorry. I have 4 of those CPUs which I acquired over time. All of them are in working condition and are Stepping 1 Revision 3. Unfortunately, I only have one matching heatsink.
I rather skipped this generation of PCs. In this era you bought something for big pile of money and after few years it was obsolete and not usable for any new software anymore.
Hi I have a intel dx4 100 how I unlock it's potential? There are software here too or not? And when you say turbo you mean the turbo button on pc case?
Yes, I mean the turbo Button on the PC case. It just shorts two pins on the mainboard and then the CPU is either running normally (turbo on), or slower based on how the turbo feature is implementation on the motherboard. A regular Intel DX4 does not have any special features that can be unlocked to my knowledge. But you could try to overclock it to 120 MHz.
