LGR 486 Update! Installing L2 Cache
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
Jesse
The biggest impact I've noticed wasn't so much on 486 systems, Pentium systems were more like it. Games/Applications were paying more attention to that stuff around that time so added Cost modules in a Pentium setup was way more beneficial. The biggest performance jumps besides clock speed differences you would see between builds would be the SX/DX designation (Whether or not an FPU was present) or the write-back vs write-through cache found which I've noticed is why I prefer my 486 Overdrive DX2-66 over my 80486DX2-66. I have some boards with cache chips installed and others not so much. Pentium PRO CPUs you see a big jump when you change cache. Pentium II era not so much. The one time I would ever recommend buying a Celeron in any generation. Hell, Pentium 4s can be skipped in favor of Pentium III and Xeon builds that will blow any of them away. If you need a Pentium 4 for a task, you might as well go multi-core from that point on and 64-bit. Really depended on the generation but it's interesting how the performance was there but he software just wasn't written to take advantage of it hence why cache didn't make a huge difference in a Duke Nukem 3D test.
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The biggest impact I've noticed wasn't so much on 486 systems, Pentium systems were more like it. Games/Applications were paying more attention to that stuff around that time so added Cost modules in a Pentium setup was way more beneficial. The biggest performance jumps besides clock speed differences you would see between builds would be the SX/DX designation (Whether or not an FPU was present) or the write-back vs write-through cache found which I've noticed is why I prefer my 486 Overdrive DX2-66 over my 80486DX2-66. I have some boards with cache chips installed and others not so much. Pentium PRO CPUs you see a big jump when you change cache. Pentium II era not so much. The one time I would ever recommend buying a Celeron in any generation. Hell, Pentium 4s can be skipped in favor of Pentium III and Xeon builds that will blow any of them away. If you need a Pentium 4 for a task, you might as well go multi-core from that point on and 64-bit. Really depended on the generation but it's interesting how the performance was there but he software just wasn't written to take advantage of it hence why cache didn't make a huge difference in a Duke Nukem 3D test.
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Trev0r98
Something is seriously wrong with your main memory configuration / board & BIOS settings. No way should your main system RAM be running at 361 ns access time (or even 154 ns. Most RAM chips for '486 systems back then ran at 80ns or even 70ns access times (and as always, install chips in matched pairs, all chips should be identical. Whatever setting or config you have is severely crippling that system, and I mean -severely-. You're getting 11 MB/sec throughput on it. It should be around 33 MBps (megaBYTES per second. Once you get that all sorted, your Duke Nuke'Em 3D should run around 45 - 60fps. It always ran around 45 fps through the whole game on my '486 system back in the day, and that was at 1024x768x256 (VESA mode. Video was 1MB VLB Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428, surface mounted on the board. Ran like greased lightning, especially when I upgraded from i486 DX-2 66 MHz CPU to AMD 5x86-133 MHz CPU (with system board correctly jumpered to 33 MHz external bus speed / 4x multiplier.
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Something is seriously wrong with your main memory configuration / board & BIOS settings. No way should your main system RAM be running at 361 ns access time (or even 154 ns. Most RAM chips for '486 systems back then ran at 80ns or even 70ns access times (and as always, install chips in matched pairs, all chips should be identical. Whatever setting or config you have is severely crippling that system, and I mean -severely-. You're getting 11 MB/sec throughput on it. It should be around 33 MBps (megaBYTES per second. Once you get that all sorted, your Duke Nuke'Em 3D should run around 45 - 60fps. It always ran around 45 fps through the whole game on my '486 system back in the day, and that was at 1024x768x256 (VESA mode. Video was 1MB VLB Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428, surface mounted on the board. Ran like greased lightning, especially when I upgraded from i486 DX-2 66 MHz CPU to AMD 5x86-133 MHz CPU (with system board correctly jumpered to 33 MHz external bus speed / 4x multiplier.
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fanjoy
Great video here! In my experience, adding as much of the L2 cache as possible made plenty of difference.
Sometime in 1994 I bought a very nice 'multimedia' desktop PC made by HP. It was based on the AMD DX4 Enchanced CPU running at 100MHz. All other specs were outstanding for that time.
Anyways, I did not know that no L2 memory was included at the time of purchase. The bootup process was a real slow and painful atrocity. So, after loudly complaining to a dealer's sales rep regarding this issue of not telling me about the absent L2 memory, I bought 512MB of it (I hope I am correct, and installed it.
Wow, what I difference it made! The bootup alone felt alot like going from a slow HDD to a nice SSD these days. I do not believe that L2 memory influences all computing processes equally, but in some cases it provides for some dramatic performance improvements.
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Great video here! In my experience, adding as much of the L2 cache as possible made plenty of difference.
Sometime in 1994 I bought a very nice 'multimedia' desktop PC made by HP. It was based on the AMD DX4 Enchanced CPU running at 100MHz. All other specs were outstanding for that time.
Anyways, I did not know that no L2 memory was included at the time of purchase. The bootup process was a real slow and painful atrocity. So, after loudly complaining to a dealer's sales rep regarding this issue of not telling me about the absent L2 memory, I bought 512MB of it (I hope I am correct, and installed it.
Wow, what I difference it made! The bootup alone felt alot like going from a slow HDD to a nice SSD these days. I do not believe that L2 memory influences all computing processes equally, but in some cases it provides for some dramatic performance improvements.
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Caillou's
I remember the game playing well enough on my Pentium 120MHz NEC system, 1MB video, sound sucked though (opti 82c930. I don't have that PC anymore, that was a million years ago. I wanna build a new DOS system though. I might go with an AMD DX4, am told that it rivaled that of some of the Pentium 1 (or better in some cases. My worry though is that it is too powerful for some of the older DOS games. It's weird, it's like, if you build a DOS PC, there seems to be two kinds of DOS PCs. one for the really old games, and one for the 3D games. One DOS PC can't run them all?
Guess I'll have to choose the older games, I'm more interested in internal speakers, CGA/EGA, Awe32, etc. otherwise an MMX 233 would be the lowest spec for a 3D DOS PC (otherwise you may as well just play in DOS Mode on Win98 with a P3, which isn't very retro imo.
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I remember the game playing well enough on my Pentium 120MHz NEC system, 1MB video, sound sucked though (opti 82c930. I don't have that PC anymore, that was a million years ago. I wanna build a new DOS system though. I might go with an AMD DX4, am told that it rivaled that of some of the Pentium 1 (or better in some cases. My worry though is that it is too powerful for some of the older DOS games. It's weird, it's like, if you build a DOS PC, there seems to be two kinds of DOS PCs. one for the really old games, and one for the 3D games. One DOS PC can't run them all?
Guess I'll have to choose the older games, I'm more interested in internal speakers, CGA/EGA, Awe32, etc. otherwise an MMX 233 would be the lowest spec for a 3D DOS PC (otherwise you may as well just play in DOS Mode on Win98 with a P3, which isn't very retro imo.
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Achilleas
My first motherboard with Pentium 150 MHz in 1997 had slots for extra cache memory but the cache was very expensive for me then.
In 1999 I bought a Soyo motherboard with super socket 7 socket and 1 MByte cache memory. I used the motherboard with the AMD K6-III 400 MHz with 256 Kbyte cache. I overclocked the motherboard to 450 MHz and with 1280 KByte of total cache the norton utilities benchmark gave me a performance comparable to that of Pentium III.
It was a smart move for people who couldn't afford the expensive Pentium III.
I had great times with my AMD K6-3. Very fast and affordable CPU. I was using it for many many years. My next CPU was with a Celeron at 1. 7 MHz in 2003. It was incredible faster than my old AMD K6-III but for its time it was one of the slowest. However it was very cheap and good enough.
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My first motherboard with Pentium 150 MHz in 1997 had slots for extra cache memory but the cache was very expensive for me then.
In 1999 I bought a Soyo motherboard with super socket 7 socket and 1 MByte cache memory. I used the motherboard with the AMD K6-III 400 MHz with 256 Kbyte cache. I overclocked the motherboard to 450 MHz and with 1280 KByte of total cache the norton utilities benchmark gave me a performance comparable to that of Pentium III.
It was a smart move for people who couldn't afford the expensive Pentium III.
I had great times with my AMD K6-3. Very fast and affordable CPU. I was using it for many many years. My next CPU was with a Celeron at 1. 7 MHz in 2003. It was incredible faster than my old AMD K6-III but for its time it was one of the slowest. However it was very cheap and good enough.
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mortrek
This video is very old, I know, but the reason that your cache made such a huge difference is because you have very slow memory access. my 486 DX2 RAM has half the latency of yours (43 vs your 95) and and a bandwidth of 25MB/s, compared to your 12MB/s. The RAM in my system is just some standard -60ns 72-pin. I remember that the motherboard chipset used to have a -massive- effect on memory performance back then and well into the P6 core CPUs. It wasn't really until memory controllers were integrated into CPUs that this stopped being an issue, but in the 486 and even Pentium days a lot of trashy low-performance chipsets were floating around. In fact, trashy knockoff motherboards sold at a steep discount would sometimes even have the cheapest off-brand chipsets rebadged as good ones and fake L2 installed.
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This video is very old, I know, but the reason that your cache made such a huge difference is because you have very slow memory access. my 486 DX2 RAM has half the latency of yours (43 vs your 95) and and a bandwidth of 25MB/s, compared to your 12MB/s. The RAM in my system is just some standard -60ns 72-pin. I remember that the motherboard chipset used to have a -massive- effect on memory performance back then and well into the P6 core CPUs. It wasn't really until memory controllers were integrated into CPUs that this stopped being an issue, but in the 486 and even Pentium days a lot of trashy low-performance chipsets were floating around. In fact, trashy knockoff motherboards sold at a steep discount would sometimes even have the cheapest off-brand chipsets rebadged as good ones and fake L2 installed.
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Mr.
I ran Duke Nukem back in the day via a 486 DX4 100 with a sound blaster compatible. it ran well on this, but this game did have some demands back then. I may have had a Matrox graphics card as well around that time. very cool stuff. Duke Nukem back in the day was simply astounding action, and tons of fun. too bad the Xbox 360 game failed so badly. the secondary cache having 2 different sets of ram? I am assuming that you either use the 28 pin or 32 pin. perhaps you did not need 8, but only 4. If the Secondary cache is optional and probably expensive back in the day, I would assume that most developers would not really take much advantage of it. cool video anyway. this brings me back to 1995.
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I ran Duke Nukem back in the day via a 486 DX4 100 with a sound blaster compatible. it ran well on this, but this game did have some demands back then. I may have had a Matrox graphics card as well around that time. very cool stuff. Duke Nukem back in the day was simply astounding action, and tons of fun. too bad the Xbox 360 game failed so badly. the secondary cache having 2 different sets of ram? I am assuming that you either use the 28 pin or 32 pin. perhaps you did not need 8, but only 4. If the Secondary cache is optional and probably expensive back in the day, I would assume that most developers would not really take much advantage of it. cool video anyway. this brings me back to 1995.
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Dr.
The 486 DX2-66 is what the 386 really should have been, people had 386 boxes but when the 486 was released its really what took Intel to the next level. The 486 supported floating point directly without a co-processor and a 5 clock integer multiply, the external cache could was controlled by intercepting the chipset. It only supported a read cache and not write back caches like a Cyrix did.
Intel actually deferred the release of the 586 -Pentium- because the performance of the 486 DX66 was so close to the original 586.
FYI the 486 was the last CPU I designed into a PCI system: ) I designed the cache also.
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The 486 DX2-66 is what the 386 really should have been, people had 386 boxes but when the 486 was released its really what took Intel to the next level. The 486 supported floating point directly without a co-processor and a 5 clock integer multiply, the external cache could was controlled by intercepting the chipset. It only supported a read cache and not write back caches like a Cyrix did.
Intel actually deferred the release of the 586 -Pentium- because the performance of the 486 DX66 was so close to the original 586.
FYI the 486 was the last CPU I designed into a PCI system: ) I designed the cache also.
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MrGaableenz
I owned a lot of retro computers (still have lots of parts - nostalgia. A lot of motherboard had numbers of L2 slots. I came 2001 to one shop: hey, have you some old L2 cache? I buy it. The guy brought me the whole basket of it! No cash. That crap is yours now. I installed dozens of it in my 486 computers. Fantastic boost to load sofisticated games of middle 90'. Not the game but the loading of various menu screens was pretty quicker! I remember the legendary -installing afternoon- one cold day in early spring 2001.
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I owned a lot of retro computers (still have lots of parts - nostalgia. A lot of motherboard had numbers of L2 slots. I came 2001 to one shop: hey, have you some old L2 cache? I buy it. The guy brought me the whole basket of it! No cash. That crap is yours now. I installed dozens of it in my 486 computers. Fantastic boost to load sofisticated games of middle 90'. Not the game but the loading of various menu screens was pretty quicker! I remember the legendary -installing afternoon- one cold day in early spring 2001.
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cacodayum
Seeing that BIOS screen tortures my soul. See, I once (as a teen) had a bunch of scrap PCs & ANCIENT parts. This was early 2000s and the PCs were. anywhere from late-80s to mid-90s, there was one with that same BIOS, either it got broken or I just tossed it because. well, I was a teen. I tinkered but I didn't feel quite the same passion back then. EARLY IBM 1x CD-ROMs & their controllers. working Pentium-based PCs. 5 1/4- floppy drives that worked, etc etc. oh god, the shame. lol
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Seeing that BIOS screen tortures my soul. See, I once (as a teen) had a bunch of scrap PCs & ANCIENT parts. This was early 2000s and the PCs were. anywhere from late-80s to mid-90s, there was one with that same BIOS, either it got broken or I just tossed it because. well, I was a teen. I tinkered but I didn't feel quite the same passion back then. EARLY IBM 1x CD-ROMs & their controllers. working Pentium-based PCs. 5 1/4- floppy drives that worked, etc etc. oh god, the shame. lol
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