For those wondering why the CPU has such a huge impact on the framerate even with a 3D accelerator, it's important to remember that these early 3D accelerators only implemented a hardware rasterizer, i.e. they could draw triangles on the screen with texture mapping and gouraud shading. That's about it. All of the 3D transformation math still had to be done on the CPU, meaning that the more polygons you had in the scene, the more work the CPU had to do. This made that early 3D accelerated games were still very heavily CPU bound. This didn't change until the first GeForce card introduced Hardware Transform & Lighting, with which the 3D math could be delegated to the GPU.
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
The antialiasing test and maybe also the 3Dfx logo animation may be good examples of what you are explaining. T&L was definitely a huge advancement which helped nVidia to finally and undisputedly pull ahead of the competition - to the detriment of 3dfx.
@riccardoiovenitti8688
8 ай бұрын
486 was quite poor on FP instructions...fmuls and fdivs were a manifold slower than Pentium
@TheDrQuake
8 ай бұрын
That wasnt initial attempt. It's just first mass PC api with this feature. Famous GTE polygon jitter bug in PS1 says exactly about it's presence ) One of earlier 3d accelerator apis also featured such transforms, but cant just remember exact which one.
@Thomsonicus
8 ай бұрын
Ok, maybe a test with 486 + T&L capable GPU? Wouldnt make much sense in Real world application, but would be fun to see
@TheDrQuake
8 ай бұрын
@@Thomsonicus PowerVR in SGL mode allows use of hardware transforms AFAIR. But there is not much games with NATIVE powervr support. Fortunately, TR supports PowerVR in any generation of its time, but was it native or something like d3d - idk.
@AG-jj3lx
8 ай бұрын
Excellent retro review! Enjoyed every minute of it. The 90's was such a great time for hardware and platform modularity. Socket 3 really was a beast.
@bitsundbolts
7 ай бұрын
Thank you!
@Slawek361
8 ай бұрын
Series still goin, great! :D
@Towdeee
7 ай бұрын
This video series is absolute best! I love it! It has everything. It has benchmarks, it has repair, it has comparisons. Keep up with a good work! Greetings from Poland!
@bitsundbolts
7 ай бұрын
Thank you very much! I am glad that you enjoy this series! Thanks for watching!
@3dfxvoodoocards6
8 ай бұрын
Very interesting benchmarks, like!
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Thanks!
@FoxMccloud42
8 ай бұрын
2:00 Also sometimes stuff breaks during shipping. I sold private a Thinkpad T61 on ebay. It worked before I shipped it. When it came to the buyer it was broken.
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
It probably depends on how it is handled. For sure there are exceptions, but when items are properly packed, the risk is minimized. Sad that the Thinkpad didn't make it.
@pazsion
8 ай бұрын
very much needed clock speeds displayed too hehe loved your stats from other videos
@pazsion
8 ай бұрын
ata-33 definately causes issues over 120- otbwas never used at higher clocks. or the voltages. and not much limits it across the board... increase cpu voltage, you decrease voltage to other parts... and vice versa
@Thelemorf
8 ай бұрын
Noone I know of used a cyrix 486-100 only AMD and Intel 100mhz, which really is too bad since it seems to be a nice chip. Any plans for benchmarking with a Pentium 83 OD cpu? Sure its not a 486 but the series is named socket 3 :)
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Yes, this video is coming soon. I am waiting for an original Intel fan since I am missing the one on mine. Without the fan, the CPU is limited to a multiplier of 1. I don't want to modify the CPU if I have the option to get such a fan soon.
@SobieRobie
8 ай бұрын
Cyrix 5x86 was really short living product.
@necro_ware
8 ай бұрын
Due to its architecture, glide needs a fast FPU, that's why 3Dfx and 486 ist not really a good combo. Cx5x86 has the best FPU among all 486 CPUs and this is what we see in the benchmarks. If someone wants to use 3Dfx, I'd suggest to go at least with Pentium 133, but this is a great video and a nice overview of how 3Dfx performs on a 486. Theory is good, practice is even better! Thank you very much.
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Thank you 'scorp' ;) ! Yes, the Voodoo is severely bottlenecked by those CPUs - any 486. I am still surprised however, that you could get a halfway decent performance with a 3Dfx card. I wonder how many people actually added a Voodoo to their socket 3 system back in the day.
@Retrocidal
7 ай бұрын
i sold and rebuilt every single cpu and video card ever built back in the days i used all these cpus :)
@ecchichanf
8 ай бұрын
>486er DX4 100Mhz Der war in meinem erstem eigenem Rechner :3 (damals 1996) Auf jedenfalls ist das eine schöne Videoserie.
@bitsundbolts
7 ай бұрын
Vielen Dank! Und danke fürs Anschauen!
@JoaoVitor-cw2vg
8 ай бұрын
You should try with the Pentium overdrive to see how it performs
@No1BRC
8 ай бұрын
Could you please suggest to electromyne to hide sold out items? I have no idea whats the purpose of showing anything that's not available anyways?
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
I know what you mean! It always gets my hopes up only to see that the item is "sold out"... I don't know if they will listen to me ;)
@No1BRC
8 ай бұрын
@@bitsundbolts haha, true same to me when I look up things 😂
@lwiehfalkshflkahflak
8 ай бұрын
great video, terrible AI-generated woman thumbnail
@philscomputerlab
8 ай бұрын
Yes! This is the power of Voodoo, even on slower CPUs it really makes a difference! It's a real shame the top Cyrix has bugged features, it has a lot of potential...
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Correct! It is a really nice CPU for socket 3 if they just had more time to finish the features properly and fix the bugs.
@jpmacunha
8 ай бұрын
that cyrix is a beast!
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Absolutely!
@richard.20000
8 ай бұрын
Cyrix 5x86 was stripped down version of Cyrix M1 (6x86) AKA the first out-of-order CPU for PC. Yeah, Cyrix was a leading company and beating Intel Pentium (had a simpler in-order execution, but better FPU than Cyrix). Cyrix M1 technology was on par with Pentium Pro and Pentium II (first OoO CPU from Intel). Too bad that Cyrix disappeared. Cyrix 5x86 has excellent memory access due to predictors/prefetch. 486 had no predictors at all hence so sensitive for FSB scaling in most games. BTW amazing video!!!
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Thank you! I agree that there were great improvements in the Cyrix CPUs. Could have been that they were always short on time implementing new features and smart ways to improve performance
@richard.20000
7 ай бұрын
@@bitsundbolts I always wanted PC with Cyrix because it was the biggest bang for the buck. Also I think Cyrix is a cool name for tech company. It sounds so cool. It's not boring acronym like Integrated Electronics (Intel) or AMD. It sounds like Cyborg and robotix combined :D
@OpenGL4ever
7 ай бұрын
The Cyrix was faster than a Pentium with floating point arithmetic, but it was slower at integers. And because many games back then still used integer calculations with a few exceptions, the Cyrix CPU was advertised as an office CPU.
@woldemunster9244
8 ай бұрын
Of course i want to see that intel DX4! It was the first CPU i've overclocked with Voodoo, back then i got a good scare when it wouldn't boot but after everything cooled down everything was fine. Kids have it too easy nowadays, back then we had to use jumpers and just RTFM + YOLO for results. :D
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Hehe. Changing settings in the BIOS are a lot easier. But these days, you can pick from 100 settings! I still prefer a handful of jumpers than going through AMD's Precision Boost Overdrive... Anyway, I guess I should check if that Intel DX4 actually works 😅
@S9uareHead
8 ай бұрын
Very nice result from the Cyrix 5x86!
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Yes! I was surprised by its performance!
@raysgarage2351
8 ай бұрын
Hought the amd dx4120 was the fastest & was surprised to see the Cyres results. I know they had the best fpu at 1 point so it could be the reason it did so well . Great video well presented & very enlightening . Thanks
@lemagreengreen
8 ай бұрын
@@bitsundbolts I might have missed this in previous videos but do we know why so many features were disabled on these chips? I remember they got panned hard in reviews etc and as you have noted they didn't even last a year on the market, I certainly never heard about these enhancements being something you could enable though.
@adamw.8579
7 ай бұрын
Cyrix and later AMD 5x86 was equipped with 3Dnow module, some sort of pre-MMX functions. This explain much better performance in gaming apps.
@waytostoned
8 ай бұрын
Would love to see an pentium overdrive and evergreen upgrade (blue lightning) as well in the next video if possible! Loving the content and thank you. Could also be fun to see what soundcards increase performance.
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Yeah, I noticed that my ESS AudioDrive recorded pretty bad, low quality mono sound. Ah well, what to do. Soundcards are coming soon. I got my hands in two Soundblaster 2.0
@Brooklyn727
8 ай бұрын
The Cyrix 5x86 is basically a baby Pentium(closer to a POD). The AMD 5x86 is a very fast 486. Which explains why AMD needs faster clock speeds. To me, simply incredible a 160mhz 486 exists and can closely match a 120mhz Cyrix. The Cyrix is basically a Pentium class chip up against a bunch of 486s😂
@bitsundbolts
7 ай бұрын
It definitely has advantages. I just would want to know how much the FPU differs between the Cyrix and the POD.
@MM.
8 ай бұрын
Worth remembering that Wolf3D had been out for three months when the DX2/66 was introduced. Starting at pixelated raycasting and ending with texture-mapped 3D with bilinear filtering on the same machine would've been a revelation at any frame rate that wasn't a slide show.
@mashk
8 ай бұрын
First accelerator card I owned was an Orchid Righteous 3d Voodoo 1 with 4mb ram. And Tomb Raider was the 1st game I tried on it. I'd just started a new job, got speaking to a guy at work who had just upgraded his rig and sold me the graphics card, Pentium 133 and motherboard for something like £100. This was circa 1997. Voodoo 2 wasn't out yet but it was on the horizon. Anyhow I went from software mode on a Pentium 60 to high res (640 x 480) accelerated mode on my 'new' rig. Regardless to say, I was impressed. I was firmly in the Voodoo camp from then until it died. Don't understand what went wrong there, at the time they were the market leader.
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
I am not entirely sure, but I think they burned bridges with their third party vendors (Diamond, Orchid, Guillemot, Creative, etc.). They only sold under the STB brand from Voodoo 3 onwards. Over time, nVidia had better GPUs and outperformed 3dfx who constantly delayed new product launches. 3dfx got too comfortable from their success of Voodoo and Voodoo 2 - which was helping their Voodoo 3 initially, but then they slowly drifted into insignificance. Sad.
@hardcore8uk
8 ай бұрын
My Very first PCI 4MB 3D card accelerator was actually the now very soat after NEC VideoLogic PCX2 with a full 4MB texture buffer that could run Ultimate Race Pro at 1024x768, I always thought that SGL API accelerator was miles ahead of the voodoo but the only problem and quite major was the lack of transparency effects and a few other but I remember running Tomb Raider at 1024x768 on it like URP and Mech Warrior plus others, I currently own several NEC PCX2 Cards plus Every 3DFX Card ever made, well sold that is including the ultra rare 6MB Voodoo 1 Pure3D Canopus that can output S-Video onto large screen CRT TV's that was amazing at the time, Going back to NEC PCX2 the picture quality was fantastic, way better than Voodoo both in- game as quality was quite soft and blurry at times plus the 2D pass-through was non existent.
@Thelemorf
8 ай бұрын
3dfx died, just like commodore and many other, because of really stupid business decisions and Poor management
@MrDukeeeey
8 ай бұрын
Faster cpu will help but eventually you'll hit the fill rate limit of the card
@OpenGL4ever
7 ай бұрын
What went wrong was that they hired a new CEO who knew nothing about the computer industry but a lot about potato harvesting. And he is responsible for 3dFX buying the board manufacturer STB. This meant that 3dFX suddenly had all the other board manufacturers as competitors who had previously bought a lot of 3d chips from 3dFX. This meant that a sales market was lost and NVidia and ATI filled the resulting gap. NVidia and ATI were pure chip manufacturers, they did not act as competitors to the circuit board manufacturers. The STB factory cost 3dFX a lot of money, including running costs. There was therefore no money for research and NVidia brought GPUs like the Geforce 1 and 2 onto the market, which could pose a threat to the Voodoo 5. From DirectX 6 onwards, there were no longer any significant advantages for the Glide API, which is why game manufacturers switched to DirectX and no longer released an extra Glide version for newer games. When 3dFX went bankrupt, there was a huge inventory of old games that benefited from Glide support, but the new games all ran very well with DirectX and in 32-bit color depth on a Geforce card. The previous 16-bit color depth was another weakness of the competition, because the Voodoo cards all had a 22-bit post filter, which made the image on the screen look better than the competition's 16-bit dithering. There is a very great interview available on YT with all 4 important company members of 3dFX. The interview is highly recommended.
@Choralone422
8 ай бұрын
Great results! It's nice to see the performance scaling within the 486 chips. An original 3Dfx Voodoo card in a 486 machine is like pairing a current day Nvidia 4090 in a 3rd gen Intel Core CPU. It will work but the card is really going to be held back by the CPU! Still, it's cool to see the results! In my own experience back then a 40MHz FSB seemed to be the sweet spot for both Intel and AMD 486 CPUs. 50Mhz FSB can be faster, but only if you have L2 SRAM that's rated for 20ns or faster installed and if the BIOS doesn't automatically loosen timings for stability when running at that speed. Trying to get 50 MHz FSB stable on a late 486 board with PCI slots is possible. Trying to do the same on an earlier board with VLB or EISA slots (PCI hadn't been released when the 486 DX50 CPUs were first created) is really tough to do! Intel had briefly released a 486DX 50MHz non clock doubled chip in mid 1991. It was only used in a few business oriented systems as almost none of the big OEMs & board makers at the time wanted to spend the resources into developing systems that ran properly at a 50MHz FSB in 1991. The 486DX2 66MHz was released in early 1992 which used a 33 MHz FSB and was basically a drop in replacement for systems built around the 486DX 33Mhz which had been the dominant CPU at that point. I had an early 486DX2 66MHz based PC from 1992 and it ran well at 40MHz FSB for an 80Mhz CPU clock. The AMD 5x86 133 that I later upgraded to (with the help of an in-socket voltage adapter) also ran much better at 3x40MHz for 120MHz than at 3x33 for 100MHz, more than just the 20MHz bump in CPU speed would account for. I had a board that had no way of forcing a specific multiplier as the DX2 chips had not existed when the board was first designed, so the chip ran at 3x all the time due to this.
@BadManiac
8 ай бұрын
Hardware accelerated 3D was never worth it on a 486, the FPU is simply not fast enough no matter the CPU in any realistic scenario. Yes it makes a difference and yes, very few games might become playable, such as the case with Tomb Raider in a select few system configurations, but at a loss of visual fidelity more often than not. 3D simply needs a faster FPU, and Glide scales very well with CPU speed, so to really get the most out of the voodoo cards you need later, faster CPUs. Still a really cool series of videos, thanks for all your work!
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Absolutely agree! Let's wait for the Pentium Overdrive - which will be the last video in this series. Thanks for watching!
@BadManiac
8 ай бұрын
With the POD I'd wager GLQuake might be doable. At that point you probably run into the bus speed limitations next.
@ofrancis
8 ай бұрын
Fascinating. Great video. Than you so much for your rigger and diligence. I feel like I'm watching the dawn of the GPU in a parallel dimension. Amazing how focused people get on modern GPUs hitting 120 / 144 / 200+ fps and what is bottlenecking their precious 4090, when back in the 486 era the leaps with an overclock or 3Dfx board were truly transformative. I remember getting an extra 4MB of ram for £150 so I could play Doom on my DX2 66. The first time I saw a Voodoo card on a Pentium 1.Getting a Geforce 256 DDR and being gobsmacked at how much better Half Life 1 looked. These where revelatory moments.
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
So many revolutionary products were released in such a short period of time. Competition was fierce and if you couldn't compete, you were gone in a matter of months or years. 3Dfx Voodoo, Pentium, race to 1 GHz, and T&L GeForce. There was just so much happening.
@ofrancis
8 ай бұрын
So true. There were so many more competitors and innovators. Seeing how hard it is for even Intel to enter the discrete GPU market shows how hard it would be to create revolutionary products now.
@OpenGL4ever
7 ай бұрын
@@ofrancis The new Intel Arc A770 GPUs are pretty good for their price, but only in newer games that use DirectX 12 and Vulkan. The Intel Arc GPUs have problems, especially with older games that use DirectX 8 and 9. A DirectX 9 to Vulkan wrapper helps a little bit here, but the compatibility is better with NVidia and ATI. But for pure DirectX 12 and Vulkan games, the future Intel GPUs are likely to be strong competition to NVidia and ATI, provided they get the power hunger under control. This is another current disadvantage of Intel Arc GPUs.
@Taorakis
8 ай бұрын
I am surprised to see the Cyrix outperforming the AMD, as back when we had those CPU's I alwways thought the Cyrixes are the lowest of the bunch just because they where often the cheapest.
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Yes, the Cyrix did very well at a much lower clock speed. I wish there would be a possibility to remove the frame cap. I could imagine that the Cyrix would extend its lead significantly over the competition
@OpenGL4ever
7 ай бұрын
Thank you for doing this test with a 486DX 33 MHz too. I had a CPU like that in my computer and I still have it and I always wanted to know what a 3D accelerator card would have done if its mainboard had a PCI slot. Now I finally know thanks to your test. Otherwise I have to say that all PC games from around 1996 run best with a Pentium 200 MHz or Pentium 2 266 MHz. From this time on, most games had a reasonable time measurement feature, so that CPUs that were too fast had little influence on playability. This wasn't the case with older games where the CPU mustn't be too fast.
@bitsundbolts
7 ай бұрын
You're welcome! I'm happy that this video could answer a question you had kept for so many years. And I also agree with your statement of running games on a fast Pentium MMX or Pentium II. I had a P2 350 after my 486 DX4-100. It was like day and night! Unfortunately, I had no Voodoo accelerator, just some ATI Rage chipset. Later, I got a Diamond Viper 550 TNT...
@UpLateGeek
8 ай бұрын
Very impressive results from the Cyrix processor, I had no idea it was such a speed demon! Also, great work with the benchmarking. I'm definitely glad I just left it up to the professionals, and just read their results in magazine reviews. I didn't have the patience to sit through game cut scenes, let alone actually figure out how to properly run game benchmarks. Looks like you've done a very thorough job in this video though.
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Thank you! Yeah, sometimes I wonder how long people spent on benchmarking. I do not deny that it was a lot of work to get the benchmarks done for this video, but it wasn't that terrible. But I was surprised by the performance of the Cyrix 5x86. I just wish they would overclock better :(
@Malheirods
8 ай бұрын
Maybe you want to stick to 3Dfx but it would be a good idea to test with a Rendition Verite 2100 or 2200 as it offloads the CPU from many 3D related operations.
@bitsundbolts
7 ай бұрын
If I ever get one of those cards, I'll give it a try.
@IronicTonic8
8 ай бұрын
I always felt the original Voodoo card needed a fast Pentium class processor to maximize its potential. Something around 166mhz or faster.
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Yes, the benefit of a Voodoo is severely limited by a 486 CPU. In my other Tomb Raider video, I tested a Pentium 133 and we mostly remained at the 30 fps cap. So, yes, you're correct - a fast Pentium is required to get the full potential of a 3Dfx accelerator
@V3ntilator
7 ай бұрын
I still have my 3DFX Voodoo 1 for MS-DOS and Voodoo 2 for Windows. My favorite 3DFX games in DOS were Carmageddon, Fatal Racing, Descent 2, Terminal Velocity and Tomb Raider. Windows. Carmageddon 2, Hellbender, NFS 3 and Descent 3 among others.
@HybOj
8 ай бұрын
Reminded me a lot of the good ol days. Never had 3dfx, and no good CPU like the top ends here. So yea.. 10fps at rex was probably me. And it was good enough. More than that. It gave me more experience and novelty than 4k 120fps in some generic game nowadays.
@darthtripedacus1
8 ай бұрын
Enter the Pentium OverDrive!!!!!
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Coming soon!
@tomiluukkonen4035
8 ай бұрын
If I remember P200MMX was almost optimal CPU for Voodoo1 in _early_ 3D-games like TR1. Socket3 is certainly limiting factor, Socket7 and especially SuperSocket7 improved things a lot. And because CPU calculated geometry back then, 300-400MHz CPU's improved framerates quite dramatically sometimes - even with Voodoo1. I used K6-2's and K6-3 with Voodoo1, older 1st generation 3D-games flew with those.
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
That sounds about right! I would pair a Voodoo with a Pentium MMX 200/233. Voodoo 2 for faster Pentium II, and SLI for medium clocked Pentium III. And then slowly transition to Voodoo 3 and up.
@tomiluukkonen4035
7 ай бұрын
If your testing develops into Socket7-era, it'd be interesting to see how Voodoo1 behaves with later Pentiums and 66/75 or even 83MHz FSB. If I remember P200MMX overclocked to 225/75 was visibly faster in some cases, we never used 83MHz FSB because 41.5MHz PCI-bus caused serious stability-issues. MB chipsets started to corrupt disk operations etc 😒@@bitsundbolts
@OpenGL4ever
7 ай бұрын
@@bitsundbolts I would pair a Voodoo 3 or 5 PCI with a Pentium MMX 200/233. The reason is simply because the Voodoo 3 or 5 combines both 2D and 3D and, unlike all the NVidia cards (cough), it also has excellent DOS game (or VGA/VESA Mode) compatibility, which means it is also suitable for later software mode DOS games such as Duke Nukem 3D or Wing Commander 3. There is actually no reason for the Voodoo 1 or 2 if you have a Voodoo 3 or 5. Of course it looks different if you already own a Voodoo 2 and have to buy the Voodoo 3 separately. The advantage of the Voodoo 5 would be 32 bit color depth in Glide games.
@JadigertheReal
7 ай бұрын
AMD 5x86@160 Mhz this was my last 486 CPU.
@JadigertheReal
7 ай бұрын
33Fsb 133 mhz, 40 mhz 160 mhz it was a no brainer. My CPU never see the 133 mhz.
@Athiril
8 ай бұрын
When i was and had a dx2 overdrive on a super cheap system, it couldnt sustain a 100mhz overclock, at 66 it didnt run Age of Empires well but at 100 it was just right. Could have really used that Cyrix 586 back in the day lol
@DoobooDomo
8 ай бұрын
Is it possible to run the Cyrix at 2 x 50MHz?
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
I did not try this yet, but I doubt we will see much difference between 50x2 and 33x3. And this is because the game seems to be heavily FPU limited.
@alvaroacwellan9051
8 ай бұрын
Interesting video, and what's especially interesting to me is the Cyrix 5x86. I've never played with these in this depth, exploring the enhanced performance is still on my todo list. And it seems those flags can enhance the Cyrix quite a bit. Btw those 486 boards can do fishy things as FSB increases, going to slower cache and memory timings is just the most obvious of these. Btw I _may_ have one 486 board of the many that possesses cache that can deal with 50MHz at the tightest timings, I found it an exceeeeedingly rare gift! No sets of 15ns nor 12ns, 256k ,512k or 1M chips can do this for me, only (maybe, I'm not even sure) a PCChips M919 cache stick that's incompatible with any other board.... I had much better luck with 40MHz, many chips CAN do 40MHz at 2-1-1-1 timigs, I even found EDO sticks that can be diabolically fast at that clock (single cycle, perhaps?) in a PCChips M918 (ALI chipset). But in other boards, there are many FPM and EDO sticks that are capable the tightest timings of those. PCI frequency is another can of worms, VGA access can slow down tremendously if a board decides that it must put a /2 divider on the PCI but at 40MHz. Not even a 2/3 one, it goes right to the kill and downclocks it to 20MHz. It's horrible, really. At 50MHz a 2/3 divider should still suffice, but no... Other boards can do 40MHz PCI and many VGAs and the onboard HDD controllers can deal with it. At 50MHz, it's tricky, though cards with AGP versions (like the Riva 128 I love as a quick DOS card) can usually deal with it flawlessly. VLB is an even bigger can of worms :D All in all, my favorite Am5x86 setting is definitely the 160MHz one, it performs very well, and I even have a permanent build like that. And I'm looking forward to trying the Cyrix 5x86 at 120MHz and pit the two against each other. I have 3 Cyrix parts lying around here, I hope at least one of them can do it.... About the FPU - I guess Tomb Raider won't even start without it, let alone its 3dfx patched version. It has A LOT to calculate and I'm quite sure an FPU was a standard part of a bog standard CPU when it came out so it's most probably heavily relies on it.
@foobar-9k
8 ай бұрын
As someone that watches almost all of your videos... I understand that the AI generated LC might help getting a few new viewers, but..., man... I wish you just got rid of it. Feel cheap, click-baity, and far from what this channel provides: quality content. Edit: regarding the question about comparison with AMD CPUs..., my answer would be: No! I certainly didn't expect that! (that coming from someone that, at the time, tested a K5-PR133 against a few Pentiums-166😊.
@freemansteinslab
7 ай бұрын
Ah the nostalgia...my first ever PC that I got back in about 1993, came equipped with that same Intel i486 DX2/66! 😊 Unfortunately though, I wasn't lucky enough to also have a 3D accelerator card, but I tended to mostly play Sierra Point&Click games on it anyway
@TheDunbartxeen
7 ай бұрын
Tomb Raider was the first game i played on my 3dfx. Had a P90 back then and even that couldn´t handle 30fps in 640x480 software renderer. With the 3dfx it was butter smooth. I remember playing TR III without sound on that machine still in 512 resolution. Demo was smooth but finally game had issues, maybe because everything was loaded from CD not from hard disk.
@dimddr_man
4 ай бұрын
Interestingly, the ps1 CPU is only 33 MHz, but the tomb raider shows great performance there. But in addition to the CPU, there is also a powerful gpu with an architecture similar to that of the geforce 256.
@ronny332
8 ай бұрын
I would say, the results of the DX2/66 and lower are impressive. As you said, the resolution is much higher, than the software renderer, and the CPU has to calculate the whole geometry on an today unthinkable single core. The 3Dfx card is 3-4 years younger than the tested CPUs. From our today standpoint all 3Dfx work at best compared with a high CPU clockspeeds. Especially Glide is more a graphics API only, no other performance gains are included.
@theALFEST
8 ай бұрын
The Cyrix 5x68 is known to be faster than the 486 at the same clock speed. It is more like Pentium Overdrive.
@infinity2z3r07
8 ай бұрын
Thank you very much B&B! These efforts are so appreciated by people like me who could not do it without great cost. I cannot imagine how many hours were needed to not only produce the benchmarks, but to package the data, restore all the hardware, and document the entire process in video form. You should be very proud of this work!
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Thank you so much! I am happy to hear that this and the previous videos are well received and bring joy to many! Thank you for watching!
@ferrari2k
7 ай бұрын
I really felt being ported back in time, the gaming experience was exactly like this, you just had to accept it :D Because upgrading was so expensive you were kind of stuck...
@Crusaderon
7 ай бұрын
Cyrix DX 2/66 was my first CPU in my first pc. Then I upgrated it to AMD DX4/133 overclocked to 160 Mhz. Thanks for the time machine for my memory ;-)!
@GarryMobi
7 ай бұрын
Looking back, wow was I amazed at the 3dfx graphics with Lara ... looking even at it nowadays show you how far technology has come in 28 years ....
@Ale.K7
8 ай бұрын
Great video! I'm very impressed with the Cyrix 5x86! I thought the AMD would run better at 150MHz than 160 due to the higher bus speed, interesting to see it didn't. I would love to see the results with an SX and the Intel DX4 100MHz with its mighty 16KB L1! And a comparison of 486s!
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
I have a feeling that the higher clocked core still has an advantage because of a faster FPU. We will see how an SX works and draw some conclusions. Thanks for watching!
@system450
7 ай бұрын
When i bought an Orchid Righteous 3D 3Dfx, i had a Pentium 166, so no problem with frame rate. 30 fps rock solid.
@rodhester2166
8 ай бұрын
Yes, I would like to see the other cpu charts.. thanks..
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Noted!
@pazsion
8 ай бұрын
i want to know if other optimization help even without the visual enhancements. i played at loke 640x400 that made everything bigger... it stretched to fit the screen. these days with higher resolutions your mostly shooting pixels... or they dont even render... lol
@pc-sound-legacy
8 ай бұрын
I heard that the cyrix 586 is a decent performer - but hadn't expect it to beat the overclocked amd 586 (120 vs. 160mhz!). Great comparison, thanks🎉
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Unexpected indeed! Thanks for watching!
@1NSHAME
Ай бұрын
This doesn't happen often, but yeah I'm going to try your sponsor next time I want some retro hardware. 😊
@BSzili
8 ай бұрын
The Cyrix processors performed really well, especially with the enhancements enabled. Too bad they shipped with these disabled, so most people missed out on the extra performance.
@bitsundbolts
7 ай бұрын
The problem is that those enhancements seem to be buggy and lead to instability in certain situations.
@pazsion
8 ай бұрын
😂 150mhz the wolves kick my butt yup thats an improvement
@laurdy
8 ай бұрын
Do you have any of the late model AMD 486DX2's/DX4's such as the V16BGC that actually have an AM5x86 core? If so could you do a comparison of the same clock speed but different bus speeds such as 4*25, 3*33 and 2*50MHz?
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
I do have a BGC model. I may add different configs in the next video, but without showing every single benchmark - I think we all got the idea :D
@Druze_Tito
7 ай бұрын
I had a Cyrix CPU on my first PC. It died. I never knew it was a good processor at its time.
@JarppaGuru
7 ай бұрын
every year from this point realistic. i se graphics even new games LOL
@shemsureshot
7 ай бұрын
I ended up getting this on the Sony Playstation because my PC won’t be able to handle it.
@stevencarlson5422
8 ай бұрын
Makes me wonder what other games the cyrix can perform good with amazing how well that did
@Geenimetsuri
7 ай бұрын
Oh man this brings back memories! Excellent stuff!
@moeschizlac
7 ай бұрын
Try running Tomb Raider on socket 5 and an AMD k5.
@jacquesb5248
7 ай бұрын
i had all of those. i could over clock my dx2 from 66 to 75MHz
@asanjuas
8 ай бұрын
Oh my bad i have bent pins on a amd fx of course it's on warranty. :(
@jaeger8882
8 ай бұрын
This is actually very impressive. To play at similar framerates as the AMD 5x86 160mhz with voodoo at 640x480 with software rendering only, you would need something like a pentium 200, maybe even faster. Pentium 200 was a very expensive CPU in 1996, the fastest available actually. It might be hard to appreciate if you have only experienced modern hardware '" waaaahh I only have 100fps at 4k resolution, my PC sucks" Back in the day, it was a revelation.
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Adding a 3Dfx Voodoo card in your system made such a big difference - even for a 486 system as it seems. Not comparable with today. In 1996, 3Dfx Voodoo was revolutionary. And, you just had to add something to your system, not replace anything.
@devil5051000
8 ай бұрын
Cyrix 5x86 was half on its way to fifth generation and had many features pure 486 CPUs in this test missed. That it performs well with that competition should not be surprising (especially with enhancements enabled). But AMD managed to give it a run for its money with pure 486 tech and enough Mhz. Had a Cyrix 5x86 100 Mhz system in the early 2000s (saved from the recycling bin) but never used it much. Cyrix was for me always only third class behind Intel and AMD and I remember that some programs were not running at all on it because of compatibilty problems in Cyrix CPUs (6x86?). Removed the mainboard at some point of time and installed an AMD 5x86 133 Mhz system inside. That computer is with me to this day for occasional retro sessions. ^^
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
I had an AMD 486-DX4-100 back then. Never even heard of Cyrix back then. It was always Intel or AMD. Well, it was the cheaper alternative for me. And yes, the Cyrix is more advanced having features from the next generation on board. Still nice to have so many different options for this platform.
@Sonyfreak
7 ай бұрын
Compared to the Cyrix 486DX4, the 5x86 also doubles the L1 cache to 16kb. Probably I'm not the only person mentioning this, but I don't want to look through over 300 comments. That's why I guess, the Intel 486DX4 will pull ahead of its older siblings.
@bitsundbolts
7 ай бұрын
I'll also test an AMD 486@100 MHz and 16kb L2 cache to see if there's a difference. It will be in the next video
@sandmanxo
8 ай бұрын
Interesting results. I never played Tomb Raider in Glide mode but I remember the original Grand Theft Auto ran like crap in 640x480 on my P54 133 and my voodoo card clocked to 58 mhz. I always played it at 512x384(I think, it's been nearly 30 years) and ran quite smooth. I wonder if this res is available and make any difference in these tests, ot is it cpu bound.
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
I'm not aware of any possibility to change the resolution in Glide and Tomb Raider. In Unreal, you could change the resolution to 512x384. But I believe we're completely CPU limited, so, reducing the resolution may not help much - if at all.
@DefenderOfBoston-yo2tl
8 ай бұрын
*checks own previous comments on 5x86 performance as well as 3dfx performance and grins smugly* as always, this was an absolute pleasure to watch, great work! excellent method of capturing and plotting/calculating the framerate! i'm really curious to see the pentium overdrive results at 83 and 100 mhz now, i think the fpu plays a major role and it will be another considerable step up. and YES, PLEASE! test an intel dx4-100 if you get the opportunity. it's the second cpu i owned and the 10 year old in me still considers it the best cpu ever made. 😄 in all honesty though, i'm fairly certain the 16kb l1 cache will make an appreciable difference.
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
I started with the next video already. The AMD 486 SX2-66 footage is captured 🤦♂️ 🚮 The FPU is so underrated - that is all I can say for now 😉 Hopefully the Intel DX4 is working - I will test it today. And the Pentium OverDrive will be the last video I want to make in this series. I should get an original fan by March...
@cobrag0318
8 ай бұрын
Was the AMD 586 done with write through or write back? They are capable of write back with the proper setting, often a jumper in the board, which likely just activates a certain pin on the CPU that might could be tied manually to the proper signal. Also, I'd like to see the pentium overdrives added to this list. Yes, technically not a 486, but running on a 486 board. I think you can also switch between WT and WB caching on it too. So we can see how it fares on the same hardware at similar speeds. How much do you think the architecture will help? Or the 32kb? l1 cache size? Or the improved fpu?
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
AMD was using write-back cache. Unlike for the Cyrix, there is no option in the BIOS to toggle between write-through and write-back. It is done via jumper as you said. Regarding the Pentium OverDrive - it will definitely come soon. I am just waiting for the original fan to arrive. I have no idea what to expect to be honest, but I could imagine that it will play in a different league!
@dyslectische
8 ай бұрын
And the last test. 3dfx glide wrapper with other cards from that time.
@chuck2501
8 ай бұрын
I've shipped working hardware, that just dies when a seller gets it. I've had GPUs die on a shelf! So I have some wiggle room for sellers. I remember being able to set the 3dfx voodoo2 to a resolution of 512x384. ((side note I also remember that sli only worked in 1024x768 for the v2))
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Of course, there is always a possibility that things stop working. I just dislike false advertising or selling defective hardware as "untested". I just don't believe it.
@alexj.f.kennedy6084
8 ай бұрын
What I would see as interesting is to compare the performance of the 486 CPUs to the PS1, since from my time playing it the game seemed to run at a pretty stable 30FPS with frame drops here and there. I think the fight against the T-Rex was around 20FPS but i never used benchmarking tools it's just my recollection. Might be an idea to put those performance figures into a part of these series? People back in the day sure might have had the consideration of putting out like 300 bucks for a Pentium 2 or 586 or just get a PS1 for cheaper to play the game. Would love to see a comparison!
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
I wouldn't mind to be the reason to re-ignite the battle between PC and PS1 gamers trying to convince each other that device is better than the other :D Unfortunately, I do not have a PS1. But if someone would offer to send me the uncompressed (*.mkv) footage of the PlayStation, I could analyze it and put it next to some PC footage... Then we would be able to figure out what PC you would need to be on par with Sony's PlayStation.
@rtomas82
8 ай бұрын
Really nice video! What I always wonder is that I never ever saw any YT video using an intel 486 DX4 75Mhz. It has a 25mhz bus but I think it could be overclocked to 33mhz to match the dx4 100mhz
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
I haven't seen this CPU, but it is easy to downclock the 100 MHz version to 75 MHz. But you will probably end up with performance similar to the DX2-66 CPUs.
@Kevin_40
8 ай бұрын
i think tomb raider one of the most overrated games all time. mario 64 murders it for instance.
@OpenGL4ever
7 ай бұрын
Why should Tomb Raider be overrated? For the first time, it offered climbing fun, combined with an irregular game world that didn't just consist of straight blocks. It was so successful that LucasArts tried to copy the gameplay with an Indiana Jones game.
@MonochromeWench
7 ай бұрын
I really was not expecting such a strong showing for Cyrix
@chrisducati26
8 ай бұрын
The first time i finished Tomb raider was on my first pc an intel dx4 100mhz at 320x240.when Voodoo 1 arrived it was way better and I remember very playable at 640x480. Did know the existence of that beast the cyrix 586 but i want to know more and please compare it with the intel dx4 100. Excellent video review as always
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
There will be two more videos which will hopefully answer all your questions ☺️
@maraz666
8 ай бұрын
120 MHz is unstable, because the PCI bus is running at CPU bus frequency - at 120 MHz the bus must be 40 MHz, and thus all the extension cards and even the hard drive controller are running on a 21% overclock
@bitsundbolts
7 ай бұрын
Yes, you have to be aware of this behaviour. However, I used a Tseng et6000 and the Voodoo. They work fine at 40 MHz FSB. I do agree that at 50 MHz, the IDE controller seems to be unstable, but that is another 10 MHz higher.
@micb3rd
8 ай бұрын
Thanks for the video BuB. Interesting to see the CPU limiting the frame rate. Will you try on Intel P166 or P200 MMX to see if you get get to the 30 FPS cap with the T-Rex?
@bitsundbolts
7 ай бұрын
I already have a video on my channel with a P120 and P133 using a Voodoo with 4, 6, and 8MB of memory. Just search for Tomb Raider on my channel and you should find that video - it's about a year old.
@JeroenPut
8 ай бұрын
As far as I can remember from the source code, the game doesn't really use floating-point operations. All the information like block sizes and distances are encoded as integers. So I don't think the lack of floating-point should make a big difference. If there is a difference it is purely due to the Voodoo drivers. Keep in mind that the game was primarily developed for the PSX, which didn't have a particulary strong floating-point capability. If I would have to bet on something to make the biggest difference, it's probably the much better branch prediction of the Pentium.
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
I have never seen the source code and cannot explain if Tomb Raider uses floating-point operations or not. However, you should definitely not miss the next video!
@pazsion
8 ай бұрын
oh jeez man 😌 still its worth it all these emulators never compared to the packard bell 166mhz 138 fsb 40 pci and quadro 500 that was softquadroed... they linked like windows accelerators. put a 266 cyrix in there ... some of these 5x86 that were just overclocked 486 still reached similar clocks. here its the memory that helps most and is usually safer to overclock or pit heatsinks on first. but your fsb and pci clocks are the bottlenecks and the memory. voodoo did have true hardware and 3 axis rendering and other things. a z buffer hehe ... even multiple cards dont improve much without addressing the clocks on the motherboard. thats the bridge between these components then the memory. voodoo2-3 + the 486 era may have needed two cards to properly offload from the cpu more than half the tasks... a 2d and a 3d card... i even put a windows accelerator in the third slot with a modem in the last one. sound card was isa or onboard on the 486 board hehe.
@pazsion
8 ай бұрын
mmx put some 3d and texture as well as particle and sprite effects into the mmx package... memory and media optimizations and more cache too.
@WTFOMGTube
7 ай бұрын
I'm afraid to ask, but I'm doing it anyway, can you run the tom raider game on a modern cpu ? What frame rate would there be? What will the 3dfx voodoo card spit out and what will be spit out by a newer card. I'm afraid the game will still look terrible but hey, we are spoiled now, back in the day these were mouth-watering graphics. Cheerz on your decent work on cpu's and gpu's man!
@OpenGL4ever
7 ай бұрын
The old games like Tomb Raider were developed for 3D graphics chips that have a fixed graphic rendering pipeline. This changed with the later GPUs, where pixels and vertex shaders replaced the fixed graphics rendering pipeline, which means that these later GPUs do this in software on the shaders. This is particularly the case for all cards from NVidia Geforce 8x00 onwards. Before that it was a mixture of both. And before the Geforce 3 it was fixed rendering pipeline only. With a few exceptions, like the Rendition Verite chips. And that's a problem. With "software" rendering on the shaders you can achieve everything in terms of image quality that the fixed rendering pipeline can, but what can cause problems is latency and therefore lag. An example is the game Gunship! (also known as Gunship 3). This is a DirectX 8 game. It runs great on all cards up to and including a Geforce 7xxx because, as far as I know, this card has an additional fixed rendering pipeline in addition to the shaders. But on the later Geforce 8x00 this fixed rendering pipeline was completely removed to make room for more shaders. And on the Geforce 8x00 you can run very high resolutions in this game with apparently very high frame rates, but the game just doesn't run smoothly. It has micro-stutters that it didn't have on the older Geforce 7xxx. And the reason why is that everything is done in the shaders and because there is no fixed rendering pipeline on modern GPUs. In this respect, yes, the games might run on a modern graphics card, but they often don't run well. A workaround is a DirectX 8 to Vulkan wrapper. The situation is similar with Glide Wrappers, but these were written for DirectX 9, which may be too old for some modern GPUs (especially Intel Arc). So in the end you can say that real hardware from back in the day is still best for the old games.
@GigAHerZ64
8 ай бұрын
Those results felt so weird for me... But then you mentioned your bios settings being in "auto". Makes sense. All my boards have changed their timings based on FSB and multiplier. (the bios has a datatable in it for each combination) If you want good comparable results but don't want to mess with bios settings, set them manually very slow, but keep them fixed. ;)
@bitsundbolts
7 ай бұрын
Yes, that would have probably been better. I want to make a dedicated tuning video one day, but maybe on a different board. The Soyo Board doesn't support EDO memory.
@VeritronX
8 ай бұрын
The effect of tuning the timings vs auto should also not be underestimated
@Lake333GLD
8 ай бұрын
I hope you do understand, this test is not so valid, because there is a 30 fps lock in the Benchmark application. But I am happy to see it!
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Yes, it would be better if there wasn't a frame cap. However, I do believe that in such a case, the Cyrix 5x86 would do even better!
@colonthree
8 ай бұрын
Becoming the next Digital Foundry now? x'3 This is what I came for. uwu
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Hehe, just trying out other concepts.
@petertorda5487
8 ай бұрын
I guest it was quite pitty, that Cyrix totally failed to advertise, that you needs to enable something to get max of that CPU. In 90's I can guarantee, that almost nobody know that.
@bitsundbolts
7 ай бұрын
Unfortunately, those enhancements are buggy and sometimes lead to instability. I guess it was better to have a lower performing CPU than having people complaining about a faulty product.
@MatheusSSales-io2zu
8 ай бұрын
Bro I love your content... Watched with peak focus from beginning to end💪 also I love your accent and the way you say CPU, "CP-oo”😂 freaking gold!
@bitsundbolts
7 ай бұрын
Hehe. Thanks for watching
@bradenrichardson4269
8 ай бұрын
I wasn't shocked at all, I own a 5x86 clocked at 120mhz and I figured it would be at the top.
@bitsundbolts
7 ай бұрын
Good, then my testing methodology isn't complete garbage 😂. Thanks for watching and confirming!
@klausschmidt982
8 ай бұрын
13 FPS were totally playable for me in like 2001 lol
@kurthectic2902
8 ай бұрын
I hope you test with Pentium overdrive and try some overclock. I believe the FPU will make some difference.
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Yes, I will test the Pentium Overdrive. I am waiting for a fan to arrive. But that video is coming soon.
@scruffy7443
8 ай бұрын
I had a Cyrix in my old Packard bell pc back in 95.
@nelsonyin3410
8 ай бұрын
Finally the 3dfx came into the picture
@naib_stilgar
8 ай бұрын
I have been telling you that Cx5x86-120 is king among 486s for a while now :)
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Well, good that we have some numbers now too to back this up! You were right! Thanks for watching!
@kaycee_one
7 ай бұрын
wenn du mehr hardware suchst, schreib einfach DX2 könnte ich noch haben und sogar ein komplett system. lg
@OpenGL4ever
7 ай бұрын
Er könnte eine Rendition Verite gebrauchen.
@registrazioniduemillaotton6030
8 ай бұрын
Can't wait for the Overdrive result!!!
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Same here! Just need that fan to arrive :)
@boardernut
8 ай бұрын
Excellent work mate
@bitsundbolts
8 ай бұрын
Thank you! Cheers!
@Metalliferous
8 ай бұрын
Also curious to see what the impact would be on other software rendering titles like Quake and Duke Nukem 3D
@bitsundbolts
7 ай бұрын
Ah, maybe another series some time in the future...
@theALFEST
8 ай бұрын
My amd 5x86 system was faster at 150 than 160 in most cases. It had vesa local bus, Edo ram and l1 cache mode was write-through.
@bitsundbolts
7 ай бұрын
Probably due to the Soyo Board. It only supports FPM memory and may be the limiting factor for the AMD 150. However, I did notice some weird behaviour at 50 MHz FSB. I don't think the board is fully stable
@theALFEST
7 ай бұрын
@@bitsundbolts Oh, just remembered, my mb didn't support edo, so I believe ram despite being edo was working in fpm mode.
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