Aladdin 7 results

Discussion relating to Socket 7 hardware.
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Uranium235
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Aladdin 7 results

Post by Uranium235 »

I've been experimenting with an Aladdin 7 board over the last few weeks in the limited time I've had. It's a little known Powercolor P561A. It does have some interesting features:
- an Award Modular BIOS V6.00, the only socket 7 board I've ever seen with this version.
- no external L2 cache, another unique feature
- "dual channel" memory, yes it's true! Slots 1 & 2 need to be occupied for this feature with identical sticks of RAM.
- 133FSB support, although I haven't got it to work yet.
- room for the largest heatsinks available.
- integrated 3D video with up to 64MB of shared memory available.
-4X AGP supported, the only socket 7 board I've seen to have this. However, only 2X is enabled.


I've run into several road blocks and hassles with this board:
- no manual, can't find one anywhere. The silkscreening is good however describing all of the jumper settings.
- no manufacturer support, although it is an old board. ArtX was bought by ATI and vanished off the face of the earth. Powercolor offers no support on their website and won't respond to any e-mails. ALI is out of the motherboard chipset business.
- a broken heatsink lug on the CPU socket. This required me to buy a special heatsink with a 3-lug retainer clip.
- poor driver support. I've only been able to find one ArtX video driver version anywhere, Version 04.12.01.0429-D.
- no tweaks available. Can't find any .pcr files, chipset datasheets...nothing.
- problem running universal PCI cards (with 2 keyways). I wanted to test this board with an add on PCI video card but neither my Radeon 9100 or Geforce MX4000 will work. Can't find any info on PCI compliance.

Here are some early benchmark results demonstrating how the dual channel memory works. I used 2 identical sticks of 512MB (2x256) Hynix PC133 in slots 1&2 for dual channel and the same RAM in slots 1&3 for single channel. I used the best components I could round up. Here's the setup:
Powercolor P561A
AMD K6-3+ 550 @600(6x100)
512MB (2x256) Hynix PC-133 2,2,2,5
ArtX on-board video w/ 64MB shared
Western Digital 40GB HDD, 7200rpm, 8MB cache
Windows 98SE

Everest V2.20.405 Single Channel
Memory Read 273 MB/s
Memory Write 113 MB/s
Memory Latency 227.3ns

Everest V2.20.405 Dual Channel
Memory Read 332 MB/s
Memory Write 139 MB/s
Memory Latency 190.2 ns

CPUmark99 V1.0 Single Channel
56.2

CPUmark99 V1.0 Dual Channel
57.6

Hot CPU Tester Pro4 Single Channel
Total Score 1077
Metamark to MHz Ratio 1.79

Hot CPU Tester Pro4 Dual Channel
Total Score 1125
Metamark to MHz Ratio 1.87

Super PI Single Channel
[1M] 5m 57s

Super PI Dual Channel
[1M] 5m 20s

I've tried to run OSmark but it crashes. I'll try to get those results when I can. I have run this board stable at the 110FSB and the results look promising. I'll post the 110FSB results when I can. I also plan to load WindowsXP to see how well that works. More to follow.....
Last edited by Uranium235 on Wed Dec 13, 2006 12:35 am, edited 2 times in total.
Jim
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RE: Aladdin 7 results

Post by Jim »

Don't know if it is any help to you but I found this :

Video drivers here :
http://www.video-drivers.com/companies/836.htm

Sound drivers here :
http://www.soundcard-drivers.com/companies/836.htm

Bios here :
http://www.bios-drivers.com/drivers/118/118037.htm

EDIT : If my arm was twisted a bit, (Since I live about 10 miles from ATI's head office & only use ATI video cards), perhaps I could try to pester them for you if you think it would help.

You could also try Peter's site for the chipset data sheets; - might get lucky.
Superpuppy 3
K6-3+ 450 ACZ (6x100)
DFI K6BV3+/66 Rev B2 (2 Meg) w/ 2x28mm Chipset Fans
2x256 Meg PC 133 Hynix SDRAM
1x 20G Maxtor (7200)
2x 80G Maxtor (7200) Ducted w/ 2x486 Fans Mount
52/24/52/16 LG CDR/RW/DVD
8/4/3/12/24/16/32 LG Super Multi
ATI 9000 aiw Radeon AGP
SB Audigy 1 MP3 Sound
CMD 649 IDE Controller
NEC USB 2 Card
DonPedro
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Post by DonPedro »

thank you uranium! :)

interesting numbers, especially the high values for cpumark under win98 but also very good results for the 1m-superpi bench.

all this without any wpcredit-tweaks ....

I think should we get our hands on the chipset's specsheet for wpcredit tweaks this chipset will make 400+ everest mem-read score without overclocking the fsb.

if it then would be possible to even raise the sdram-speed from 100 to 133 (which the chipset should support as far as I have read) then this board's performcance could go through the roof.
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Uranium235
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Post by Uranium235 »

Thanks! Any and all information you can gather on the P561A or ArtX would be appreciated.

I found this article which gives me the impression that Windows XP has built-in driver support for ArtX graphics:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/282481
Jim
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Post by Jim »

K, clarify a couple of things here please. 1) What has "ArtX" got to do w/ "Powercolor" ? (I know "Powercolor" makes video cards based on the ATI chips.) 2) Who did ATI buy out, "Powercolor" or "ArtX" ? 3) The board in question is a "Powercolor", what has "ArtX" got to do w/ it ? 4) What exactly should I be asking ATI for ? (They have a service counter, where I took my old Radeon 7500 aiw in, and they replaced it). I also have a business card for the head of customer service floating around somewhere.
Superpuppy 3
K6-3+ 450 ACZ (6x100)
DFI K6BV3+/66 Rev B2 (2 Meg) w/ 2x28mm Chipset Fans
2x256 Meg PC 133 Hynix SDRAM
1x 20G Maxtor (7200)
2x 80G Maxtor (7200) Ducted w/ 2x486 Fans Mount
52/24/52/16 LG CDR/RW/DVD
8/4/3/12/24/16/32 LG Super Multi
ATI 9000 aiw Radeon AGP
SB Audigy 1 MP3 Sound
CMD 649 IDE Controller
NEC USB 2 Card
DonPedro
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Joined: Wed Jul 27, 2005 2:11 pm

Post by DonPedro »

@jim,

ArtX was a graphics solution manufacturer. they designed the graphics core for some game station, I think it was the nintendo machine. Later ATi bought ArtX.

the aladdin7 chipset boards for the sockel7 (there exist also boards for pentiumII or pentiumIII) used the ArtX graphic solution integrated on the mainboard. the pentium boards of the aladdin7 chipset came with an integrated nvidia-tnt(2?)-solution.
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Uranium235
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Post by Uranium235 »

Jim, DonPedro is right. ArtX was a graphics core designer responsible for the graphics on the Nintendo Gamecube.
Here's a link regarding ArtX:
http://www.answers.com/topic/artx
ArtX was a company formed in 1997 by a group of engineers from Silicon Graphics, Inc. that worked on the Nintendo 64's graphics chip. Focused on delivering a PC graphics chip that was both high performance and cost effective, they hoped to be able to instantly compete with the giants in the industry at that time, 3dfx and nVidia. David Orton, who was head of Silicon Graphics' advanced-graphics division, was appointed President of ArtX. He has now become CEO of ATI Technologies. They demonstrated their first integrated graphics chipset with built-in geometry engine at COMDEX in the fall of 1999, which was marketed by Acer Lab of Taiwan. ArtX was contracted to create the graphics processor (called the "Flipper chip") for Nintendo's fourth game console, the GameCube.

The company was acquired by ATi Technologies, Inc. in February 2000 for $400 million dollars in stock options. Eventually, AMD bought (in fact, merged) with ATi on July 24, 2006. The deal is valued at U$S 5.4 billion and the merger is expected to complete in Q4 of the 2006 fiscal year. ArtX paved the way for the development of the R300 graphics chipset from ATi. Today, ATi closely rivals nVidia Corporation in an intense race for the fastest, and most advanced graphics card (concerning processor speed, memory speed and capacity, pipelining etc).


Powercolor is the manufacturer of the P561A motherboard, just like Asus or DFI. The integrated graphics on this motherboard are ArtX only.

ArtX and ALI together created the chipset for the motherboard. ALI integrated the ArtX core into the Northbridge.

Maybe ATI could come up with some different drivers maybe??
Jim
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Location: Toronto

Post by Jim »

, Will do, though it may take a while, (have to work it in to my work schedule while in Markham). Further to all this , here is Petetr's link to datasheets. maybe you can trace your chipset part numbers there.

http://www.datasheetcatalog.com/
Superpuppy 3
K6-3+ 450 ACZ (6x100)
DFI K6BV3+/66 Rev B2 (2 Meg) w/ 2x28mm Chipset Fans
2x256 Meg PC 133 Hynix SDRAM
1x 20G Maxtor (7200)
2x 80G Maxtor (7200) Ducted w/ 2x486 Fans Mount
52/24/52/16 LG CDR/RW/DVD
8/4/3/12/24/16/32 LG Super Multi
ATI 9000 aiw Radeon AGP
SB Audigy 1 MP3 Sound
CMD 649 IDE Controller
NEC USB 2 Card
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Uranium235
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Posts: 183
Joined: Mon Sep 12, 2005 9:59 pm

Post by Uranium235 »

Here are some more benchmark results at the 110FSB, all are done in dual channel mode. The setup is the same as before:
Powercolor P561A
K6-3+ 550 @605Mhz(5.5x110)
512MB (2x256) Hynix PC-133 2-2-2-5
ArtX on-board video w/ 64MB shared memory
Western Digital 40GB HDD, 7200rpm, 8MB cache
Windows 98SE
no tweaks

SiSoft Sandra 2004.10.9.89
RAM Bandwidth INT MMX 211 MB/s
RAM Bandwidth Float FPU 206 MB/s

CPUmark99 V1.0
59.6

Super PI
[1M] 5m 16s

Everest V2.20.405
Read 368 MB/s
Write 138 MB/s
Latency 175.6 ns

Hot CPU Tester Pro4
Total Score 1165
Metamark to MHz Ratio 1.93
DonPedro
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Post by DonPedro »

uranium, have you ever tried to contact ali for a specsheet on the aladdin7-chipset? maybe they are the only source that may can help.

if you are not too much on a budget you may try to get a gf2-mx pci-version on ebay. maybe this card will work satisfactorily with your board. btw, what exactly was the problem with the pci-cards you tried? did the machine boot, had you freezes in windows? or just had problems running some specific program?
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Uranium235
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Post by Uranium235 »

Good idea on contacting ALI for the chipset datasheet. I'll give it a try.

The problem I'm having with the Radeon 9100 and the GF MX4000 I tried is that the machine will not boot with them in any slot. I did finally get an older 4MB Permedia2 PCI video card to work in the machine. Strangely, it will only work from the first PCI slot only.

I did succeed in getting the motherboard to run at the 133FSB but only in single channel mode with one stick of memory in the first slot nearest the CPU. It does boot into safe mode but is unstable. I ran Memtest86 and got errors. It seems the more memory I allocate to the on-board video, the more errors I get. I'm thinking if I can completely kill the on-board video then I may get stable 133FSB operation.

Another oddity I'm seeing with this board is that the memory settings in the BIOS appear to have little or no affect on performance. 3-3-3-6 seems to be just as fast as 2-2-2-5. I'm still trying to figure this one out.
Guest

Post by Guest »

from hardforum.com:

Powercolor P561A Socket 7 motherboard (Onboard video, sound. 5 PCI, 0 ISA, 0 AGP -- Has some stability "issues" when the onboard sound is turned on in the BIOS)
lazy_kalabok

Post by lazy_kalabok »

ok guys,

its time to investigate the aladdin 7 chipset ... im thinking to get one.
ebay usa:

powercolor p561a:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Powercolor-P561A-So ... dZViewItem

ebay germany: 2x pc chips m583lmr

http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie ... &rd=1&rd=1

i asked the seller, the mobo has got the winbond w83194r-67b pll ... 133mhz setting by hardware!

go for it!
DonPedro
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Post by DonPedro »

kalabok,

off-thread: wo bleiben die angekuendigten benchresultate? ;)

regarding your post above I followed the 2nd link: why do you think it is an aladdin 7 board? why pcchips 583lmr? the seller just states it is of sis-chipset (and therefor can't be of aladdin7 chipset) and also states in the text that it features an ali 1543 chip (which is in contrast to the statement that is a sis-chipset board)? ...... also he sells 1x board, not 2 of them ...
DonPedro
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Post by DonPedro »

uranium,

if the powercoloer p561a is a rebranded pc chips m583lmr (ebay auction # 160067705556 suggests so) then you may
a) may give the m583lmr's bios a try that you can download from here and
b) may expand your search for a manual with having the m583lmr in mind.

also did you read the guest's posts above about the tip to turn off onboard sound?
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