GA-5SMM overhaul

Discussion relating to Socket 7 hardware.
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stevenaaus
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GA-5SMM overhaul

Post by stevenaaus »

[Hmmm... i see theres already a 5smm forum.. It's 13! pages long ... sorry for not posting there.]

I got a totally crazy box to fix the other day. It was a cyrix-II 333 (75x3.5=263) on a nice micro ATX SS7 board, a Gigabyte 5SMM.

It had a busted powersupply, which i replaced, and it then tried to boot
windows2000! This was quite a suprise because it was only used as a home games box, and it only had 32meg-4video=28 meg ram. Anyway, (after an eternity) the OS wouldn't boot either... the NTFS formatted hard drive was failing. It also had a two button cartoon Mickey-Mouse mouse with a busted Y roller,and a crap type of 14" monitor you never want to see again.

In the end i booted up knoppix, scanned the hard-disk for anything retrievable/ useful , and transplanted a win98 image onto a new hard-disk, installed some jetway-SIS530 video and sound drivers and it ran ok. New CRT, new mouse.

I'm curious about the mobo... It's a nice u-ATX board (and i half wanted it). It has a SIS530/5595 chipset with no 72pin ram , 3 SDRam slots for 768M and a heap of freqencies , clock rates to 5.5 and Voltages 1.3V~3.5V, all on dip switches. It also had what appeared to be 4 onboard ram cache sockets - in a line - empty. But performance was ok and i think some utility reported 512K L2 Cache though i couldn't see the cache chip. I tested it a little bit and itshowed no signs of flakiness which the Cyrix-MII/SIS chipsets/onboard-vid can do. Had no problems at all with USB with both Win98 and Knoppix. I ran Wintune on it, and IIRC it didn't lose out much against a k6-2 500 except for floating
point.

Hmmm... The Gigabyte web site boasts it's a high performance board, but they would of course. Did the GA-5SMM get much of a run? Thanks
p54-166/p55-200 - ga586
k6/2-380@412 - txp4
k75-750 slot a - pcchips 800LMR (rock solid)
compaq C2.4Ghz - U8668grand (cheap)
Sempron 3400+ (754) - K8VM800M, FX5600, Fedora 7
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DonPedro
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Post by DonPedro »

stevenaaus,

there is BIG thread on operating and optimizing sis530-boards like yours over here at k6plus.com.
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stevenaaus
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Post by stevenaaus »

Hmmm, read the thread.. Congrats on a big benchmarking event. I gathered that the ga-5smm is much better than the soyo model... But I'm still curious how this board stacks up against the mvp3 and alladin chipsets (at <100 fsb).
And whether the ga-5smm is the best SIS SS7 board.

Steven
p54-166/p55-200 - ga586
k6/2-380@412 - txp4
k75-750 slot a - pcchips 800LMR (rock solid)
compaq C2.4Ghz - U8668grand (cheap)
Sempron 3400+ (754) - K8VM800M, FX5600, Fedora 7
E5200 - Asrock 4CoreDual-Sata2
Core 2 Quad 9400 - Asus P5G41-M
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Stedman5040
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Post by Stedman5040 »

At 100fsb the SIS530 chipset with a PCI video card, rather than onboard vga graphics, falls short of the performance you can get from both the ALI and VIA chipsets. When boosted up to 133fsb it can compete with the ALaddin V and MVP3 chipsets running at 100fsb. I have a Radeon 9250PCI card in my GA-5SMM board which works OK running with a K6-2+/550 @ 600MHz (4.5x133). My biggest problem is sorting out what memory will work in this board at 133fsb. Both my Crucial cl2 and Hynix cl2 modules refuse to boot. The hynix modules will boot at 100fsb. So at the moment I am stuck with one module of cl2 Samsung 128mb and a kingston cl2 64mb. One downside with the board is the hardware monitoring is virtually non existant. there is no cpu temp monitoring but it does monitor some of the fans and board voltages. These however cannot be picked up correctly by Everest.

Stedman.
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Post by DonPedro »

yes, I agree with stedman that hardware monitoring is a big problem with sis530 in general.

my asus p5s-vm was originally used in some hp or compaq pc. the bios that came with that machine actually had working hw-monitoring (cpu-temp, cpu-voltage). at least I was able to read the values in question in a sub-menue in the bios. unfortunately the bios was too old to recognize a k6-2/3+ cpu, did not recognize harddisks bigger than 30gig at all and also did not accept 256mb ram modules.

so I used the 1.06 bios that steunebrink offers at his website to get all these features. BUT the hardware monitoring is gone except giving some values for the fans.

EDIT:
this raises a question: wouldn't it be possible to "extract" the hw-monitoring code from the old-bios and transplant it into the new bios? I think steunebrink could have the technical expertise to do exactly that.
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stevenaaus
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Post by stevenaaus »

I'm afraid 100fsb is it for me. I've never had joy any
higher as i dont have any plus chips, just K6/2-500 and a
K6/3-400.

> wouldn't it be possible to "extract" the hw-monitoring
> code from the old-bios and transplant it into the new
> bios? I think steunebrink could have the technical
> expertise to do exactly that

I think the problem is that bios' are a fixed size and new
code (generally for big HDDs and K6-III support)
necessitates removing some other code. In the README for
Jan's TXP4 bios, he says: "... Deleted the unused 50 and 60
MHz support to make room for this change."

.... Is anyone interested in his mail to me from 2003:

Code: Select all

> Steven wrote
>
> > I've done some assembly programming back in time
> > (z80/microbee, and PDP-8 at uni) but I can't imagine
> > what's involved in hacking a bios.

Jan wrote:

> This BIOS patching is all done via reverse engineering!
> The main BIOS vendors keep their source code well
> protected, so I had to find-out everything myself. ;-)
> Patching socket 7 BIOSes for additional CPU support is not
> difficult but very time consuming. There is no general
> recipe for this and you have to disassemble and analyze
> each BIOS carefully to see what needs to be changed.
> Award and AMI have made so many code changes over time,
> that it is always a surprise what you will find. ;-)

> Greetings from Holland,
>   Jan.
p54-166/p55-200 - ga586
k6/2-380@412 - txp4
k75-750 slot a - pcchips 800LMR (rock solid)
compaq C2.4Ghz - U8668grand (cheap)
Sempron 3400+ (754) - K8VM800M, FX5600, Fedora 7
E5200 - Asrock 4CoreDual-Sata2
Core 2 Quad 9400 - Asus P5G41-M
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Uranium235
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Post by Uranium235 »

I like the Asus P5S-VM myself, seems a little more user friendly at 133FSB than the GA-5SMM and has a jumper to disable onboard video. I couldn't run the Soyo SIS530 board at 133FSB, at least the one I have couldn't do it.
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Stedman5040
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Post by Stedman5040 »

Managed to get the GA-5SMM running with 3x128mb of cl2 sdram. With a K6-III+/450acz @ 600MHz (133x4.5). Video card is a Radeon 9250pci. Everest and superpi 1m figures given below

Everest 2.20.405

MR/MW/ML 402/156/168.6

Sandra 2004 memory bandwidth

216/211

Superpi 1.1e (1M)

4m 52secs

Stedman :)
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Stedman5040
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Post by Stedman5040 »

Finally got hardware monitoring running using the Soyo Sy-5SSM hardware monitor downloaded from the soyo site. Works OK on my GA-5SSM board, apart from there is no temperature monitoring as there is no temp sensor on the Gigabyte board. The only other quirk is that the outputs for the system fan and the cpu fan are reversed.

Stedman
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Post by DonPedro »

stedman,

does that mean you are now in the position to read voltages?

the package you downloaded is the 530m233.zip file?
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Stedman5040
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Post by Stedman5040 »

Yes Peter the 530m233.zip file is the one I downloaded and used. Yes I can now read voltages and fan speeds. The only thing noticeable on the voltages is that the read out for the CPU seems to read 0.7V higher than indicated in the bios set up menu.

As you can see from the earlier post I have got a K6-III+ working at 133x4.5 on the gigabyte board with 384mb of cl2 memory. For Superpi 1m for the same hardware set up it is about 10 seconds faster which works out at about 5%. This present set up with the Radeon 9250 scores better on hotcpu tester as well scoring 1153 with a cpu metamark to mhz ratio of 1.93.

I was hoping to get 512mb of memory (1x256 + 2x128) working on the board. I can get the thing to post but it is just too unstable at the moment in windows. I would like to continue the benchmarks that we showed earlier if you are keen.

To me the board working at 600 (133x4.5) seems very responsive and I think it is possibly a better set up than the Epox MVP3G2 set up working at 6x100 with 512mb of memory with a Geforce3ti200 card. Of course this is with simple internet browsing and the like and not gameplay.

It seems that the SIS530 chipset is not such a dead duck at all as you can run the chipset at 133mhz with no problems on the Gigabyte board. Certainly the memory bandwidth of the SIS530 board at 133Mhz beats both the MVP3 and aladdin V chipsets at 100mhz. With regards to superpi 1m you have to run the Epox board at 112mhz with the magical 5.5x multiplier to equal the GA-5SMM performance.

Anyway this much maligned chipset certainly deserves some more work on it.

Stedman
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Post by DonPedro »

yes steadman,

you precisely hit the point about the sis530 chipset (once it gets going @133mhz): superb responsitivity!

I completely agree with you about the sheer speed programs are loading compared to any other system (socket7) I use. that is the reason why I want to find the best possible usb/firewire/sata add-on card for my p5s-vm board. if the the card I ordered (from siig) works and the harddisk I plan to use results in a performance improvement I expect (transfer rates at 80mb/s and above) then this machine will certainly be a real super super7-performer.

I already managed to reach 666mhz by using the best socket7/370 cpu cooler I am aware of: global win cak II 38. problem: due to lack of hw-monitoring so far I have no idea about actual state of voltage and temperature. also at this point it is not stable enough to run hotcpu, everest or superpi. both programs crash after about a minute. otherwise the system works without crashes. I don't know whether it is because the cpu runs too hot or whether I should raise the voltage even more. but because of fear to ruin the cpu I stopped testing. I hope I get the hw-monitoring working, without it is a shot in the dark. also I found another possible better cooling solution that fits onto a socket7/370/A-socket: innovatek i-COOL rev3.0 water-cooling. I will dig into this once I am finished my tests with the sata-card.
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Post by Stedman5040 »

Peter,

Which K6 did you have to get up to 666mhz? I haven't yet managed with any of my K6-2+ 550s or K6-III+s. The best I have got to is posting 666 with one or two of the K6-2+ 's.

Have you tried delidding a cpu? I will try it on one of my 550's to see if it helps. I have managed to delid both a K6-2+/500 and a K6-III/400 in the past. I can get to 630 @ 105x6 with no problems, but that last 36mhz is tough. You may be right in looking at the water cooled option. I have also got a CAK38 cooler which fits on the socket just missing the closest capacitors.

I am surprised that ASUS did not have a hardware monitor program for the P5S-VM. Maybe one of their older versions of Asusprobe works. You can try the Soyo monitor. There is also a monitor on the Jetway site but it doesn't work properly for my Gigabyte board.

Stedman
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Post by DonPedro »

stedman,

I used a k6-2+550 for the 666 experience. also I start with hw-multi set to 4 (=533mhz) and change to 4.5 from within windows (98se) using the tool ctu or k6speed. the cak-2 cooler does a lot better job than the cooler I used before (smartcooler), which I use in all my other socket7 systems (good cooling AND VERY silent). the cak-2 is a jet in sound-comparison. so the cak-2 solution has no future even if I manage to reach 666mhz with solid stability. with the smartcooler I was also able to switch to 666mhz but it lasted only for less of a minute or so, then the desktop crashed. the cak-2 survives way longer but I did not want to really test how long this would go without knowledge about the temps and voltages.

I have tried decapping once and I used an old k6-2-300 for that purpose. although I took every caution and always cross-lifted the cap I did some harm to the cpu because after decappiing was done it was just dead. it could be that I damaged one of the very small electric parts that surround the cpu-die while sliding the screwdriver between the cap and and the plate. there was abolutely no visible damage but this unlucky experiment keeps me from repeating it for now. I think that the water-cooling solution will be the best solution because according to some test results I have learned that decapping lowers the temp only about 3°C, while the innovatek i-COOL rev3.0 (or rev4.0) is able to lower the temp of some athlon xp (can't remember exactly) to a mere 25°C at idle desktop and the temp stayed around 40°C when the cpu was kept busy. so our k6-cpus should pose no problem for this w-c-solution and the temperature question will be solved once and for all.

regarding the hw-monitoring software I can tell now that the soyo software indeed shows data for cpu-temp and voltages, but the values it reports is just crap. I also tried pcprobe some time ago (different versions) but again in the end with no success (can't remember exactly what was wrong with it but I remember that pcprobe did not help either). so today I also tried "motherboard monitor 5.3.7". it has no sis530 board in its hw-list (I checked asus, gigabyte, soyo, biostar) but in the readme it says that hw-info for sis5595 (part of sis530) is only available via input through an ini-file. I have no idea how to use that information. anyway, I skipped the board-selection part and mbm actually reported the same weird data we already got from the soyo-hw-monitor. I will go into this issue more deeply tomorrow but will post the "questions/findings" in our good old sis530-thread. it is just more reasonable to keep things together.

last but not least I have to report that the 512mb ram stick with 32Mx8 organization is working, but the system acknowledges only 256mb of ram. I digged into this and possibly found the reason for this. in short, the sis530 specs indicate clearly that it is able to accept such sticks (up to 1.5gigabytes) but seems to not (for now) have been programmed for this possibility. according to wpcredit it is only 1 bit that is not set compared to the spec-sheet we have. the tool ctspd reports the full 512mb of ram. again, I will post in detail about this tomorrow in the other sis530 tread.
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Post by stevenaaus »

> Managed to get the GA-5SMM running with 3x128mb of cl2 sdram. With a
> K6-III+/450acz @ 600MHz

Long live SS7!
-------------

I've returned the board now.. though I wanted to keep it for myself. SS7
boards are fun, and what impressed me about the GA-5SMM was it's beautiful layout and multitude of dipswitches. I initially thought it might be uncommon, but from the feedback here that doesn't seem to be the case. I have often wondered how common particular boards are but have never seen any numbers. Does anyone know about any [SS7] mobo sales numbers ? I guess the figures would have to come from the manufacturers, as OS's don't really report mobo IDs... And business being businesses, they don't release the numbers. Gigabyte must have made a few SS7 boards. The ga586hx ga586s2 ga586t2 and ga5smm have been through my hands.

There's some interesting stuff at http://www.redhill.net.au/ib.html

Re SiS530 sensor support... I just checked out the linux lm_sensors status for the SiS5595 (which i think is what the 5SMM has). /usr/share/doc/lm_sensors-2.10.3/BUGS:
sis5595 (sis5595 and i2c-sis5595 drivers) These drivers latch on to many non-sis5595 chips which do not support sensors, i2c bus, or both. This is because SiS uses the same PCI ID for several different chips. This will have to be fixed by us to recognize these other chips.

Also, the temperature reading in sis5595 is usually wrong. Different formulas are required for different versions of the chip and different motherboards.
So obviously things here aren't perfect, but its good to see people are still
working on them. If i get the chance, i'll have to test out the latest kernel
and the GA-5SMM. Not much use for Windows users, unless you finally get sick
of m****soft's stunts (... vista is a shocker).

[I just realised my current K8 mobo is also a Gigabyte (rock solid GA-K8VM800M). Nowadays, underclocking the CPU (and reducing heat) is more of a consideration than overclocking. This board+Sempron 3400+ (2Ghz) overclock straight away 10% but whats the point... my Nvidia FX5600 is the limiting factor in the games i occasionally play. I recently upgraded my _main_ operating system to fedora7 (for the first time in 5 years) mostly just to get CPU throttling with the latest linux kernel. The cpu runs at 1GHz instead of 2, and lm_sensors reports the voltage is throttled back to 1.1V from 1.4V]
p54-166/p55-200 - ga586
k6/2-380@412 - txp4
k75-750 slot a - pcchips 800LMR (rock solid)
compaq C2.4Ghz - U8668grand (cheap)
Sempron 3400+ (754) - K8VM800M, FX5600, Fedora 7
E5200 - Asrock 4CoreDual-Sata2
Core 2 Quad 9400 - Asus P5G41-M
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