VIA EPIA SP 8000, a great replacement for the K6-III+

TA152H · Post by **TA152H** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 8:06 pm

Tez and Jim,

Makes you wonder why anyone would support 6x, since 2x was the same. Very odd. Probably was done before AMD remapped 2x to 6x, nothing else makes any sense at all to me.

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 8:44 pm

I believe the remap was done to enable the K6-2 400 to reach 400 without OCing on those boards that only had 66, 75, & 83 MHz FSBs. (6x66). You may be right assuming that this particular board came out before the K6-2 400; but if not, maybe IBM was just doing their job.

tazwegion · Post by **tazwegion** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 6:04 am

Totally 100% correct Jim

The whole 2x/6x remapping IMHO was related to peoples upgrade paths, especially relating to 66fsb platforms, allowing people to upgrade their processor and get the benefit of the improved K6 architecture but retain their M/board (thus reducing the almighty cost factor) something Intel couldn't, wouldn't, didn't offer their consumers

... on many occasions I've needed to set a K62-400 @ (6x66)... though this feature has not been so relavent with later high fsb capable platforms (with the exception of OC'ing naturally

)

Anyways, Intel are famous for their socket swapping antics, AMD however thankfully are not

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 6:51 am

Thanks Taz. Right now I needed that. BTW: IMHO??

DasMan2 · Post by **DasMan2** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 1:40 pm

No matter, I think AMD should build their own low-power utility m.b. setup.

There seems to be companies that design adaptors for many CPU's to be use on other motherboards. You think AMD could build a New CPU & small adaptor to be used on present m.b.'s and even on their hopefully low-power utility m.b. It needs to have a built in Router/Switch 8 x also and no onboard sound or video. Micro-ATX design.

The VIA present SP8000 /13000 system without any expandability or AGP slot does not interest me at all. I need more flexibility.

tazwegion · Post by **tazwegion** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 8:07 pm

IMHO Jim, means "In My Honest Opinion..."

DasMan2... were I an electronics engineer, I'd build that XS7 (eXtreme Socket 7) platform but as I'm not and don't know anyone who is, I'll just have to make do with whatever the market coughs up

smoke · Post by **smoke** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 11:53 pm

Interesting stuff this way --> My Athlon mini-ITX

tazwegion · Post by **tazwegion** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 5:43 am

TA152H wrote:Taz and Jim,

Makes you wonder why anyone would support 6x, since 2x was the same. Very odd. Probably was done before AMD remapped 2x to 6x, nothing else makes any sense at all to me.

Well as promised... here is a nice little 'snap shot' of the supported multiplier settings on the IBM 263PRO (Aptiva 21xx series)

DasMan2 · Post by **DasMan2** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 2:06 pm

Beauty Taz !

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 3:27 pm

Curious Taz, did that board come out before the K6-2 400, (looks unlikely), or was it a case of IBM doing their job?

tazwegion · Post by **tazwegion** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 6:46 pm

Well Jim that's hard to ascertain as there isn't much info' around about this particular platform, except to say it was equiped with a K62-400/500 & SiS chipset (100Mhz fsb) as standard fare...

ID# IBM FRU 09N5392 M/B 2000-07-27 Pro263 REV:3.0

I just like the fact that it has a 6x multi (standard)

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 7:24 pm

I could be wrong; but 2000 07 27 sounds like after the K6-2 400 to me.

By the way, Superpuppy 2 is back up and running. Still have a lot of software to load, but it is producing significantly better Everest Memory Read numbers than the DFI, though not quite as good with Memory Write. SP2 is an Asus P5A-B. But it has only had minimal setting up. (and it is still on 768 Meg of ram). I will reduce it to 512 for hard comparisons, once I get it setup.

tazwegion · Post by **tazwegion** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 10:34 pm

Seeing as that reference material is on a decal (M/board) I'd have to assume it's a build date for the particular system (Y'know how IBM are)

Word for the wise... once all the appropriate SiS/ESS drivers are loaded into the OS for the on-board sound & video, the performance really sucks even @ 550Mhz (64Meg of Sdram) it's scoring on virtually the lowest point in Everest's benchmarking suite

even lower than the ALi Aladdin V chipset platform I recently benchtested

SP2 is lucky... my systems must get by on 64 - 512Meg's of RAM

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Sat Jul 23, 2005 11:01 am

Yeah but SP2 has 3 mismatched sticks of low grade 256, sigh. Though, I'd say 64 Meg is not enough for good performance. At least 128, preferably 256; especially on a board w/ onboard stuff eating ram. (Munch, burp, oh? did your performance go down?) Not trying to be smart, just bad joke. If you have a spare sound card, and video card, disabling the onboard, and using PCI stuff may help performance.

tazwegion · Post by **tazwegion** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 12:18 am

Considering it's only using Win98SE you'd think 64Meg was plenty... considering I used to only have 32Meg on a similar system

Mismatched? shouldn't be a huge problem unless it's @ different speed ratings ie. PC66 & PC133 or single & double sided etc.

This M/board has had issues in the past, FDD controller was killing floppy drives

then the on-board video began playing up altering it's settings and so on... personally I'm just glad to have the K62-500 back 'in-house' I missed it