MVP-3 or ALI Aladdin chipset for K6-3+?

Discussion relating to Socket 7 hardware.
Post Reply
Guest

MVP-3 or ALI Aladdin chipset for K6-3+?

Post by Guest »

Hey all,

Which chipset would give better memory performance? I've tried the MVP-3 maxed out and the performance wasn't that great in the memory area. Is the ALI chipset better, generally?

Also, what revision of the ASUS P5-A is needed in order to run a K6-3+ cpu, should I decide on one?
User avatar
Stedman5040
Veteran K6'er
Posts: 271
Joined: Mon Sep 05, 2005 4:22 pm

Post by Stedman5040 »

Look through the posts in the Hardware Tech Forum area for

Ram question for Giga-byte GA5-AX ver2 by KGB

If you read these posts you will get a good idea on the performance of ALI chipset boards vs VIA boards. My experience is that ALI boards will give better Everest benchmark results and Sandra memory bandwidth figures when compared to VIA boards. However that does not mean it will transfer into real life performance as there are, of course, other features that come into play.

I have an Asus P5A v1.04 board and this works fine with a K6plus cpu using a suitable bios. The 1.05 and 1.06 revisions will not work with the plus chips.

Stedman

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Asus P5A v1.04
K6-3+/500ANZ @ 578MHz
3x256mb Hynix pc133 cl2
Wd 5,400rpm HDD 20gig
Realtek network card
Creative SB 5.1
Cd/rw
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Aopen AX59PRO
K6-3+/400ACR @ 550mHz
3x128mb Hynix pc133 cl2
Wd 5,400 HDD 20gig
realtek network card
Hercules Muse Soundcard
CD/RW
DVD rom
Jim
K6'er Elite
Posts: 1745
Joined: Wed Jan 21, 2004 7:10 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by Jim »

I would revise that to say the 105 & 106 Revisions, cannot easily be made to work properly w/ K6+ chips.
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
Guest

Guess I had one more question..

Post by Guest »

I should have included this in my original post.

What about the SIS 5591/95 and TX chipset in comparison to the ALI and VIA chipsets?

I realize that you can normally only get about 500Mhz out of those since most boards only supplied 83Mhz and a 6x multi. but I understand that the K6III/+ series doesn't benefit that much from 100mhz bus anyway, so I'm pretty much looking at any chipset with good memory performance figures at 100Mhz or even lower.

Thanks, guys.
User avatar
Stedman5040
Veteran K6'er
Posts: 271
Joined: Mon Sep 05, 2005 4:22 pm

Post by Stedman5040 »

You say that you tried the MVP3 chipset, but have not given any indication as to what board you used or the memory benchmark figures achieved. Can you be a little bit more informative.

The MVP3 and ALI V chipsets are the ones you should be chasing as they do support 100fsb and you can therefore max out your K6plus cpu to 600MHz or more if it will take it. What K6plus cpu do you have?

The SIS530 chipset is not a good memory performer so avoid that one.

The ATX MVP3 board of choice should go to the EPOX MVP3G series of boards or the DFI K6XV3+/66. AT to the FIC VA503+

The ALI to the Asus P5A or Gigabyte GA5-AX. For AT layout the P5A-B is recommended and I am sure Jim will support this.

The P5A board has overclocking fsb speeds of 105, 110 and 115. I have tried the 105 and 112 settings and have run a K6-2+550 at 617Mhz.

Stedman
Guest

Post by Guest »

I currently have a FIC PAG-2130 with a beta BIOs instaled and works fine with the + cpu. I also have a K6-III+ 400mhz. I've clocked it up to at least 550 w/ no problem. i never did try 600 yet.

Memory benchmarks, if I remember correctly were around 139-145MB/s (at 100Mhz) with memory interleave driver installed and all BIOS setting maxed. I think some other chipset like ALI were able to get around 175-200MB/s or so.

I remember about the Sis 530 chipset being not that great, so that's why I mentioned the 5591/95 set instead.

The TX chipset may not work out anyway, since I just discovered that it's max memory is only 256MB (unless you guys know of a TX board that supports more than that).

Thanks for the board name mentions.
Jim
K6'er Elite
Posts: 1745
Joined: Wed Jan 21, 2004 7:10 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by Jim »

What I have found so far, (I say so far because I have not yet run any tests w/ my 2Meg DFI - still building), is that an ASUS P5A-B w/ 512k cache, (ALi chipset), seems to outperform a DFI K6BV3+/66 w/ 1Meg cache, (MVP3 chipset), at least as far as memory performance is concerned. Kyle Brant, (the author of "K6Speed"), however has said that in his experience the FIC Super 7s, (MVP3 chipset), have the best memory performance. My own tests seem to confirm that. Though I have not tested an FIC VA503+ very extensively, as far as I did test it, it outperformed both the ASUS and the DFI. See "K6-3+ 450ACZ over / under Clocking Results" and also see "MVP Vs ALi chipset 3-Way Shootout" on pg 2 of this forum. There you will find results that indicate the FIC is the best memory performer.

EDIT : Should mention that Kyle said the the FIC needed first class RAM in order to achieve stability w/ the settings he was using. I also found the FIC to be unstable w/ lower grade RAM if pushed.
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
Guest

Post by Guest »

I guess I'm on good ground then, with my PAG-2130. The only thing it lacks is an AGP port (although it has built-in AGP graphics - blehh).

Think I'll stuff it with a Promise RAID card and a couple of 8MB 7200rpm drives, and a nice Win2000 install. Maybe max the ram to 768, too. Currently has 384.
User avatar
Stedman5040
Veteran K6'er
Posts: 271
Joined: Mon Sep 05, 2005 4:22 pm

Post by Stedman5040 »

The FIC PAG2130 has the MVP4 chipset I think. The inbuilt VGA is not going to help with your performance figures. I can tell you that with my AX59PRO board the Everest figures are in the region of

Memory Write 240
Memory read 133
Memory latency 265

With no tweaking by WPCredit, but with CTU at start up

My Asus P5A with no tweaking gives with Everest. Again CTU used at start up.

Memory Write 340
Memory read 142
Memory latency 192

If you want to get better figures you may have to go for a board with no inbuilt graphics.

Stedman
Guest

Post by Guest »

Oh, ok. wow, I didn't even think about that!

You think just adding a PCI video card would be well enough to raise the memory figures?
User avatar
Stedman5040
Veteran K6'er
Posts: 271
Joined: Mon Sep 05, 2005 4:22 pm

Post by Stedman5040 »

Running a separate PCI card and disabling the onboard AGP may give you an improvement on that board. I tried on the Gigabyte GA5-SMM board with the SIS530 chipset but got no improvement whatsoever with the memory benchmarks. Just using a good PCI graphics card should give you some overall system improvement.

Stedman
Jim
K6'er Elite
Posts: 1745
Joined: Wed Jan 21, 2004 7:10 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by Jim »

I think ideally, what I would want if I could find such a thing, would be an ALi board w/ 4 PCI slots, 1 AGP slot; and 1 Meg on board cache.
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
swaaye

Post by swaaye »

One thing though is that the ALI Alladin boards usually have only 512K cache it seems, meaning that only 128mb is cacheable. Though this means not a lot to a Plus chip.

I'm running a VA503+ (MVP3 w/1MB) with a K6-III+ @ 600MHz. It's running well. I even have a Voodoo Graphics in the PCI1 slot while using the AGP slot lol. It occurred to me that Voodoo boards don't use an IRQ which makes that slot perfect for one. :)

A friend of mine ran ASUS P5A boards for years for his K6 machines. He never had a K6-III or any Plus chip though so was always limited by cacheability. They were decent boards though, as long as you don't try to run a GeForce2 in one. All the Super7 boards had such awful AGP slots.

I love messing with old hardware!!!
DonPedro
K6'er Elite
Posts: 578
Joined: Wed Jul 27, 2005 2:11 pm

Post by DonPedro »

@jim
the p5a version 1.07 features 1meg cache .... I tracked down such a beauty but unfortunately the owner had given it away for free to his nephew :(

@swaaye

regarding the gf-cards on an ali board I can not agree with you. they had problems in the beginning but these problems have been solved with agp driver 1.66 and up (late 1999). Since then I used all flavours from gf2 to to gf4 without any stability problem whatsoever.

the cacheable area on an ali-board depends on the chipset's revision (screenshot taken from the german asus homepage)
Attachments
p5a ali 5 cacheable area.png
p5a ali 5 cacheable area.png (12.89 KiB) Viewed 12550 times
Post Reply