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Dual pentium pro, HORRIBLE performance, can't figure out why.

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luckybob

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Feb 3, 2009
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short story: irregardless of what I do, I cant get my dual p-pro system to work at an acceptable speed. Benchmarks @ 2.5 with memory throughput @ ~28mb/s. Regular Pentium comes in @ 147 and 70mb/s.

Long story: I just got in the voodoo 1 card for my "gaming" dual Pentium pro system and in attempting to install NT 4.0, I noticed it was taking FOREVER. I stopped it after EIGHT hours. I decide to run some benchmarks to see what was going on. Here is the "ideal" setup that I was shooting for:

Asus p65up5 motherboard with c-p6nd cpu card. (REV 1.41 and 1.2 respectfully)
512mb edo ram (8 sticks)
2x Pentium pro overdrives @ 333mhz
matrox G200 video card
voodoo 1 6mb
awe64 sound
3com 509b
IDE raid card LSI series 511

Naturally I pull everything to the bare essentials, and it still made no difference. re-setting the bios did nothing, nor did setting up the bios for "maximum speed". So I run some benchmarks too see whats going on, and this is the result:
http://i.imgur.com/fG51is.jpg
And for comparison, here is how my 386dx40 does.
http://i.imgur.com/5EfT7.jpg

changing video cards made no difference. Changing the ram made no difference. (tried 5 sets)
I change the processors to 200/1m's
http://i.imgur.com/tzwrm.jpg
Then to 200/256k's
http://i.imgur.com/rG4D7.jpg

So I test another board. This time its a dual socket 7 with a pair of 200's and 512kb of total cache. Same video card, same ram.
http://i.imgur.com/dlML8.jpg
You can see in the bottom right graph the cache working exactly as it should, a LOT different than the other board. Also, i know full well it says failed on the extended memory test, But that's a concern for a later day, as this board did this with EVERY set of ram that I have. (I'm running mem test right now to be sure, I THINK it has a bad socket)

I test a 3rd board, this time its a DIFFERENT p65up5. Its a rev 1.2/1.1 setup. it was NOT compatible with my 1mb chips but the scores were identical. I didn't bother to save any pictures of these.
 
update, the dual Pentium has either a bad memory slot or something else wrong. the memory works without errors in other boards. hooray for memtest!
 
Remember the old advice? read the F******* manual? Get this, just after the cache setting is a setting called deturbo. The manual says, turning this ON will essentially make your system run at 286 speeds. (I'm paraphrasing here) It also says the DEFAULT setting is OFF. Well, I go and check the bios, and its ON. on BOTH boards. Apparently in the latest bios, they changed the default setting from off to on. I tested this by resetting the bios. Here are the benchmark results!

2x 200mhz 256kb cache
http://imgur.com/Pm0pJ

2x 200mhz 1mb cache
http://imgur.com/d2NLK

2x 333mhz 512kb cache (overdrive)
http://imgur.com/3kLvx

If it EVER find the programmer at Asus that pulled this little stunt, I will get on a plane, goto his house, and KICK HIS DOG. I've been hitting my head on the wall from about 1pm to about 15 minutes ago. That said, I don't know if this is the drian bamage talking but having this fixed so I can get onto tackling NT4 does feel good.
 
Turbo settings make sense as a switch. But in the bios? This is the first Pentium I've owned that has that "feature" and seriously, why on EARTH would you do this? I mean seriously, who would drop $5000 on processors alone, then use a bios setting to make them run like a 286.

Oh well, I'm just happy its working now. I just need to remember to turn the deturbo off on my other board if I need to use it or sell it.
 
Some real old software installers had timing loops that would crash the install, maybe it was a way around that? Anyway since you have it working no big deal.
 
Also in the news, the dual Socket 7 tyan I have, the one that failed memory tests? Upon further examination it turned out that removing the cache resulted in the 100,000 errors by test #2 went to ZERO errors. Further trouble shooting revealed that the on-motherboard tag ram needed 2 jumpers to be enabled to be functional. This was not the case. Now I have the full 512mb of cacheable ram AND zero memory errors! WOOPIEE!! I'm 2 for 2 tonight!
 
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