VIA C3: is this the best CPU for DOS gaming?
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- čas přidán 1. 08. 2024
- **Update** I apologize for issues with sound (popping noises) in the video, they were caused by my video editing application. I have identified the source of the issue, hopefully it will not happen again in the future.
In this video I want to talk about an unusual CPU which is a great choice for a DOS retro gaming PC. This CPU was made by VIA Technologies, and its main advantage is the ability to smoothly scale down its performance to accommodate speed-sensitive games.
PhilsComputerLab video about Pentium MMX performance scaling: • Pentium MMX and SetMul...
VIA C3 official list of compatible motherboards: www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/...
SetMul: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?...
Rayer's SMB tool: rayer.g6.cz/programm/programe.htm
=== Table of Contents ===
00:00 Intro
00:25 The problem
02:50 The solution
03:26 Enter the VIA C3
04:23 Specifications
05:38 Motherboard compatibility
07:10 Benchmark results
10:31 Slow it down, baby
13:32 Outro
===
If you enjoyed this video or found it helpful, please consider donating to the Come Back Alive foundation to support Ukraine in its fight for freedom: savelife.in.ua/en/donate-en/ - Věda a technologie
I wans't looking for this in particular but it surely helped with information. Future looks bright for my 866 :)
Thanks
Wow literally had no idea about SMB support on Intel boards, especially 440BX chipsets. This is a great video, and an interesting use of the VIA C3 core.
Using an intel 440bx as a base for a VIA C3 build is a bit of a hassle for the following reasons:
- the 440bx does not officially support 133Mhz fsb (witch the faster C3 CPUs need), as such there is no AGP divider for correct AGP operation at 66MHz when setting the FSB to 133). That makes using most AGP cards difficult or impossible. 3DFX cards seem to run OK with an overclocked AGP bus.
- they do not directly support the C3 CPU and that leaves up to 20% performance on the table (tested on a C3 1200A Nemiah + Abit BH6-II vs Epox EP-3VSM)
- overall cost. 440BX boards, especially ones from known and respected manufacturers are getting quite expensive. Using a socket 370 cpu like the C3 means you also need a good slotket - preferably one with an on-board voltage regulator - those are pretty rare and expensive.
The same results can be obtained (performance and stability wise) using a VIA VT82C694X or VT82C694T chipset motherboard, but like Ye Olde Stuff mentioned, not all boards are compatible with all C3 core revisions - but as a general rule, they all support the C3 Samuel and most support the Ezra core as well.
For my build I went with an Epox EP-3VSM witch with the latest BIOS fully supports the C3 1200A Nemiah. At 1200MHz on this mohterboard, the C3 performs similarly to a Pentium 3 Coppermine running at 750MHz, allowing you to play games up to 1999 comfortbly, while keepeing the ability to slow down for old speed sensitive games. The motherboard was 20e on evilbay and the CPU was 15e a few years ago.
I have to admit that it took me one and a half years to find a motherboard I was happy with, but I didn't loose any money on the boards I decided not to keep, since I went mostly for 694T motherboards witch are Tualatin compatible and easy to resell.
Excellent comment, thank you.
@@yeoldestuff excelent video, very fun to watch, thank you!
Who would've thought that 440BX's would start getting rare. I have a ton of P2 and P3 processors, but only a handful of motherboards. So far, the only needed recapping. Going forward - who knows. On ebay, everything already costs more than it did originally, when brand new. Give it another 10 years, and all of this gear will be golden. I deliberately kept a whole crate of floppy drives in storage, joking that they would one day pay for my retirement. If I keep them them for another 20-30 years, they probably will be worth a fortune, at the rate things are going. I most regret the CRT tech. Digital logic we can emulate with FPGA's. No big deal. Analog signal can be emulated as well. So loss of things like vintage MIDI synthesizers or ISA soundcards isn't as critical. But the depletion of good glass monitors - that's a tragedy. Once that form of manufacturing is gone, it can't be reproduced on a small scale, without the massive support infrastructure. Every CRT should be preserved. To me, they represent the bridge between analog and digital eras. I regret getting rid of my Trinitrons and flat screen Samsungs. If only they weren't taking up so much damn space!
@enilenis I really miss CRTs as well. I used to have a 17-inch Sony Trinitron that was amazing, it could do 1024x768 at 100Hz, 1280x1024 at 85 Hz and even 1600x1200 at 75Hz with excellent image quality, although admittedly 1600x1200 is way too much for 17 inch.
Dam dude, you are committed! 😀
I have 3 VIA C3 CPUs the C3 500 MHz with out the L2 cache(granted it was supposed to be a 1.3 GHz socket 370 The person advertised but lied and good thing was I was able to not only get my money back but also keep the CPU) I also have the 733 MHz with the L2 Chache and a 1.2 GHz version as well also with the L2 Chache( I think at this point that was standard) and I wonder how they would all fair with this test. Thanks for the video and showing some love for the VIA/Cyrix CPU. Have a good one.
Very nice video! Thank you.
Two years ago I found that a Socket A (with KT133A) build with an ISA slot and an Athlon Mobile Socket A cpu is very good for games using setmul or throttle, but now I discovered that also the VIA C3 is very DOS compatible using setmul and a supported chipset. My next test build will be an Ezra-T CPU with QDI Advance 10T motherboard. I want to see how a VIA C3 CPU handles the L1 and L2 caches when disabling them. A SS7 build with an AMD K6-III+ was working excellent with L1 and L2 caches for slowing down. Socket A and Socket 370 has more options.
I messed around with a bunch of old CPU's a few years back. After building a K6-III+ 400Mhz system with a Mystique and a VooDoo 2, I set about experimenting with older parts. The SS7 board with the K6-3 allowed me to go all the way from 75Mhz to 550Mhz, so I didn't need another DOS machine per-se (DOSBox staging was doing the job on my main PC for older titles) - I had a bunch of CPU's to play around with. After trying various C3 chips, Winchip IIA's, K6-2's and the good old Pentiums, I settled on the vanilla P-200 (non-mmx) as the best all rounder.
The K6-III+ system still wasn't powerful enough to run ALL MS-Dos games smoothly. Screamer 2 and Screamer Rally, along with Carmageddon, TombRaider and GunMan Chronicles, all needed a Pentium 2 450 or stronger to run "smoothly". At least to my eyes...
There are games that need a roughly 1 GHz Pentium III to be completely smooth. The opening cutscene in Wing Commander IV, for example. (The game itself is OK on a ~400MHz Pentium II)
Liked this!
interesting video, shame about the popping tho, but cool to see that you fixed it.
KIRG?
I recently bought both a CIII Samuel 2 and Ezra for my Slot1/S370 board - since I will be able to underclock low enough to run some of my clock sensitive games (233MHz maximum frequency), and I will be using an S3 Savage4 or SiS 315.
Or a Riva 128ZX and 1994 Aztech soundcard (OPL2) if I decide to go with Windows 3.1.
Plus I want to update the Retroweb entry on my motherboard's supported CPU, and need a 133MHz CIII to demonstrate.
😍😍😍
Hot damn. I have no need to search for a K6-compatible motherboard anymore.. I can simply just use my 440BX build, get a compatible Slotket, and swap between a Coppermine and a C3.
hmmm nice ;)
Thanks for such informational video Ye Olde Stuff, much appreciated!
Couple of questions if I may: The VIA C3 CPU you're using, is the Ezra or the Ezra-T core?
Any potential differences using a C3 800/933/1000MHz providing that all use the same 133MHz bus speed? Or is just "get whatever you can find, it will be fine" :)
Thank you!
Hi! My C3 is Ezra. Ezra-T is the same in terms of performance etc., but uses the same signalling as Pentium III Tualatin.
I would say try to get the fastest Ezra/Ezra-T you can find, you can always slow it down in software but in my experience they don't overclock well. My 800MHz C3 is not 100% stable even at 866 MHz. The 866MHz one I have is stable at 933MHz but no faster than that.
You pissed off every early dos lover in this whole world 😂 I think if you played those games when you were younger then nostalgia is the motive here. But I really like your work, for someone limited in space its a great option!
The problem is fiding a proper sloket
I have now a p3bf (bx440) But my sloket just has jumper for "cyrix" cpu and fsb setting, however, no voltage selection.
I found a via c3 700a (Samuel 2 core because the 1.6v rating) but i dont want risk. I wanted use the p3bf because has two slot ( my cuv4x has 1) and using a slower isa video card to reach slower speed.
If I remember correctly, Samuel 2 should be fully compatible with P3B-F because this board is compatible with Pentium 3 Coppermine CPUs.
Tell me, if I were to test Nehemiah in particular on a motherboard that is not officially supported, wouldn't I run the risk of the CPU getting too much power? Because the older So. 370 boards usually have 1.6V.... and if it doesn't recognize the CPU then that's not entirely safe, is it?
Personally I would not even try to run any VIA C3 CPU on a motherboard that does not support voltages lower than 1.6V. The best way to use these CPUs is on a Slot-1 board using a high quality Slocket adapter equipped with a voltage clamp (such as MSI MS-6905 Master)
It's not fully i686 compatible, though :/
True, the Ezra core does not support CMOV* instructions. But I've been using my retro PC with this CPU almost every day for 2 years, and I have not found any period-correct software that does not work with it.
The Nehemiah core, on the other hand, is a true 686-class CPU.
How to know iff a cpu is erza or erza t
by using CPUID or a similar program
But tse doesn't show the actual game performance. Could you show the actual game footage? I'm not sure if X-COM actually requires a faster 486. I mean, it could run Doom 2 silky smooth
X-Com TFTD was much more demanding than the original X-Com - Enemy Unknown. Apart from the final turns of a terror mission, with smoke all over the map - even the standard coral nightime missions in TFTD were very taxing compared to the first game.
I found a 386-DX to be adequate for UFO 1 - it was certainly playable being turned based, if not "smooth". A 486-SX-33 was about right for smooth gameplay in the first game. But the second game, with phosphor torpedos and dye grenades slowing everything down to a crawl on those missions, I found a 486-DX2-66 gave enjoyable gameplay, without waiting seconds for the cursor to catch up to the mouse movement etc.
Well, the C3 definitely seems to be the most flexible with regards to speed... I don't know if that makes it the best CPU for DOS gaming, but it definitely makes it a good candidate depending on what you want to do. There might be a few DOS games that rely on undocumented tricks that only work on Intel CPUs, and if you run into one of those, it might not be 100% compatible with the C3... I have no idea if this ever happened with games or not, but I know for sure there is some DOS productivity software that will not run on a C3 because it's not bug-for-bug compatible with Intel's x86 implementation. The other thing worth noting is that there's a program out there called Mo'Slo, which works on Pentium III and Athlon XP systems (possibly later ones too, but I know for sure it works on those), and it basically just slows them down enough to be able to run old DOS games too. I have no idea if there are some games Mo'Slo doesn't work with that would require actual CPU frequency scaling, though, but it would be interesting to compare this with a Pentium III running Mo'Slo.
Thanks for the idea, I have a Coppermine Pentium III 700 MHz that I can stick into the same system and try to compare it with the C3.
Я бы всё-таки уделил больше внимания более сбалансированным архитектурам. Есть прекрасные способы замедления, кроме того, отличная совместимость.
I had pentium MMX (still has it somewhere at dad's place) and it was best all-rounder for dos and early win games. The 200mhz model is pretty awsome and only 3D games suffered (but not if you had a card for that just we never had until p2). I think it is complete for DOS and not really know any dos game it cannot run properly. That being said its good to have alternative, just saying.
I have a few Mercury motherboard with integrated VIA C3 Samuel2 CPU's. RRRrrrealy strange devices. Always runs too fast or too slow. Worst timing management ever...
UA, welcome...
Can it go down to 8088 speed
Unfortunately, it cannot. But the slightly newer C3 'Nehemiah' can.
How can a newer CPU go slower ?
And from where did you get the information on how to use set mull all those instructions you where righting in dos
@@scalamasterelectros3204 Nehemiah has a longer pipeline which makes it more dependent on caching, it slows down to a greater extent than Ezra if you turn off the L1 cache. The commands are described in the SETMUL documentation.
I have asus CUV 4x with 1 ISA and other one without.
The AGP on VIA chipset are bugged.
I juts use with Voodoo Banshee
My cpu via c3 866 erza.
I have a CUV4X as well, there's nothing wrong with the AGP. Right now it has a pin-modded 1GHz tualeron installed, running at 133x10 and a Geforce 2 GTS. It's been one of our main lanparty PCs for a year and a half now.
Make sure to check for bad caps. My board had a couple of bloated caps right under the AGP slot, and one near the RAM slots.
well.. its just a cyrix cpu.. they sucked in dos days because they had terrible math processing if any at all. so I not sure its the best.. would expect a k6 to out perform a c3/cyrix.,
quake needed a math processor. a dx cpu. It ran fine on my am486dx4 back in the day.
Well, in my case it's running at 866MHz, so it's actually quite a bit faster than the K6 at, say, 400MHz. In fact, it seems to perform about as well as a Pentium II running at 400MHz. The K6 would still be faster on the clock-for-clock basis though.
via c3 still too fast for early 90s Dos game.
not really. Using setmul you can select a lower multiplier on the fly from dos. The Samuel core C3 can go as low as 3x (3x66MHz = 200) and the Nemiah can go as low as 4x (4x66Mhz = 266). That puts you in pentium 1 teritory. You can slow down evem more by disabling cache, witch should bring you down to 386 levels of performance, and even fine tune using CpuSpd.
There are however games that will not run corretly on a C3 build regardless of how much you slow it down - one of these is Dyba Blaster. For some reason, on anything other then a 486, I can't get the character to move ingame. The game runs, I can select a new game, but Bomberman will not move. I think this is because anything newer then a 486 messes with the game's copy protection.
@@kaneCVR Even still, a Pentium of any kind broke many early DOS games. Lots of games were coded with their engine tied to clockspeed etc - giving insanely fast, unplayable gameplay with a Pentium or even refusing to load.
Disabling cache and running at 75Mhz fixed most of those issues on my K6-III+ system. But not everyone had that ability on their motherboard.
@@TheVanillatech keyword is early. Most post 1990 dos games will do fine on a slowed down C3. For others there are patches available (tppatch.exe for example).
Sorry you are so wrong its not even funny. Via c3 is best dos CPU lol one can tell you are not from the west.
Thanks for your extremely well argued opinion. I wonder if you have have any more illuminating comments.