Godfodda
07-23-01, 11:18 PM
These CPUs were being discussed in the previous thread "Unlocked PIII? Yes!" It was touted as being a *multiplier* unlocked CPU. Well, you gotta have one of these. I set myself up as guinea pig and bought one. I had hoped for enough of a surprise to warrant writing an article, but, as everyone suspected, the only surprise was the terrible performance. I'll at least pass on some information here. If the moderator feels this belongs elsewhere, or should be shared elsewhere, please move or copy at will.
I ordered the Evergreen Spectra III 550 from an online vendor for $49 + shipping (actually not too bad a price for a toy I've never played with :-) ). Arrived today.
Cracked open the box and went straight for the CPU. As had been discussed, it was a VIA Cyrix III. Sticker on the plastic case says 128K L1, FSB max 100, CPU core speed max 550, CPU volts 1.9.
The core was about the size of my son's Celly 400 core. The ceramic was also about as thick. A notable difference, though, was the pin board. "There is no pin board." Well, there is on this thing. Attached to the bottom of the CPU there is a plastic green board like a plain old circuit board, but thinner and with no traces. The board is stamped Evergreen Technologies, Inc." The pins come through holes in this board. But there aren't 370 pins. Two pins are gone... not talking about the two at the corners. These are in the first column (looking at pin side with pin 1 upper right) and the next column over. One of these two empty spots is soldered. In my ignorance on these matters, I'm assuming this is the unlocking mechanism.
I tested the CPU in my Abit VH6-2 with 768M RAM. For reference, I used my P3 733 at default speed (133x5.5), and my son's Celeron 400 also at default speed (66x6.0). The only test I used on all three was Sandra's CPU Benchmark. You'll understand why I used only one when you see the numbers. I tested the reference CPUs first. The 733 gave 1971 MIPS, 981 MFLOPS. The 400 gave 1062, and 528.
At the advertised 550 for the Evergreen / Cyrix, Sandra showed 653 and 175. 400 (66x6) was 470, 126. 700 (100x7, and the nearest I could get to the 733 without wasting more of my time) showed 835 and 223. Wow :-D
I did pull out a few interesting things from this, though. Point 1, the multiplier is, indeed, unlocked. I went from 4 to 7 in my simple and hurried tests. Are the missing pins the key to unlocking the Cyrix? Would a P3 work like this, too?
Point 2, I discovered that my Abit VH6-2 supports higher voltages than 1.85. This is the max voltage shown with my 1.65V 733 in socket. Both the Celeron 400 and the Evergreen / Cyrix were 1.9 or higher. The voltage options increased accordingly when these were in.
Point 3 still needs investigating. The installation guide that came with the CPU (a floppy was also included), says that on the floppy there is a program called Eticlock that will allow the multiplier to be software adjusted (the way that SoftFSB allows the FSB to be adjusted). As I said, this still needs investigating. I didn't make it past "Holy s*** that thing is slow!" tonight. I'll test out the Eticlock program soon and post back if something looks interesting.
Don't know to what to attribute the poor performance. Some of you tech guys can probably answer those questions. I'll try to snag a digicam within the next couple of days so you all can see this pin board I'm talking about. Maybe that'll give someone a spark to break their P3 using a similar pin chopping technique. |-) All I know is that I at least have a backup processor now... even though it was a $49 P1. :-)
I ordered the Evergreen Spectra III 550 from an online vendor for $49 + shipping (actually not too bad a price for a toy I've never played with :-) ). Arrived today.
Cracked open the box and went straight for the CPU. As had been discussed, it was a VIA Cyrix III. Sticker on the plastic case says 128K L1, FSB max 100, CPU core speed max 550, CPU volts 1.9.
The core was about the size of my son's Celly 400 core. The ceramic was also about as thick. A notable difference, though, was the pin board. "There is no pin board." Well, there is on this thing. Attached to the bottom of the CPU there is a plastic green board like a plain old circuit board, but thinner and with no traces. The board is stamped Evergreen Technologies, Inc." The pins come through holes in this board. But there aren't 370 pins. Two pins are gone... not talking about the two at the corners. These are in the first column (looking at pin side with pin 1 upper right) and the next column over. One of these two empty spots is soldered. In my ignorance on these matters, I'm assuming this is the unlocking mechanism.
I tested the CPU in my Abit VH6-2 with 768M RAM. For reference, I used my P3 733 at default speed (133x5.5), and my son's Celeron 400 also at default speed (66x6.0). The only test I used on all three was Sandra's CPU Benchmark. You'll understand why I used only one when you see the numbers. I tested the reference CPUs first. The 733 gave 1971 MIPS, 981 MFLOPS. The 400 gave 1062, and 528.
At the advertised 550 for the Evergreen / Cyrix, Sandra showed 653 and 175. 400 (66x6) was 470, 126. 700 (100x7, and the nearest I could get to the 733 without wasting more of my time) showed 835 and 223. Wow :-D
I did pull out a few interesting things from this, though. Point 1, the multiplier is, indeed, unlocked. I went from 4 to 7 in my simple and hurried tests. Are the missing pins the key to unlocking the Cyrix? Would a P3 work like this, too?
Point 2, I discovered that my Abit VH6-2 supports higher voltages than 1.85. This is the max voltage shown with my 1.65V 733 in socket. Both the Celeron 400 and the Evergreen / Cyrix were 1.9 or higher. The voltage options increased accordingly when these were in.
Point 3 still needs investigating. The installation guide that came with the CPU (a floppy was also included), says that on the floppy there is a program called Eticlock that will allow the multiplier to be software adjusted (the way that SoftFSB allows the FSB to be adjusted). As I said, this still needs investigating. I didn't make it past "Holy s*** that thing is slow!" tonight. I'll test out the Eticlock program soon and post back if something looks interesting.
Don't know to what to attribute the poor performance. Some of you tech guys can probably answer those questions. I'll try to snag a digicam within the next couple of days so you all can see this pin board I'm talking about. Maybe that'll give someone a spark to break their P3 using a similar pin chopping technique. |-) All I know is that I at least have a backup processor now... even though it was a $49 P1. :-)