AMD X5-133 OC to 200 MHz & Peltier Cooling / DOS & Windows 98 Benchmarks 3DFX / Worlds Fastest 486

[@RetroTechBytes]

Thank you for all that you do, and thank you for making such an awesome video! Congratulations on this record--this is no easy feat, and it's impressive just how much work you've put into this and getting it stable! This is such an impressive effort and really goes beyond the limits of what I ever thought was possible with a 486 on a 500nm process! The fact that you got Windows 98 stable absolutely blows my mind. That is not always an easy feat on a 486, and on this 486 that's overclocked so heavily is absolutely mind-blowing! Funny enough, I happen to own an LS486E, but mine is the Revision D variant, and does not seem to be easily over-clockable to 66MHz, at least not without some degree of modification. 4V isn't even that much of an overvolt! Your CPU is such an awesome example of the X5, and I just cannot fathom how tough it would be to find another such CPU that's so highly overclockable! I am absolutely beyond impressed. Also, I just have to say, thank you greatly for all of your kind words and for the shoutout! I really do appreciate it, and I can't wait to see what crazy cool project you come up with next!

[@cloerenjackson3699]

He's the PC loving hero we needed in the 80s and 90s and are thrilled to have now. :) I hope these videos kickstart some competitive retro PC modding. Especially sticking to components available back then, it might reveal much about the platform which was ignored then. (People often tout the Amiga as a missed opportunity, I think the PCs of the 80s and 90s were far bigger missed opportunities as they can do so much more than what they're famous for). While I'm waxing: How about a socket 3 performance contest parallel to the 486 contest? Pentium ODs enter the chat. ;)

[@JPDuffy]

Overclocking the bananas out of a 486 with a peltier is literally what my nerdy friends and I fantasized about in high school. Thank you for letting me live the dream. :D

[@Ozfrank]

Me too!!

[@ytytiuiu2590]

sorry but does peltier in that days.

[@whoknows8225]

@@ytytiuiu2590 ?

[@OzzFan1000]

Wow! I'm impressed. I would have never thought I'd see a 486 running at 200MHz stable. Good job, sir!

[@MrBooMY3]

This is like reliving my childhood. I accidentally set a 486-133 to 40mhz bus when I built a computer for someone. I saw the 160 at boot up and was like hmm. All benchmarks were much faster. We started selling them pre over clocked to customers and they were always amazed at how fast they were. It was literally about as fast as a Pentium 90-100mhz.

[@Kedvespatikus]

I'm...speechless now a bit. It's not just chip lottery. You also needed knowledge about that mobo and its hidden 66 MHz FSB. Maximum respect, sir!

[@SUCRA]

You are a true master at 486 performance tweaks. Congratulations on beating your own record. It's truly amazing that your 486 can run the Quake time demo at over 21 fps! Thank you for challenging the community with this awesome test, you can count on us for the next ones as well! Thanks for the shout out, it's a pleasure being a part of this. #486QuakeRace challenge lives on!

[@rodneydawn4134]

and at that speed, adding a voodoo 1 (if pci slots are avalible) or failing that, a top tier VLB 3d accelerator would nearly double that fps.

[@mrbrad4637]

This is great.. my favourite PC architecture being overclocked to extreme all done over 2 decades after it's release..

[@mlodzin90]

Yes! 486 era is my favourite too. I don't have to watch this video to already know it's great ;) of course I'll watch it in a moment :)

[@MsRomanFed]

Wow and my favouite as well! :) We all love 486 ))

[@mecha2001]

totally mind=blown you achieved this with a 486. I enjoy all your videos but this is just incredible. it brings me joy someone used a peltier again, I thought those crazy overclock projects with Celerons in the early 2000s were awesome but this takes things to a whole other level. #486quakerace

[@bahadoromid3554]

Thank you so much . AMD has always been special

[@AndrewTubbiolo]

Uses old CPU's and married a Soviet woman. My kind of man!

[@5roundsrapid263]

“Frau Galaxy” is a very lovely and intelligent lady. He married well.

[@albase1112]

"Frau Galaxy" is an engineer I assume? 😁 most of the female engineers from eastern european countries I’ve met are pure badass and I‘m so lucky I found one who wants to be with me 😇 A romanian software engineer who programs the shit out of some of her far more experienced male colleagues and she‘s not even 30…she's just possessed 🤷🏿‍♂️❤️ disturbing her during one of her "debugging orgies" is about as dangerous as taking a hungry dog's bone 😂

[@CPUGalaxy]

very cool. 😉. Yeah, „Frau Galaxy“ is a Semiconductor R&D Engineer. 😇😍

[@cellsplicer2008]

Absolutely insane. Love your work with retro overclocking. Taking me back to the days when I got my Cyrix 5x86 to 133mhz and Celeron 300A to 504Mhz. Good times!

[@shadowflash705]

600MHz Coppermine was a real overclocking beast. 600MHz to 900MHz with just one jumper. No overvolting, no crazy cooling. And people with 1st generation Pentium 4 CPUs were very sad. Because that Celeron was faster. Also i had 5x86-133 running on stock voltage at 180MHz with just a modified Pentium Pro heatsink. 200MHz is a different story.

[@fhunter1test]

@@shadowflash705 even worse - Pentium 4 first generation (the ones with socket 423 and RDRAM) were very unstable when overclocked. (And yes, we did overclock our P3's usually with older motherboards and slot1->socket370 converter).

[@warrax111]

​@@shadowflash705 Celeron 900 was not faster than first Pentium 4 (Willamette 1.5 Ghz). Only full Pentium 3 Coppermine aroun 1 Ghz, with 133 Mhz FSB, beat it, and only in few tests. If you take overall score, particulary after some time passed, and programs started to be better optimized for new Pentium 4 instructions and architecture, Pentium 4 started to win over Pentium 3 even in more benchmarks. Celeron 900 with 100 Mhz FSB, was at around Pentium III 750 Level. In no way Pentium III 750 beat Pentium 4 at 1.5Ghz. I remember, only highest Athlons Thunderbird at 1.2 Ghz, beat Pentium 4 1.5 Ghz, at that time. Problem was price, new Pentium 4 was over expensive, while performance was only slighlty better overall (and in some benchmarks even worse), than Pentium 3. But it was not slower. When you do complex benchmarks of various application, overall result is maybe 20% faster from Athlon 1.2 Ghz, or Pentium III coppermine overclocked at 150 Mhz FSB to around 1.2 Ghz.

[@umageddon]

Ohhh coppermine!!! thanks for the flood of memories

[@tonifasth]

I did an insane overclock on my modded Abit BP6 motherboard. Had dual Celeron 366 running stable at 732MHz. That one was a beast, especially when ran under Linux (because Windows 2000 multi CPU scheduler was terrible compared to NIX).

[@Aiyoros]

IIRC Half Life minimum requirements needed a pentium 133. I wonder how this setup performs in that game. Awesome job!

[@ms-dosman7722]

Awesome result! There might be some wiggle room here with a voodoo 3 PCI!

[@enilenis]

I only had mine at 160MHz on air cooling. Running NFS2 on a 486 - I never even tried. That's pure alchemy!

[@cloerenjackson3699]

Well done for kickstarting this contest to see how far the 486 can be pressed, you are a legend!

[@RetroTinkerer]

Also the fact that you tested for stability is great, I got my 5x86 to 160 and it was pretty fast at quake (17.4) but it would not end a Doom timedemo, yours is just flawless!

[@detmer87]

Love these retro overclock videos!

[@AdrianBratu]

I salute you sir - I know the amount of time spent and trial and error it took to deliver us this great video was probably a lot - the 486 holds a special place in my life and seeing this made me dust off my old Taken socket 3 motherboard which to my surprise still worked

[@therealfox]

Gottseidank wieder eine neue Folge, war schon auf Entzug

[@ganniterix]

I got flashbacks of me trying to run Quake on a 486DX2 way back then! My 13 year old self would have loved to own this! Great video!

[@mrbrad4637]

I first played Quake on its release on a DX2/66 and it was unplayable to me.. But a year or so later I got a DX4/100 and it ran Quake very playable and I finished the game on this PC.. infact the original minimum requirements for Quake 1.0 was a DX4/100 even printed on the early retail boxes.. this was changed to Pentium 75 on later releases - probably because the only way it ran playable on a DX4/100 is if you had tweaked it right out with memory timings and has no less than one of the faster VLB video cards.

[@ZeroHourProductions407]

Gods above...! Even at the lowest volume for the video so I could still hear _you_ I find, I still hear the fan being louder. I wouldn't even want to be in the same postal code as that 486 blazing away like that. Well done on the record!

[@jpmacunha]

this... is... simply amazing...

[@soulmata]

I spent several years using an AMD DX4 at 120MHz (which was trivial then, all you needed to do was change the FSB jumper, you didn't need to give it more voltage or more cooling or anything). I already had much more powerful workstations then, but I kept the 486 around for many more years long after I'd retired even the newer machines just because it was so unique and the last of its kind on my desk. Your channel is bringing back so much nostalgia.

[@mimnunvav1mimnunvav195]

... Well done ... Quite remarkable degree of 200 MHz of CPU speed and 66mhz of mainboard FSB speed. Quite well worked and studied project of overclocking a 80486 CPU+80486 mainboard set. Very informative video and your video is making me smile. New projects from you about 80486 CPU's + mainboards or newer and older set of PC hardware I would try to watch. Thanks for the information and efforts.

[@Eremon1]

Sounds like a server and performs like one of that era. Pretty cool, literally.

[@wargods4life281]

This is amazing i never thinked a 486 cpu could reach this insane clock speed you did a very great job keep up with this kind of projects

[@totoliciu]

The cooling system is impressive! And by having that processor not exceed 1 degree Celsius while playing and testing it out with such intensive computations, it shows the great care and assurance that you took so that the processor will be intact. It is at the same time funny and to be appreciated for the super-extra safety measures! The Prize at the end made the day! Specially engineered for the processor itself! :)) Great video!

[@CPUGalaxy]

Thank you!

[@manumdias]

Nice vídeo as always, one of my favorite channels, regards from Argentina!!!

[@BruceCarbonLakeriver]

What a blast! Awesome :) The good old times where we were after fps. :D

[@dallesamllhals9161]

..'cause the young ones nowadays ain't? 😀

[@rodneydawn4134]

@@dallesamllhals9161 meaning every little thing mattered more. nowadays you just slap a beefy gpu in a ryzen or i-series, (or even fx9590 AM3+) and you're pretty much done. doesn't take any real talent like it did back then.

[@zash721]

Ok, that was nice to watch! Back in the days, I had an X5-133 ADZ. I tried to overclock it as well. At 160MHz, my trusty Trident 9440 VLB-Card couldn't keep up with the 40MHz Bus speed, leaving pixel errors, until I found a jumper on it to solve that issue. The System then did run somewhat stable with Windows 95, so I tried to run it at 180MHz, but during boot, it quickly freezed while performing POST. Using a small heat sink with a 40x40x10 fan was definitively not enough :D Thanks for the video!

[@ocudagledam]

That thermal paste application at 7:17 though! :D :D

[@dallesamllhals9161]

Yup! Stick to "The Verge"-WAY!

[@KJohansson]

Hats off! This is excellent, well documented and very intresting for a nerd! More of this! :)

[@marekmhj9349]

A very nice show. I overclock the intel pentium 133 to 200 MHz in the old days, of course without MMX, congratulations on reaching 198 MHz on 486, challenge accepted :)

[@suvetar]

To be honest, I think you deserve a trophy for putting up with that CPU fan for so long! Fantastic video!

[@DKJones96]

Ahh, beat me to this setup! Also running an LS-486 and a peltier cooler. Though I was going to run a Rendition Verite for the video card but that's just to start. 3D Blaster Bashee and V3 2000 also stand by to potentially make some gains! Work is in the way of videos at the moment though... Gotta pay the bills!

[@DixaGames]

Incredibly well presented content. Good job!

[@CPUGalaxy]

Thank you!

[@deneb_tm]

Nice work! Only a couple frames short of my K6-2/375 PC in GLQuake, really impressive.

[@5roundsrapid263]

I had a K6-2 350 running at 400 with just a minor voltage increase. I put a 486 heatsink/fan on my Voodoo3 2000, and got it running at 3500 speed. It was an insane system for 1999!

[@lx_srs]

Always excited to see what this channel will do next! Keep up the great content.

[@CPUGalaxy]

Thank you!

[@remasteredretropcgames3312]

@@CPUGalaxy I wish I could find out how old you can go and use my raytracing mods. I speculate assuming the software was compatible, a 8800 ultra could run stuff 1024x768 to 1280x1024 provided it was older. Like the half life source mod.

[@FordGTmaniac]

@@CPUGalaxy If you're going to try to push for higher overclocks in the future, I suggest going with the Shuttle HOT-433 as your motherboard of choice. It has many useful features, but the most important is the FSB speeds it can pull off. Using unofficial settings you can get a sky-high FSB speed of 83MHz, which is practically unheard of for a Socket 3 board.

[@exxor9108]

I don't know why... but I enjoy watching this video over and over again. The ability to overclock an old CPU to such a high frequency is just absolutely amazing!

[@ctiborkoza8944]

incredibly video and incredibly great CPU, my compliment

[@gvii]

I bet that copper sink was boiling hot towards the end of the run there. Very cool. A little nuts, but very cool. Lol...

Nice that you ran glquake. Was hoping to se a 486 getting in to the 30fps territory. Whats next, LN2 and 240Mhz ;)

[@stonent]

Maybe some other tweaks to cache or bios settings to crack 30? I don't know. Maybe dual voodoo2s might help. If there are any crystals or clock generators on the board maybe they could be replaced to get the bus speed higher still.

[@rodneydawn4134]

stronger 3d accelerator card (voodoo 2 or 3) should do that with clocks as they are here.

[@lemagreengreen]

I love this! Never knew of anyone overclocking 486's seriously back in the day, it's super interesting to see what they're capable of. Also never really saw a fast 486 paired with a 3DFX card before, it's surprisingly capable... I know the graphics card is the key there but genuinely looks like the 486 at this speed could compete with a slower Pentium.

[@rodneydawn4134]

would blow away any pre-mmx pentium, roughly equal to pentium-mmx running 133 (board didn't support higher multipliers, but had jumpers to set voltage right for mmx chip.)

[@blastfromthepast3073]

Im running a Celeron 300A @ 600/133 aircooled. But that's a childsplay! Thank you for your Video! Great work!

[@bionicgeekgrrl]

Great work. We thought 50mhz was crazy fast for a 486 at one point. 200mhz would have blown our mind. It was not until I had a dual pentium pro that I went beyond 200mhz for the first time, it cost a fortune too!

[@1magazine]

That's awesome! I knew you if someone would be able to reach that! Love your videos, really well-put together! Greetings from Sweden.

[@eurocrusader1724]

Nice! This is real dedication! Keep up the great work...

[@andycristea]

Great work! Congrats on the trophy!

[@tl1024]

I remember the "dx4 overdrive" that I thought my sensei just gave to me. I think he bought it with his own money for me. Well, the early Pentium world did exist then, but thinking back, he probably "didnt just have that laying around". And knew what to send me to add to my computer.

[@SlappySlapperman]

This is the best thing I have seen in a long time....... Man, I miss 3DFX....

[@mark_mcnaughton]

I think you’ll hang onto that trophy for a very long time. Your previous record was already insane.

[@CosmoRiderDE]

If someone ever would have told me things like "i was able to play NFS2se on a 486 and it was playable" i would have suggested him to seek professional help... Well today this opinion changed! Awesome!

[@the_kombinator]

I played Doom on a 386 SX, soo..... "playable" was a state of mind lol. Esp at age 12.

[@JonWhitton]

Very impressive, thanks for sharing

[@gothfather1]

CPU Galaxy this is excellent work ! Thanks for your countless hours of work and sharing this all in the name of science and technology. Also, very nice of you to offer the trophy to whoever can beat the record. Have a great day.

[@CPUGalaxy]

Thank you!

[@McTroyd]

Your 486 would have stomped our family's Pentium back in that day. Nicely done!

[@JorgeCarvalho_web_dev]

Hi Sir! only one word AMAZING !!!!! I want to thank you the time and effort to do this video and share it with us. Amazing setup

[@rawlynn2112]

A 5x86-133 was our first serious PC at home. When I was a kiddo I fantasized with that speed. Literally a nerd wet dream come true. More interesting, our moderboard (which I still have) is from LS, the layout is similar but newer revision... HELL YEAH LETS TRY 😍

[@CrassSpektakel]

Wow you beat my setup from 1995. By a good part. 160Mhz was very easy to achieve but I already managed 180Mhz back then though I had one or two crashes over the course of two days.. System was a SiS 85C417 board.

[@VladoT]

Awesome!!! This is on another level 🙂

[@Sanya4561]

It's a very nice job for you doing with the 486! 😀😀 Well done it desired to 486 Quake Race Champion. :D

[@Moglichkeitz]

Excellent work! Challenge accepted. :D

[@CPUGalaxy]

cool. I am waiting for that. 😉

[@marcinzakaszewski9561]

Congratulations for this outstanding achievement! I'm always inspired with your passion. You've set the bar really high.

[@HansOvervoorde]

66 Mhz FSB ist der Hammer! Echt toll gelungen!

[@darthtripedacus1]

My AMD K6-2 has left the chat. :) Wonderful job it is a most impressive accomplishment.

[@BrassicGamer]

It still astounds me that all of this is going on so many years after the 486DX4 was released. I have so much love for the platform, as it was my gaming setup as a teenager, so to see it achieving such incredible numbers in 2021 is awesome. All my projects are on hold at the moment, but I can't wait to have another bash, and I think people will keep on having a go at the record for years to come. Loved seeing nearly 30fps in GLQuake on a 486!

[@necro_ware]

Haha! I had to lough as I saw the award, a really nice move ;) Very very impressive results, I barely believe, that someone is able to top this without modifying a mainboard to get the FSB over 66MHz.

[@warrax111]

Would probably need only voodoo3 2000 PCI for it, to get 0.1 - 0.2 better FPS.

[@streetpreacherumm]

Awesome!!! Lets see if that trophy will change hands!!!!

[@1337Shockwav3]

Small tip: Quake slightly scales with increased RAM (1-5%) in my benchmarks. Try using 32MB instead of 16. Otherwise I'm really impressed. FPU almost beats a POD @ 100MHz, while the integer performance is considerably ahead.

[@dufus2278]

Interesting try and benchmark. Didnt know that 486DX4 could reach such freq.

[@atheatos]

I knew this was coming but I was still surprised by the results! Great Video!

[@frudi]

Now that is one screaming fast 486, and I don't just mean because of the loud fan :). Nice job getting the system to perform stable at these clocks and timings. I'm always looking forward to what you come up with next on your channel.

[@madson-web]

Impressive and amazing! Miss your videos hope you are doing fine.

[@mazafreno]

Wooooowww!!! 200mhz on 486😲😲😲!!! Very interesting project!! Thankyou!

[@armchaircommenter6805]

AWESOME video, as always! exactly the thing i wanted to see you do! :) congratulations on the wr! 👏

[@adfeldhaus]

Amazing work. Great video. Thank you!

[@Snotkoglen]

Spreading thermal paste with a finger. What a savage! :)

[@GigAHerZ64]

What a nice video and congratulations! You deserve the title.

[@WuDMatthauser]

Alter Schwede - man that Fan is loud. Hope you had your ears protected 😂 amazing job to get this to work!

[@RediscoveringRetro]

Always something special 👍 What a great little chip, and congratulations Sir, that Quake timedemo was awesome to watch.

[@Frontman936]

Great results thanks for showing this off

[@grassulo]

For anyone interested, the song used during the build is Milva - Who Knew.

[@The_Boctor]

Didn't expect to hear of the LS-486 boards here. That's what was in my grandfather's PC, before he upgraded it to a Pentium 100 around 1995.

[@GreenAppelPie]

Great video! I have no doubt this will be beat.

[@alfabètagamma-k7p]

Wow, a dream 486DX4 CPU!

[@ChadTi99]

On the Quake console run “vid_mode 16” to switch to VESA 320x200. Assuming the same mode as my Banshee. Should be a hair faster on the LS486E.

[@phreapersoonlijk]

Very entertaining ! Thanks for 30 mins of fun. :)

[@danthompsett2894]

What a Slick setup, cpu cooling wise cant be beat so the only way to beat the scores would be with the gpu side, thermal sticky pads with little copper heatsinks on the vram and i geuss water cooling the gpu.

[@DavstrWrexham]

Very good. However, there are some integrated 486 CPU for embedded use that clock at 800 MHz. No, I'm not joking. You can find them online

[@DavstrWrexham]

@@UserUser-zc6fx miles.co.uk/catalogue/cm-497_4/

[@up2tech]

You rock! I wonder how it would be with nitrogen cooling and a better performance on a Wait State and top-notch memory in a 486 :) Lets beat an i3!

[@MoatenGat]

Wonderful video, i miss messing my motherboards. Do you ever play with the Motorola chips 68000, and Amiga. Great video, love your channel thanks for all you do.

[@HighTreason610]

Very well done. I started trying to do this, minus peltier, after your original video, but most video cards don't seem to like the speed, nor the IDE controllers. Not willing to spend money on it, so 19.1fps will have to remain the limit for now. Tempted to see how far a 386 can be pushed at Doom or something.

[@ActionRetro]

Holy cow!

[@willanalikuri3290]

This is impressive! a 486 CPU on it's maximmum performance!

[@tellyjoossens4186]

Omg I have just the same motherboard here with an Amd dx4-100 to play dos games. Definitely want a x5-133 cpu now :-)

[@dallesamllhals9161]

^You'll need a VERY 'lucky' one!

[@1nsanejochem]

Awesome! When selling this CPU: never used for mining or overclocking, everyone would believe if they didn’t see this video 😂

[@k1lluachan]

would be interesting if this 486 could run resident evil 1 and 2 diablo 1 or dungeon keeper 1 great video i love the 486 architecture

[@sandmanxo]

Wow, i dont know how i missed this video until now. I ran my 5x86-133 with a Diamond Stealth 32 VLB card at 3x50mhz FSB because it was faster than 4x40mhz despite the lower raw clock speed. I would have loved to have those FSB speeds and raw clock to be that high. I ended up building a P54-120@133mhz setup to play Quake, but i always dreamed of 4x50mhz on the 486. This is even a bit better with the higher FSB and would have been a killer setup had AMD ever officially released a 200mhz 5x86.

[@elgatoconruedas7744]

Now, go for 240 or 266Mhz 🤩 Nice video. Congratulations!

[@kevinedward6132]

Seeing a 486 run quake as well as that is insane.

[@Choralone422]

I thought I remembered reading back in the mid 90's that AMD was looking at potentially doing a process shrink on their 486 chips and adding higher 5x or 5.5x multipliers (mapped to lower ones like 1.5x, 2x and so on) in order to sell 166-200 mhz chips but it never happened due to things like Quake that made the Pentium's FPU really shine compared to any 486. It may have been a contributing factor to why AMD got a sort of late start on the K5 chip. That being said it's impressive to see that chip running at 200 mhz and at 66 mhz FSB as well! Anything beyond 40-50 mhz FSB is pretty much unheard of on 486 class boards. I believe the PCI bus data transfer rate being low on the SIS chipsets was common until at least the super socket 7 days if not into the slot 1/socket 370 days as well. For many years if you wanted the fastest PCI bus you had to use an Intel chipset. That makes a lot of sense since Intel created the PCI spec in the first place!