Pentium PRO Single Board Computer / Intel Pentium II OverDrive / Testing with Voodoo 3dfx

In this video we will have a closer look at a great single board computer (SBC) made by Texas Microsystems, the P6000FX. Its a socket 8 SBC with an Intel Pentium II OverDrive at 333 MHz. A Matrox G450, Voodoo 2 and a SB-Live completes this unique setup to something very interesting.
Testing under DOS and Windows 98 will give you a quick overview what this setup is able to perform. Games as Quake, Quake III Arena, Testdrive 5 and Motoracer 2 are shown in this video.
Link to the specs of the SBC:
www.uncreativelabs.de/th99/m/S...
If you want to support this channel or you want to send me some old hardware please contact me by mail: [e-mail]
donation through paypal are also appreciated:
www.paypal.com/paypalme/cpuga...
Visit me on Twitter to see more interesting stuff:
/ cpugalaxy
Thank you very much for watching,
Cheers, Peter
music licensed through epidemic sound.

[@necro_ware]

Wow, I honestly didn't even know, that there were PII Overdrive CPUs. Thank you, Peter, as always, very entertaining video.

[@CPUGalaxy]

Thank you 😊

[@Choralone422]

They weren't very common back then since the Pentium Pro itself wasn't a terribly popular CPU as it struggled with 16 bit code and was very expensive. But for those who invested in a P-Pro based workstation or server it often made sense to upgrade it with a PII Overdrive CPU than to replace the whole PC. Especially since you could take a 150-200 mhz P-Pro PC and upgrade it to 300-333 mhz.

[@masternobody1896]

@@CPUGalaxy can you do doom 1 and 2 benchmark. with 1993 to 1995 gpu also

[@mikev8367]

@@Choralone422 This is a very popular yet very wrong belief that the Pentium Pros were struggling with 16-bit code. I hear it all the time. I did a lot of testing and comparisons to prove that. In a very few bechmarks PPro were indeed slower than the P2 (all clocked at 233MHz) but in the majority of tests PPro is actually faster than a P2 due to it's full-speed cache. In 32-bit apps this PPro superiority is even more obvious. I believe this misconception came from directly from Intel when the said they improved 16-bit code execution in P2 but it seems to me they just doubled the L1 cache from 8 to 16KB believing that would improve not very impressive (compared to much less expensive Pentium/Pentium MMX). See, in 1995-97 a lot of software still used 16-bit code and while in 32-bit PPro/P2 advantage over the Pentium was huge, in 16-bit they were almost similar in performance. That could not justify the PPro price premium. If you look up there are still early '97 thg.com article proving that the PPro was actually faster of the two.

[@hrayz]

I ran a dual Pentium Pro board, originally with two PPro-200s. Then got two Pentium || Overdrive 333 chips. Windows 2000 for the multi-cpu support.

[@nviduumde3497]

Socket 8 Machines are something of beauty. Never knew that even SBCs existed with that Socket. Great Video!

[@MrJef06]

Agreed. Reminds me of when I had a Supermicro P6DOF dual-socket motherboard and I added a second Pentium Pro 200. It was one of the early SMP systems, multi-cpu support was relatively new in the Linux kernel, was it 2.0 at the time ? It was around 1997 if I recall correctly.

[@awomandoesnothaveapenis]

I loved my old PPro back in the day

[@PixelPipes]

You know I love some 3DMark99 comparisons! Pentium II Overdrives are crazy expensive collectibles now, but I think this is the first time I've seen one in action in a video, so that's pretty cool. What's also cool is that crazy tech demo at the end! Never seen that one before!

[@spladam3845]

The coolest Pentium Pro build I've ever seen, you're content is fantastic. Just wanted to leave a comment to improve your engagements so more folks get to see your videos, thank you.

[@CPUGalaxy]

Thank you!

[@atheatos]

First immediate impression; "WOW a Pentium PRO SBC"!! Second impression "What?? and a very rare PII overdrive??", I totally missed that! Verdict, another great video with some very rare stuff! Loved it to the end :)

[@CPUGalaxy]

Thank you 😊

[@bunter6]

Love the sound of 10/15K SCSI drives spinning up the only drives that sound better to me are old stepper motor MFM/ESDI drives.

[@JVAmorim]

Congratulations for the channel!

[@rebeccaschade3987]

I never knew that the Pentium II Overdrive had the same full-speed cache as the standard Pentium Pro. That must have cost a fortune. The Pentium Pro was extremely expensive to manufacture. I've read that the on the 1MB cache version, the on-die cache was actually more expensive to manufacture than the CPU core itself. I've only got a 256KB version of the Pentium Pro myself, but it's still a fascinating system.

[@Dedubya-]

Cool, another video! Those Pentium Pros are wonderful looking chips especially de-lidded

[@damouze]

Thanks for putting up the Virhe demo at the end. I have had that demo in an archive for ages, but I was never able to run it because I did not own a 3DFX card.

[@Petertronic]

Amazing board design, every millimetre is used! Greetings from another Peter in the UK

[@RetroTechBytes]

How cool! Thank you for sharing this beautiful piece of hardware Peter! Wonderful work, as always. The Pentium II OverDrive is beyond neat, and on an SBC? Absolutely insane!

[@sndestroy]

I've never used or even saw a Pentium Pro working IRL, let alone an Overdrive one! This is something of a special one for my geeky self!! Great vid as always, you're one of the few creators I smash my thumb on that little 👍🏼 as soon as I see new content haha.

[@CPUGalaxy]

Thank you so much!

[@NLTheGreater]

This is so awesome! I just love the looks from it :3

[@stevec00ps]

Ooh full speed cache on a PII! Nice video thanks :) Loved seeing the P Pro opened up to see inside

[@Eremon1]

This is hardware I wasn't aware of until this video. Interesting design for industrial applications with modularity in mind I'm guessing. Very interesting SBC. Cheers.

[@m14radu]

nice mate !!!! love the pentium pro and 3dfx combos :)

[@moepmanauto]

Tolles Video. Wusste nicht, dass es jemals einen PII Overdrive gab. Nochmal, super und weiter so. Grüße aus Thüringen.

[@CPUGalaxy]

Vielen herzlichen Dank! Grüsse aus dem Süden von Österreich 🇦🇹

[@rtstaley]

Another great video! I'm lucky enough to have a socket 8 overdrive CPU, but unfortunately I don't have a heatsink for it. I always look forward to your great content. You also do an excellent job with your video editing.

[@CPUGalaxy]

Thank you very much! 👍🏻

[@artursmihelsons415]

I love to see unseen beauty of engineers minds. This CPU board is real piece of art! 😎 Cool, that it still works..

[@Alcochaser]

Remember had Intel not chickened out and followed their new naming scheme. This should have been called the Sexium

[@Ojref1]

Excellent, excellent setup. The socket 8 Pentium Pro, P2/Xeon Slot and AMD Thunderbird Slot A configurations were some of the best things in x86 PC IMO. Texas Micro did make some excellent solutions, several of the manufacturing factories I consulted for used their components.

[@mxthunder2]

Never seen a P2 overdrive before! awesome to see motoracer 2 in one of your videos!

[@Hardwaremoney]

A true piece of beauty!, thanks for sharing

[@wizard-pirate]

You have excellent taste in CPU socket form factors. That Pentium pro you showed as comparison is gorgeous.

[@wizard-pirate]

Also, that 10k drive sounds awesome. It's like a giant robot is powering on.

[@rafathali1999]

That PENTIUM BLOCK LOOKS AMAZING 😍

[@user-zo9dc1lu3q]

One of the most interesting video you ever made 😉👌

[@PROSTO4Tabal]

This is the best video of your channel

[@floodo1]

Wow such classic components! My friends and I all had similar hardware at the time!

[@jameshare1848]

Yay, more cool old stuff, love it. So much more interesting than the current state of the new hardware market.

[@RetroTinkerer]

Hello Peter, it's always amazing to see not only the super exotic hardware you have and take great care of but a pleasure to see how you put together your videos... I wonder if you miss enabling write combining runing fastvideo utility? I haven't checked my own numbers on a standard PII 300 (which should be slower everything else being equal) but a quick check on PIII 500 at 366 kind of confirm what I remember... I know it is already plenty fast but with fastvideo will be faster, and I think you love to tweak your systems to the max. I had a PP200 but upgraded to a PII300 before I knew anything about this overdrive, it was crazy expensive so I'm not so sure it would had made any sense. Thanks again for so much great content... I just couldn't help myself 😂.

[@pgriggs2112]

I often ran into strange pc implementations in retail environments. My favorite was a 386 hosting two pcs on a card, both with two pcs for a total of five, 2+2+1. It ran non-dedicated NetWare, making the network the ISA bus on the host.

[@karolwojtyla3047]

Peter as always the best! Greetings! :)

[@robot797]

I think that is one of the coolest looking vintage pc I have seen

[@osgrov]

Wow! Never seen a socket 8 SBC before, what a thing of beauty that board is. That must've cost a fortune back when it was new. Probably now too, come to think of it, haha. What really got me was the P2 Overdrive though. Never seen that one "for real", only pictures. I also had no idea about the cache speed that you mention, that was interesting to learn. :) Such a crazy video, I loved it. Pure engineering porn right here. :) Many thanks for sharing your rare stuff with us, please keep doing so!

[@Legal-104]

I would love to someday build a nice pentium pro setup like this, great video by the way 😊

[@soulmata]

I absolutely love Pentium Pros and all the weird liminal hardware that went with them. Thank you for this video. Of all the retro hardware I lost, one I still have are 4 still in box still in plastic Pentium Pros.

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

Very interesting hardware, like!

[@ctiborkoza8944]

Great Video, Great retro Hardware

[@jeffm2787]

I've had a few dual socket Pentium Pro setups with the 1M cache versions. I loved the Pentium Pro.

[@Damien.D]

WOw. That's lots of great stuff in one go.

[@armchaircommenter6805]

lovely vid as always, such nice hardware! i feel like the universe is mocking me a bit lately with everyone whipping out their voodoo 2s, while i'm just sitting here desparately trying to get mine fixed 😄😥

[@Choralone422]

Seeing that SBC takes me back! In college I had a friend that "acquired" a 200 mhz Pentium Pro based workstation that had a SCSI hard drive. That whole machine was a real tank. If you fed it games/programs that used 32 bit code or used a lot of FPU it really flew, but for 16 bit stuff (like Win9x) it was fairly slow. I was really glad Intel fixed the issues with 16 bit code in the Pentium II!

[@smakfu1375]

That 10k Cheetah drive took me back! In my dual PII-233 box, I had three 10k Cheetah drives (18GB each, IIRC) running off a Compaq SmartArray SCSI-UW caching controller (with 16MB of cache, IIRC), configured in a stripe. During system startup, each drive initialized one after the other, which was some awesome startup drama. Once through the controller option ROM drama, the actual NT4 boot up was redonkulously fast. Most voice-coil actuated HDD’s make fairly similar grindey noises, but those Seagate drives chucked their heads ferociously across those 10k rpm platters (and these were the earlier 3 1/2 inch double height drives). With three of them in my tower, during periods of heavy disk access (like when running synthetic test DB transactions) the whole case would rumble and tremble. Today, I have multiple terabytes of PCIe x4 NVMe storage that are bazillions of times faster, and are amazing pieces of technology… but there’s no drama and excitement like there was with those big, jet engine sounding, chattering beasts.

[@SaraMorgan-ym6ue]

imagine having a 8 sbc pentium pro system💀💀

[@Arti9m]

Now that is a system you don't see every day. Nice one!

[@MadsonOnTheWeb]

I like the song for the montage. Calming

[@billholloway9175]

Love your videos

[@OzzFan1000]

Pentium Pros were amazing CPUs. My legacy server has an Intel 440FX motherboard with 2 Pentium II OverDrive 333Mhz CPUs running with 512MB of RAM on NT Server 4.0. The thing is a rock solid beast. I've been debating on switching the disk subsystem to SCSI from IDE but SCSI drives are so damned expensive, and I wonder if there would be any speed gain over my modern IDE drive I have in there now. Excellent video, BTW. Keep them coming!

[@mikev8367]

Go for it. SCSI is absolutely worth it on an older machines like this. I recommend Fujitsu MAW, an amazingly fast and quiet HDD from 2008 and they're also cheap as chips. I have mine running in a similar PR440FX retro gaming machine with P2OD slightly overclocked to 350MHz with 1GB RAM and V2SLI.

[@euclideszoto997]

Awesome video! Love pentium pro's!

[@argoneum]

Pentium II Overdrive, whooooa! Back in early 2000s I had a Pentium PRO server as a "home router", and was hunting for one of those, to no avail. Me and my colleague called them "Almost Xeon". Great video, thank you ♡ Later I got an IBM 365 Workstation equipped with two black 1M P-PROs, with added fans. Not as good, but still decent ☺

[@rebeccaschade3987]

Well, the Pentium Pro was the Xeon before the Xeon, so yeah, it's an appropriate nickname I guess :)

[@mikev8367]

@@rebeccaschade3987 Not really. P2OD was introduced few months later than the P2Xeon, they both share the same full-speed cache (althouth 512K only for the OD while the Slot 2 Xeons had 1MB and 2MB options due to their larger PCB)

[@rebeccaschade3987]

@@mikev8367 Yeah, I was referring to the Pentium Pro, not the P2OD. The Pentium Pro was the CPU that covered the market segment that the Xeon would later fill. Hence "Xeon before the Xeon". Not in name, but in what niche it filled.

[@semifavorableuncircle6952]

Nice. I also have a few PICMG SBCs, including a core2quad one. According to the manual and the bios setup, it even supports 2 floppy drives. Unfortunately, the second floppy doesnt work and the DSB and MotorB signals are unconnected, the IO chip supports only one drive. But a rather fast pc with functional ISA bus is nice to have.

[@wishusknight3009]

I have a q6600 in a late 80s AT minitower which makes for a pretty surprising sleeper lol.

[@arniceousmaximus2183]

Seeing that slot I PII reminded me of my 98se system which I gave to my nephew in 2006 also with the SB live and I used amd Radeon PCI ya IDE HDD run like tanks for sure good one Peter and like always always a pleasure servus! arno

[@arniceousmaximus2183]

I see it was SCSI HDD without onboard controller the controller card extra

[@HighwayHunkie]

Awesome! As you know, i am a huge fan of socket 8 machines. These SBC boards must be more rare as unicorns and Ivermectin actually.. Never saw one in the wild. Anyways. What i was missing in this video was a comparison between the standard Pentium Pro 200 /256/512/1M vs the overdrive... would have been interesting too. Lately i was playing with the 512k 200Mhz on an ASUS P2L97 Slot1 with a slotket - the performance there is awesome on the LX - compared to the standard FX chipset. Maybe you can feature all this in a future video. Btw.... i first like and then watch. :) Cheers.

[@NtA..]

Me too like the sound of a old HDD 😀😀😀

[@billychan4902]

Amazing!!!!

[@Stratotank3r]

Very nice Never could get my hands on an Overdrive for Socket8. Very glad to have serveral Overdrives for Socket3 and one Pentium133 Overdrive for Socket4. Next you might check a Xeon for Slot2 which is actually a normal PentiumII but with an extra chip which contains the L2 Cache running @fullspeed- but I think you know that.

[@stefanlelieveld6779]

Nice setup, love it. How do these pii overdrives compare to the real deal pi 333?

[@DatBlueHusky]

i have one of these pii od brand new in box, very attempted to open and try it out lol hopefully ill find a used one, one day

[@Phil-D83]

I remember people buying the xeon overdrives to overclock with socket 8 to slot 1 adapters.

[@pcuser80]

Great setup!!i like industrial computers

[@SUCRA]

Great video as usual, Peter! I love the overdrive, wow, what a cool CPU! Can't believe you stumbled uppon a backplane for that build hah. Did you know right away the keyboard conector needed the external cable? Seems quite obscure to me, I'd probably take hours to figure it out. Thanks for another awesome video.

[@CPUGalaxy]

Thank you my friend! Hope you will come soon to Austria for a chilly nerd weekend and some beer. cheers, Peter

[@pc-sound-legacy]

This SBC is impressive very interesting stuff as always👍 I was surprised the newer Matrix G450 was inferior to the Voodoo 2 by the way.

[@nilswegner2881]

Not really inferior, it's Just that glide was highly optimized while Direct 3d still sucks big time today.

[@Pulverrostmannen]

I have a Pentium Pro computer as well which still works and I had it since I was a teenage dude. I used it pretty much back then but not as a primary. but I like how the big beefy cpu is looking :)

[@PicaDelphon]

My old IBM Intelestation ZPro used two Pentium Pro II Overdrive and a Dual Intergraph Wildcat 3400, and a Matrox M 2..

[@renzoreucci5621]

Que gran video!! podrías probar con windows NT y ver que resultados obtienes. Creo que podría rendir mucho mejor en Quake 3. Saludos!

[@theposguy1435]

I had a voodoo 3dfx card... it was a good card Thanks

[@brandonupchurch7628]

Ah, Texas Micro, I have a late 80s or early 90s Texas Micro enclosure with a 10 slot ISA backplane in it, it's a pretty massive 3U or 4U enclosure, kinda cream colored with a red stripe across it, it's a delightfully 80s looking piece of industrial kit. I think the model is 2001A.

[@mkbean]

Hi, great video. How did you record the screen? Especially the BIOS?

[@joakimedholm128]

this was dope

[@KJohansson]

Sweet! Looks expensive and heavy! We like!! :D

[@nexxusty]

That SBC comes with on board SCSI? Didn't expect that at all. The Overdrive P2 is a Deschutes core as well (Well obviously, Klamath has problems doing even 300mhz), cool to see. I'd love to see some FSB manipulation with this CPU. Does this board have an FSB jumper?

[@christianfath7367]

Beautiful hardware, the best video so far for me. Reminds me of mine Dual Penium Pro with my Asus MB.Maybe there will be a video too with Dual oder Quad CPU Hardware ? I firmly decided to reactivate my Pentium 66 motherboard with overdrive on the Christmas holidays.

[@CPUGalaxy]

thanks. well, yes. I am working already on a setup with dual socket 8 and two pII OverDrives. 😉

[@christianfath7367]

​@@CPUGalaxy Hey, I'm already looking forward to the videos. And one more question ... was it even possible to overclock P-Pros or Overdrive CPU or operate with a higher bus clock? Herzlcihe Grüße aus Berlin ;)

[@CPUGalaxy]

☺️. Yes, by increasing the bus speed they can get overclocked. The multiplier is fixed. Liebe Grüße aus Kärnten.

[@michaelmcconnell7302]

i love those Slot 1 CPUs

[@Elios0000]

man i miss gaming on PC in the 90's

[@Cognizance4]

Hey great work, like warp back in time for me! Very Good! You are limited in Video Ram on The Voodoo2 in Quake3, you need to use the the wicked3ed driver, it has better memory management and compression. I think you might get over 30 fps if you change. Especially Voodoo2 Sli got a massive boost by doing that. My system back was a K6-III+ 600 with 133 Mhz Bus, simply amazing performance! It is still ready in my cupboard. ;)

[@IBM_Museum]

Great PICMG board! - I haven't seen a PPro version before, but I do have a 'Slot 1' version. It ('MSPC-6800' model number marking on the board) would need to support a good level of a 'Slot 1' Pentium III to beat that Pentium II Overdrive!

[@wishusknight3009]

I have even seen dual slot 1 variations of those PICMG's boards. And they are pretty wild looking.

[@SudosFTW]

Friend is trying to collect 6 of the PII Overdrives to shove into an ALR 6-way Pentium Pro machine.

[@NkRemTeh]

Были времена когда техника рассчитывалась на обновление, сейчас видеокарта просто плата с припаянными компонентами, было бы здорово поменять на ней процессор и память, еще что то дополнить))

[@euleausberlin]

that demo is so 90s :D

[@pgriggs2112]

If you were waiting to post until someone asked, could you post? I really enjoy your videos. Thank you, be well.

[@tengkusulaiman]

Actually, i am a retired it tech. No longer like to work in this . But I like your retro presentation of pc parts which were in my era.

[@VideoVitaliy]

Wow, nostalgia ... it's a pity that 3dfx and Voodoo cards are not with us today. Greetings from Kyiv, Ukraine :)

[@kkolakowski]

It would be nice to also see some comparison between PII OverDrive and Pentium Pro as well. And also maybe in more "Pro"-level environment, like in Windows NT 4.0? With some more "appropriate" benchmarks, like compilation, CAD, Photoshop, some scientific tests... With some comparison to similar "non-Pro" Pentium systems of the era?

[@raven4k998]

imagine making a new Pentium and Pentium pro into a dual CPU computer where the Pentium handles the 8 and 16 bit work and the Pentium pro handles just the 32 bit stuffs that would be a beast of a computer you would have there at that point

[@ratdude747]

You'd love the 15K SAS drives I have in three of my workstations (8x 143GB 15K SAS, RAID10)... they are a bit loud, but nothing compared to the fans!

[@denyda1754]

Смотрю на тебя повлиял OLD ROBOT :) Тоже вставил демо в конце.

[@5553371]

you could equip the 72 pin simm modules with 4x 128 MB Modules for a maximum of 512 MB and with the p2 overdrive that would be killer.

[@FreihEitner]

I remembered the 486 overdrive and Pentium overdrive, but I never knew about Pentium Pro/Pentium II overdrives. Interesting piece.

[@VideoVitaliy]

+1

[@Tech2C]

Benchmark it against a P2-333 ?

[@kasimirdenhertog3516]

16:27 as if the SBC and Pentium II OverDrive were not enough: how on earth do you have clips from Dutch/Flemish TV from nearly 20 years ago?

[@wishusknight3009]

The 440FX should have a 4th chip to its chipset. Is this located on the backside?

[@jameshare1848]

How does the SBC communicate on the PCI bus if it is ISA/VLB?

[@MrKillswitch88]

I once had a chance of buying two of those Pentium 2 OverDrives in sealed boxes for like $15 each at a goodwill and I passed them up not realizing just how valuable they are. The kicker is that I would have lost them like a year later to arson (lost a home back in 2012) had I bought them :/ Anyway I got a slot 2 Xeon build with a pair of 2MB Pentium 2 Xeons that eventually needs to be finished someday.

[@Trancelistic]

BTW, I forgot to ask. Do you have any POWERVR cards? I had 1 back in the day to boost my old Celeron 300a back in the day. It make so many games playable, even quake 2. Altho I remember the texures are so being grey in "power vr mode"

[@CPUGalaxy]

yes. I have some but never tried until now.

[@Trancelistic]

@@CPUGalaxy Ah ok.

[@Maisonier]

The games with the 3dfx have something special. I don't know what, the smoothness ?

[@devonandersson300]

333 Mhz + 8.8 fps in Quake III seems a bit fishy. It's to low. Did this run on the Matrox G450 via OpenGL or on the Voodoo 2 via 3DFX with a Q3-3DFX patch? Maybe it was running with software emulated OpenGL only. I've had a Pentium 200MMX @ 225 Mhz (3x75) with a 3DFX Voodoo Banshee (16MB) on LAN-Parties. It ran fine and playable. 30+ fps I guess. We played without bots tho. It's just something that seemed weird to me and confused me.

[@CPUGalaxy]

thanks to point this out. I had already the feeling that 8.8 is a bit less. Need to investigate here again. cheers, Peter

[@michaeldale837]

@@CPUGalaxy Yeah you should get a lot more in Quake 3. Even a 200 Pro should do 20+ fps.

[@kokodin5895]

what i always wanted to know is if a single board computer can interface with normal pc motherboard and comunicate with it also on pentium pro overdrive, powerleap made adapters for pentium pro sockets to install coppermine celerons in them, up to 1000mhz

[@CPUGalaxy]

No, you can’t put a SBC into a existing computer. The result would be two cpus and two not synchronized clocks on the bus.

[@McCuneWindandSolar]

I wonder if you can set up more than one of those cards on that back plane.

[@CPUGalaxy]

no this is not possible. 😢

[@50shadesofbeige88]

Wow, reminds me of Threadripper.

[@yogevbocher3603]

Hello to the country where the mountains answer ones call ;-)