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--- blog:pentium_pc_tulip_166 [2023/01/15 12:40] – john
+++ blog:pentium_pc_tulip_166 [2023/01/15 13:18] (current) – [Tulip Vision Line DT 5/166] john
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 ====== Tulip Vision Line DT 5/166 ======
+This is a fairly compact desktop-configuration system I bought in December 2022 from a seller on Ebay that deals in vintage PC equipment.
+The case was pretty dirty when it arrived, but a little bit of soap and water and a magic eraser and it came up looking lovely:
+{{:blog:pentium:img20221221130839.jpg?400|}} {{:blog:pentium:img20221221130827.jpg?400|}}
+Motherboard is a compact design with a shared ISA/PCI riser, and is based on the very common Intel Triton II chipset (i430VX) with lot of integrated peripherals (dual channel PCI IDE controller, Alliance ProMotion PCI VGA, AMD PCNet 10mbit ethernet):
+{{:blog:pentium:img20221220181828.jpg?400|}} {{:blog:pentium:img20221220175302.jpg?400|}}
+Apparently there are multiple revisions of this motherboard with some having dual-voltage processor support, some having S3 VGA and optional sound support. Mine unfortunately is an early model without any of those options.
 ==== Specification ====
@@ Line 45: / Line 56: @@
 |          |                           | Pentium 166MHz  |
 |          |                           | 2x32MB EDO      |
-|          |                           | PCI S3 Trio64   |
+|          |                           | PCI Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM (S3 Trio64)   |
 |Test      | Metric                    |                 |
 |Norton    | CPU Score                 | 525.4           |
@@ Line 55: / Line 66: @@
 |Comptest  | MegaFLOPS                 | 8.2             |
 |Comptest  | Disk throughput           | 10862 KB/sec    |
-|Landmark  | CPU of emulated PC/AT     | 928 MHz         |
+|Landmark  | CPU of emulated PC/AT     | 1729 MHz        |
-|Landmark  | FPU of emulated PC/AT     | 1319 MHz        |
+|Landmark  | FPU of emulated PC/AT     | 2753 MHz        |
-|Landmark  | Video                     | 8548            |
+|Landmark  | Video                     | 23405           |
-|Speedsys  | CPU Performance           | 130.27          |
+|Speedsys  | CPU Performance           | 122.91          |
-|Speedsys  | L1 Cache                  | 263 MB/sec      |
+|Speedsys  | L1 Cache                  | 308 MB/sec      |
-|Speedsys  | L2 Cache                  | 142 MB/sec      |
+|Speedsys  | L2 Cache                  | 113 MB/sec      |
-|Speedsys  | RAM Throughput            | 108 MB/sec      |
+|Speedsys  | RAM Throughput            | 77.5 MB/sec     |
-|Speedsys  | RAM Bandwidth             | 224 MB/sec      |
+|Speedsys  | RAM Bandwidth             | 220 MB/sec      |
-|Wolfenstein 3D | FPS                  | 94.9 FPS        |
+|Wolfenstein 3D | FPS                  | 133.2 FPS       |
-|DOOM      | Low Detail                | 202.41 FPS      |
+|DOOM      | Low Detail                | 232.68 FPS      |
-|DOOM      | High Detail               | 44.33 FPS       |
+|DOOM      | High Detail               | 70.73 FPS       |
-|Quake     | 320x240                   | 26.2 FPS        |
+|Quake     | 320x240                   | 37.7 FPS        |
-|Quake     | Medium                    | 11.6 FPS        |
+|Quake     | Medium                    | 15.7 FPS        |
 |Quake     | 640x480                   | N/A             |
-|3D Bench  | 1.0c                      | 100.3 FPS       |
+|3D Bench  | 1.0c                      | 137.8 FPS       |
-|PC Player | Low Res                   | 33.9 FPS        |
+|PC Player | Low Res                   | 40.2 FPS        |
-|PC Player | High Res                  | 12.5 FPS        |
+|PC Player | High Res                  | 13.6 FPS        |
+== Thoughts ==
+The Intel 430VX chipset is the 'poor cousin' of the 430HX and 430TX, but it still delivers solid performance. Non-accelerated Quake playback in low res is very acceptable and of course titles from the previous generation (i.e. DOOM) are as smooth as you could ever expect them to be. At the time these systems came out I was an owner of a Cyrix 6x86 P166+ - having seen the real Pentium 166 perform in Quake, I can see now why it caused the downfall of Cyrix!
+It's interesting to compare this system with the [[blog:pentium_pc_digipos_pro|Digipos Pro]], which is from approximately the same era, has the same CPU socket (socket 7) and takes the same generation of processors. The Digipos system has much better RAM throughput from it's Ali Aladdin chipset (with the same type of memory - 2x 32MB EDO), but the much lower clocked Pentium 166 of the Tulip is //significantly// faster than the Winchip 200 of the Digipos. The Intel chipset/PCI IDE controller is also far, far faster than the (almost ISA speed) IDE of the Digipos, leading to a much more responsive system. It will be interesting to see whether an Intel processor in the Digipos system can improve things.