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  • ["All the Good Things" by Nocturnal Spirits plays]

  • Greetings and welcome to a LGR Woodgrain 486 upgrade thing!

  • And today, we've got the Intel Pentium Overdrive Processor.

  • "Makes your Intel 486 Processor-based PCs run faster."

  • Which is great, 'cause that's what I wanna do!

  • Yeah, we're gonna take the Woodgrain 486's AMD Am486 CPU

  • that's in there, running at 66 megahertz

  • and turn it into a Pentium, of sorts.

  • It's kind of a weird thing, you know,

  • it takes a 486 and makes it an 83 megahertz Pentium.

  • Yeah, bit of an odd frequency rating there,

  • but that's what Intel was doing, man.

  • In the mid-90s they had all sorts

  • of interesting Overdrive chips.

  • And this one in particular just attracted me to it.

  • Yeah the PODP5V83,

  • [chuckles] you know 'cause of the weird rating 83 megahertz.

  • And I've just never messed with one of these

  • Pentium Overdrives before,

  • just 486 Overdrives that take like a 486, 33

  • and turn it into a DX4-100 or whatever.

  • And perhaps that would be more suitable

  • for the Woodgrain 486, but I've got this one here,

  • complete in-box,

  • it's been sitting in its sealed packaging for 25 years

  • thereabouts.

  • It was originally launched in October 1995,

  • maybe early 1996, depending on where you look.

  • But, back then it was $299 US dollars

  • for just this upgrade chip,

  • and that's the equivalent of around $500

  • adjusted for inflation,

  • so a bit pricey for just a CPU upgrade

  • to the point where they didn't last on the market

  • for too very long.

  • And there were a log critiques in the media

  • about it being just being like,

  • who the heck is this thing for?

  • Average consumers found it too costly

  • and businesses would rather just get a new system.

  • One IT guy was quoted as saying,

  • "both a memory and hard disc upgrade made sense

  • "alongside a Pentium,

  • "so if you do one, you have to all three.

  • "And if you end up doing all three,

  • "it's just cheaper to buy a new system."

  • So, yeah I mean, all good points,

  • I totally give all the points to their logic. [laughing]

  • But man, Intel was pushing all the things it could do,

  • I mean look at all these software benchmarks, you know.

  • 135%, 144%, 267% better in some programs,

  • oh wow.

  • Need help in selecting which one you need?

  • I mean, look at all these things

  • that you can do on the website.

  • And yeah they had a website,

  • you could go out on the web,

  • the cyber spaces and you could go and download this PDF,

  • seriously, I did, it's still on archive.org.

  • Yeah, the Intel Pentium Overdrive Processor

  • performance report.

  • It's 30 pages of like, just benchmarks

  • and how cool it is to use this thing in your 486

  • and there's so much going on man.

  • I don't know, I don't really, I don't know man.

  • I just wanna play Duke Nukem 3D

  • and Descent II and stuff.

  • But,

  • there were a lot of serious people look at this

  • and making paperwork. [laughing]

  • Anyway, let's go ahead and get this unboxed

  • because I'm curious what's inside.

  • [smooth jazz]

  • Oh, the box itself is glued to itself.

  • Actually looks like this one was made in 1998.

  • February 13th, wow that's almost exactly 22 years ago

  • on the day I'm recording this.

  • Okay, maybe they were on the market

  • a little bit longer than I've read.

  • I read they lasted through 1997,

  • '98 would have been pretty late

  • to get an 83 megahertz Pentium.

  • [laughing] They did not make that easy.

  • Ooh, fresh Pentium Overdrive.

  • No Bachman Turner included.

  • Look at that.

  • Yeah this was one of those,

  • I believe, the heatsink is permanently attached

  • and there is a replaceable fan clipped to the top,

  • but, yeah they were serious about the cooling on this thing.

  • Just as an example,

  • my AMD486 that's in there right now

  • does not require any cooling at all,

  • it's a 3.3 volt CPU,

  • so it's never had a heatsink or fan or anything.

  • But this, yeah they're like "it's 5 volt,"

  • "it runs hot or whatever"

  • "you just gotta make sure it's nice and cool."

  • Gotta wonder about the thermals

  • in between the CPU and the heatsink, but we'll see.

  • Let's see here,

  • wonder what we got, oh man.

  • So we got a Stay In The Loop registration card,

  • the beginning of a valuable relationship with Intel.

  • Just what I've been looking for around Valentines day.

  • And we have the, wow this is not something I was expecting.

  • "Overdrive Processor Demonstration and Diagnostics."

  • Okay.

  • We've got a little remover tool of some kind.

  • Intriguing.

  • And some paperwork.

  • "Attention, Packard Bell systems,"

  • oh dear, what now.

  • "Serial numbers 450 and 470 require additional hardware."

  • Okay, we're not putting it in any of those.

  • Yeah quick installation.

  • I mean, yeah, pretty simple.

  • Pretty pretty simple.

  • It's just a drop-in thing, man.

  • Got some jumpers if we need,

  • I guess a diagnostics disk to check things out,

  • that's cool, I'm glad it comes with that.

  • Lets see if the manual says what to do with this doohickey.

  • Oh, there's an animated demo, that's gonna be good.

  • Ha ha, I like animated demos.

  • Okay, so that's what that's for,

  • removing the processors from the socket with no handle,

  • haven't seen one of those in a while.

  • Not in a 486 anyway.

  • So yeah, ah yeah, that makes sense.

  • You got the little groves there,

  • fits between the pins.

  • Dang that's cool,

  • glad I have one of these,

  • I've had some trouble pulling things out

  • of like a 386 before. [laughing]

  • so, yeah anyway, the rest of this just seems

  • to be generic.

  • Ah, we've got a datasheet, how nice.

  • Although I already looked up all this stuff online,

  • but yeah, check it out, man.

  • This is something I'm pretty excited about,

  • 16K of code cache,

  • and 16K of write back capable data cache.

  • The AMD that I have in there right now

  • is only 8k of L1 cache.

  • Still no L2 on board,

  • that is on the system board itself.

  • I have 256k of L2 on that motherboard

  • that we upgraded to in the past

  • because didn't have any L2 when we first did the build.

  • But, yeah, this should be quite the lovely thing.

  • Ha, that is fresh.

  • Look at this thing.

  • That's just so clean, so nice.

  • And check out that integrated fan,

  • heatsink cooler design, man, it is all clipped on there.

  • Looks like the fan could come off,

  • but I mean that heatsink is pretty thoroughly attached.

  • And I like the fact that it looks like

  • it gets the power straight through the pins.

  • There's no connector for a fan to the motherboard

  • or Molex or anything like that.

  • This is exciting man,

  • ah dude, it's not gonna be a 486 anymore,

  • it's gonna be the LGR Woodgrain Pentium,

  • that's weird, oh I don't know if I like that,

  • I didn't think about that. [laughing]

  • Well, anyway,

  • this seems like a pretty clear upgrade on paper.

  • Will it be 100+ percent better like Intel claimed?

  • There's only one way to find out,

  • that is get this thing set up

  • and try out some benchmarks and games and stuff.

  • Alrighty.

  • Let's just get the old AMD one out of there.

  • Well, the new the CPU is old as well,

  • but you know what I mean.

  • There we go.

  • Oh, poor AMD.

  • Still a good CPU, maybe I'll go back to it

  • at some point, but not today!

  • All right.

  • And now our drop-in replacement.

  • Okay, so I guess with socket three

  • we don't have exposed pins,

  • unpopulated pins around the edges.

  • I think that might just be with socket two,

  • you have like an extra row all the way around

  • each of the four sides.

  • Okay.

  • Well that's that part out of the way,

  • now it's time to get to everyone's favorite part

  • about old computers,

  • all the jumper settings.

  • So there's quite a variety of different things

  • that this particular motherboard supports,

  • but what we're looking for here is this P24T.

  • I believe that is the Pentium Overdrive

  • code name or whatever.

  • All right, so JP9 should be on one and two, it is.

  • JP10 should be two and three.

  • Okay, that is that one,

  • now I gotta worry about all these.

  • Okay, JP13 should be one and two,

  • there's nothing on JP13.

  • So we will just add a jumper down there.

  • [groans]

  • There we go.

  • JP23 needs to be on three, four,

  • five, six, and seven, eight.

  • [upbeat music]

  • Okay, I think this is the last one.

  • [laughing] All right,

  • gonna triple quadruple check everything here.

  • According to my list

  • and hey if everything checks out we'll plug everything in,

  • power it on, see what happens.

  • All right, everything's set up, ready to go,

  • installed, whatever, we just gotta get this on here

  • and see what that's about.

  • But just power it on and see what happens.

  • [computer whirring]

  • Hm, sounds a little different.

  • There is a CPU fan going. [laughing]

  • Didn't have one before this.

  • Thankfully it's not too loud

  • or grinding or anything.

  • Hey, check it out,

  • so P24T, 80 megahertz, close enough! [laughs]

  • we'll run a CPU check here in a second

  • and see how that goes.

  • All right, so yeah.

  • Intel Pentium 83 Overdrive,

  • 83 and a half megahertz, indeed.

  • 2.5 clock multiplier, bus speed 33 megahertz,

  • everything looks as it should.

  • Yeah, the internal cache is probably not gonna do everything

  • because I don't believe I have write through mode.

  • So I may just have the 16 out of 32 possible K

  • on the chip itself.

  • It's only gonna be write through for the internal cache,

  • which means we're not gonna get the full 32K.

  • We have 16K of the cache on L1,

  • L2 is write back, that's cool.

  • Not game-breaking, but worth noting,

  • this motherboard isn't the most powerful thing

  • to pair with a Pentium.

  • All right, so let's try Top Bench, really quick.

  • Because I want to.

  • And also because when I ran it before,

  • back when we installed the external cache down there, 256K,

  • we were getting around 190,

  • actually it looked just like this here,

  • 'cause that's just what this is. [chuckles]

  • So, around 190 points you can see in the top left there

  • is just running in real time.

  • So if you run the benchmark in real time here,

  • we should be, yes, it's a bit faster,

  • 218.

  • So equivalent-ish of, well it's going back and forth,

  • Pentium 75 clone or thereabouts.

  • Let's see what it is with turbo.

  • Nice okay, so turbo still cranks it down a good bit.

  • Like a 386 DX40,

  • not nearly as slow as it is with that 486,

  • but we can disable the external cache and other things

  • if we really wanna get super slow,

  • if we're playing certain older games,

  • but yeah, around 218, 219, not bad,

  • not the biggest jump though.

  • I was hoping to get around 240 or 50,

  • but again this motherboard just isn't the best thing

  • for the time.

  • Still, an improvement nonetheless.

  • I mean, it is working right?

  • So here's something else I've got another benchmark on here

  • this 3D benchmark.

  • Let me show you what it was with the 486

  • that we had in here previously,

  • this is more of a test of VGA capabilities and whatnot,

  • but you know should still be faster with a Pentium,

  • so with the 486 ended up getting a score of 47.1

  • or run it with the Pentium here

  • and see what we get.

  • Should certainly be faster,

  • I'm not expecting a ton faster,

  • 'cause again, we need to upgrade the video card

  • and whatnot to make more of an improvement to this,

  • I believe.

  • 55.7, okay.

  • Just out of curiosity, I'm gonna run cache check here

  • and I'll just have it check the cache.

  • I'm curious about that L1,

  • if there really is, just getting a 16 of the 32.

  • Oh, that's the results.

  • So, yeah only 16k of L1,

  • but man that's like two or something times the speed,

  • maybe three times,

  • it is a lot faster than the 486 one was.

  • Plus it's got all sorts of floating point stuff

  • and Pentium things.

  • It is a clear improvement

  • so let's just go ahead and try this Overdrive processor

  • demonstration and diagnostics disk.

  • So there's a Windows version.

  • I don't wanna do that.

  • Ah, it's got a fan monitor, how cool is that,

  • and DOS, I like it anyway.

  • All right, install all the things please.

  • Listen to the sound of my disk.

  • [floppy drive noises]

  • All right so we've got some demos,

  • we got a fan monitor,

  • let's just see what that looks like.

  • [laughing] It's on. [laughing]

  • No RPMs, no anything, it's just "on."

  • Okay, let's try this.

  • The actual program itself!

  • Mm, got a mouse.

  • I don't know what kind of weird resolution this is

  • it is bowing on my monitor

  • and I don't feel like fixing it.

  • Let's see if there's any different.

  • It's the same thing!

  • Just says whether or not the fan is on.

  • Review installation demonstration.

  • Whoa, [laughing]

  • Oh, that's so cool, man.

  • The dithering!

  • I am gonna capture this on the capture device

  • for posterity really quick, hold on.

  • All right let's start that over

  • 'cause it's worth it.

  • Look how awesome that looks.

  • I mean, I hope it looks good to you.

  • Or else I'm just going crazy.

  • Being a weird old man.

  • [laughing]

  • this, ah, I love these kind of little things.

  • Look at those hands.

  • Dude.

  • Animations.

  • [laughing]

  • Oh, those are phenomenal looking pixels on the motherboard

  • and there all the little details,

  • dude, somebody put some real, serious time into this.

  • Intel, man, they didn't hold out.

  • Oh, look at that, look at the little removal tool graphic.

  • [laughing]

  • Oh that is so cool, aw look at that.

  • That's enough of that,

  • if you wanna see the rest of it,

  • you can see the download in the video description

  • for the disk and take a look.

  • Anyway, let's run the processor instruction test.

  • Oh man, wow.

  • I'm assuming that that is legit

  • and it's not just running numbers

  • in an animation. [laughing]

  • All right, that's pretty cool.

  • Floating point conformance test.

  • Oh that's my kind of test right there;

  • I love conforming to floating points.

  • Doing some math, just calculating tons of things, man,

  • the power of the Pentium.

  • Look at it go.

  • All right well that's all for that.

  • Didn't really do a whole lot

  • other than show me some really cool animations

  • and some numbers that I am going to trust

  • that were real.

  • Right, let's run some games.

  • I mean, we gotta try to do it 3D

  • because it ran like total crap before this.

  • I mean, it's probably still gonna run like crap to a degree,

  • but let's make sure everything's good.

  • 320 by 200 normal mode,

  • we're not even gonna mess with VASA compatibility.

  • But if you'll see the footage here

  • of how it was running on the 486,

  • that we had before this,

  • this is just the first level of the first episode.

  • And you can see it hangs around 10 frames per second

  • just at the beginning.

  • And it goes much lower down

  • into the single digits and whatnot,

  • throughout the rest of the level.

  • And it's not great.

  • This is again, 320 by 200

  • and it's just rolling along, chugging through the game,

  • it's not a pleasant experience,

  • mostly single digits.

  • But now we're gonna try it on the Pentium

  • and man it's already loading much quicker,

  • so that's good.

  • [explosions] Nice.

  • [8-bit music]

  • - Let's rock.

  • [game character speaking]

  • [laughing]

  • - Well, it is nominally better,

  • we're getting low teens up there.

  • So that's the frame rate more or less right now.

  • Ah, you know. [gunshots]

  • It's faster but again,

  • there's only so much we're gonna be able to squeeze

  • out of this system considering the other things

  • that are installed in there

  • like the video card.

  • It's certainly more playable though,

  • that's for absolute sure.

  • Not as good as I could be, but I'll take it.

  • Time to die.

  • If I were spending the equivalent of 500 bucks

  • on this back in the day for games or whatever like this,

  • this would not be the most satisfying thing.

  • There's other bottlenecks

  • that I think are making much bigger of a difference

  • in terms of games like Duke 3D.

  • Let's try Descent II.

  • Because that's another one that just ran like total garbage

  • on the 486,

  • let me show you what that looked like,

  • here's some direct capture of Descent II

  • on the 66 megahertz AMD CPU

  • that I had in here before.

  • And again, single digits.

  • Low teens.

  • A little better than Duke 3D,

  • but

  • yeah, not great.

  • Even when cranking down the settings.

  • This is the highest settings here,

  • but if we crank the detail all the way down to the lowest

  • it's you know a little better,

  • you get a few extra frames here and there.

  • I mean, I would have played this when I was a kid.

  • [laughing] It's just such a cool game

  • that I wouldn't have cared.

  • But, this is not great nowadays,

  • that's for sure.

  • And low detail, mid-high detail, whatever,

  • it's all pretty sucky.

  • So.

  • [rhythmic music]

  • moving over to the Pentium.

  • Let us see how this goes.

  • [upbeat music]

  • Looks better.

  • Let's turn on the frame counter.

  • So, okay yeah, I mean that's,

  • again, pretty clear improvement.

  • Oh, much more playable.

  • [lasers firing]

  • Not great,

  • still dipping into the single digits here and there

  • but not nearly as much.

  • And again this on the highest detail setting.

  • [lasers firing] So,

  • that's a red door,

  • what am I shooting for?

  • [lasers firing]

  • Yeah, you know.

  • [lasers firing] [laughing]

  • Can't handle all the action.

  • [lasers firing]

  • Let's see what it's like with the lowest again.

  • [upbeat music] [lasers firing]

  • Nominally better,

  • you know like it was in the 486, but,

  • I mean honestly this is about how I played Descent II

  • for the first time back in the day.

  • It was on a Pentium 90 I believe.

  • So it was maybe a little quicker than this, but...

  • [laughing] Oddly nostalgic in a way.

  • But just really the whole point of this build

  • is not to make the fastest 486 or early Pentium,

  • just I'm experimenting with parts

  • and seeing what things do.

  • Because now I can. [laughing]

  • It's fun.

  • All right one more thing that I wanna try here

  • and that is Quake

  • because it didn't work whatsoever,

  • but we're gonna try a benchmark.

  • The venerable Phil's computer lab benchmark

  • shout out to Phil for these handy programs

  • and things you can download on his website.

  • So we're gonna run the Quake time demo,

  • just the normal one.

  • And again, this did not even run at all on the 486.

  • I mean it tried.

  • Well, this doesn't either.

  • Let's try one of the other ones.

  • Lower the resolution, I believe.

  • Nope.

  • Okay, a clean boot here,

  • let's see if it does anything different.

  • Nope.

  • That totally doesn't wanna work.

  • Let's just try Doom,

  • see if that does anything.

  • Max details.

  • [laughing] I didn't run this on the 486,

  • so I don't really have anything to compare it to,

  • but certainly looks like it's running a bit smoother

  • than it did on that CPU,

  • just looking at it.

  • All right.

  • 2134 gametics.

  • 2664 realtics.

  • Those... are numbers.

  • Again, I don't have anything to compare it to,

  • unfortunately.

  • Man, that sucks

  • I couldn't even get the Quake time demo

  • to work at all, man.

  • [Windows 3.1 Startup Sound] [LGR humming along]

  • So final thoughts on the Pentium Overdrive Processor

  • 83 megahertz, for now anyway.

  • It's unfortunate that it's connected

  • to such a computer!

  • You know if it was a more capable machine,

  • we would be getting more of the capabilities of it.

  • You know, it's a weird conundrum.

  • I was reading about that in the reviews,

  • its contemporary reviews back in the day.

  • People were like, just again,

  • questioning who exactly is this for because

  • the faster your system is the better it is,

  • the newer it is, the better capable your 486 board it,

  • the more you're gonna get out of this.

  • The older it is, the less you're gonna get out of it,

  • it's like backwards.

  • You know, the people with the slower, older systems,

  • don't get as much out of the upgrade

  • as the people with the newer, faster systems

  • that are already newer and faster, so...

  • Yeah, I much rather have a 486-DX4/100, stick that in here,

  • or maybe even one of the AMD P75 or something

  • you can overclock and do cool things.

  • Maybe I'll try that in the future.

  • And I also do wanna try with messing around

  • with different VLB compatible cards,

  • like some different video cards.

  • And memory as well,

  • I wanna try to maybe some faster memory,

  • because I think that would make a good difference, honestly.

  • Got I think that's a bit of a bottle neck.

  • Anyway, all sorts of things to mess with on this 486

  • and [laughing] that's why I have it.

  • It's just, yeah, screwing around with configurations

  • and things that I never could back in the day.

  • Wondered about them.

  • I've always been curious if they'd been any good

  • ever since diving back into the hobby

  • as an adult and yeah it's like,

  • I don't know it's just fun.

  • I love messing around with these things.

  • [arcadey sound effects]

  • And I love Missile Command.

  • And my camera battery just died,

  • so I guess that's the end of the video.

  • I mean, it pretty much was anyway,

  • I was just wrapping up,

  • so right, if you enjoyed seeing this

  • then do checkout some of my others

  • in the 486 updates, upgrades series

  • or whatever else I post here

  • each and every week on LGR.

  • And as always, thank you very much for watching!

["All the Good Things" by Nocturnal Spirits plays]

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