SiS 530 Chipset

[amdforever2]

I have this thing I wanna do where I build a computer with ancient CPU, but loaded with RAM and modern SSDs and such.

A Compaq Presario 5420 has a K6 compatible motherboard but despite the SIS 530 supporting up to 1.5GB ram the website of HP says this model will only allow 384MB?

Anyone know what the real deal is?

 

[NutBucket]

Probably some bios/board limitations like the number of RAM slots, channels, etc.

 

[amdforever2]

I'd love even more to get a modern version of Linux to boot on a pizza box mac running a 68k processor :-o

 

[Insomniator]

wat

 

[poofyhairguy]

Anyone know what the real deal is?

SiS and/or Via = Crap

 

[TwiceOver]

So... You gonna hook that SSD up with some sort of adapter? Or an add-in card or what?

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

SiS and/or Via = Crap

The KT333 and KT400 were alright.

 

[Xpage]

drivers i think would be the huge issue

 

[SPBHM]

Probably some bios/board limitations like the number of RAM slots, channels, etc.

it's single channel SDRAM PC66/100

the memory controller should be able to handle 512MB sticks but I'm not so sure (other chipsets from that era only acepted 256mb per slot max with low density chips), BUT, the onboard cache is probably optimal for 128-256MB and anything over it will make things much slower anyway.

SiS and/or Via = Crap

sis 530 IMO it's really crap, but Via an SIS made other much nicer chipsets, the best super socket 7 chipsets were made by VIA (ALI also had a good one)

drivers i think would be the huge issue

even for XP, the IGP doesn't work properly, it works much better on 9x, so yes..


--

the SSD should work fine, specially if it's a 40GB model, with a simple adapter... the 530 southbridge (can't remember the name) had support for ata66

but basically,

bad, bad idea...

sis 530 was not anything near the best chipset for this platform (performance and stability), and k6 is simply way to slow... if we were talking about k7 or Pentium 3 (even pentium II with a nice 440BX board and 768MB of ram) it could be a more fun thing to do.

 

[Blue_Max]

Bear in mind that 99% of SSD's and ALL of the modern ones are SATA. You'll need a SATA controller card to use 'em.

And I can't stress how terrible SiS is for drivers and graphics. At VERY least, use an AGP video card. Odds are good that 3x256MB is the best you'll squeeze into it - and 512MB Pc-133 is rare and expensive! (Or free if you get lucky scrounging!)

I suppose if it's all you have... [shrug] ...but I'd sure try to find something else to work with.

 

[SPBHM]

Bear in mind that 99% of SSD's and ALL of the modern ones are SATA. You'll need a SATA controller card to use 'em.

people have used basic adapters successfully with SSDs and old PATA controllers

 

[ShadowVVL]

It only supports 128mb per dimm and has 3 slots so 384mb is the max.

specs are here if anyone wants to look

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...infoCategory&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&product=93309

 

[Blue_Max]

people have used basic adapters successfully with SSDs and old PATA controllers

Forgot about those little buggers... they worked ~90% of the time. Performance would sure SUCK going through ATA66, but that's not the point of the experiment, I guess...

...have I mentioned my loathing for SiS chipsets and video yet?

 

[Arkaign]

If you're going to use a fossilized motherboard to build something ancient, do yourself a favor and get this :

Intel i815 Chipset board with 4 DIMM slots and AGP 4X slot
Intel P3 Coppermine
AGP 7600GT 256MB + SLI Voodoo 2 12MB
Load her up with 4x256MB PC133 SDRAM
Use an IDE to Sata adapter, and run an SSD at max ATA speeds, lol
Windows 98SE + Windows 2000 Dual Boot

This would be ridiculous, but you could probably get some damned nice performance out of it.

I would say use an AMD chipset, but they were pretty terrible back then. The Nforce 2 + Athlon or Athlon XP would be the best alternative, and a ton faster, but might be too new for what you're trying to do.

Every time I see something like a SiS 530 I laugh and shiver at the horrendous memories. They made VIA look good. And honestly, the KT133a, KT333, etc were okay. Not wonderful, but better than the effectively broken AMD Irongate and SIS chipsets.

 

[ShadowVVL]

This would be ridiculous, but you could probably get some damned nice performance out of it.

yeah I got a win 98se disk from a friend a few years ago and installed it on my athlon x2 5600+ and man it was fast.Only issue is no drivers and I couldn't get ethernet working.

 

[Maximilian]

I have this thing I wanna do where I build a computer with ancient CPU, but loaded with RAM and modern SSDs and such.

A Compaq Presario 5420 has a K6 compatible motherboard but despite the SIS 530 supporting up to 1.5GB ram the website of HP says this model will only allow 384MB?

Anyone know what the real deal is?

I did something similar a number of years back. Went from PII --> PIII --> dual PIII slot 1 --> dual PIII tualatin --> dual athlon MP --> dual opteron 182? All that stuff was outdated at the time except maybe the opterons but I was just messing about with it.

The further back you go the more trouble its gonna be. I set a pentium II as a baseline system, going any further back and theres likely to be too many miscellaneous issues that noone knows the answer to because the stuffs so outdated. As others have said avoid via/sis if possible. Pick something popular, 440BX was a popular chipset for example.

 

[Fred B]

I did something similar a number of years back. Went from PII --> PIII --> dual PIII slot 1 --> dual PIII tualatin --> dual athlon MP --> dual opteron 182? All that stuff was outdated at the time except maybe the opterons but I was just messing about with it.

The further back you go the more trouble its gonna be. I set a pentium II as a baseline system, going any further back and theres likely to be too many miscellaneous issues that noone knows the answer to because the stuffs so outdated. As others have said avoid via/sis if possible. Pick something popular, 440BX was a popular chipset for example.

And what abouth the ALi M1531 chipset

 

[Compman55]

Don;t bother with SiS/ALi they were so crappy. Via was acceptable, but not good. Amd 761 was ok too.

 

[XiandreX]

Don;t bother with SiS/ALi they were so crappy. Via was acceptable, but not good. Amd 761 was ok too.

Man now you are bringing back memories. I remember using an SiS-Virge which was so so. The SiS/Ali were honestly horrid. Via had its moments but yup not something you looked for.

I still remember using as Asus SP97-v motherboard which I did enjoy and used but that was the exception to the rule.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Wait... is there a crack in the Bermuda triangle today...? Haven't seen an SiS chipset thread in 10+ years... :biggrin:

No seriously, stay well clear of SiS chipsets. Horrible performance, even more horrible drivers.

For Socket7, VIA is really the go-to. My top choice would be the MVP3 or 4. Given board support they could take 768MB RAM. Though if I remember right, only 512MB was actually usable... :hmm:

 

[ElFenix]

K7s5a, newbs

 

[SPBHM]

Don;t bother with SiS/ALi they were so crappy. Via was acceptable, but not good. Amd 761 was ok too.

AMD 761 was for k7 and it was outdated pretty quickly, VIA chipsets were better I think.

ALI Aladdin V and VIA MVP3 were the best chipsets for socket 7

SiS and ALI had quite a few decent chipsets for other platforms also,

but SiS 530 was not very good, it probably made them some good money, but it was to problematic... still one of the older chipsets that tried to integrate almost everything for a low cost, I think...

 

[Atreidin]

If you're going to use a fossilized motherboard to build something ancient, do yourself a favor and get this :

Intel i815 Chipset board with 4 DIMM slots and AGP 4X slot
Intel P3 Coppermine
AGP 7600GT 256MB + SLI Voodoo 2 12MB
Load her up with 4x256MB PC133 SDRAM
Use an IDE to Sata adapter, and run an SSD at max ATA speeds, lol
Windows 98SE + Windows 2000 Dual Boot

This would be ridiculous, but you could probably get some damned nice performance out of it.

I would say use an AMD chipset, but they were pretty terrible back then. The Nforce 2 + Athlon or Athlon XP would be the best alternative, and a ton faster, but might be too new for what you're trying to do.

Every time I see something like a SiS 530 I laugh and shiver at the horrendous memories. They made VIA look good. And honestly, the KT133a, KT333, etc were okay. Not wonderful, but better than the effectively broken AMD Irongate and SIS chipsets.

i815 only supports 512MB, you'll never get 1GB of RAM to work. You probably don't want to use more than 2 slots if possible, either. It was a hard limit they stupidly put on to make their more expensive RDRAM crap look better. They wanted to force it to be lower-end and not useful in servers.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Old mainboard with old CPU + relative new dGPU

Unless you're using a PCIe-to-PCI adaptor, that's a fake. The KT400A was/is AGP only...

What are you trying to prove? Even an Atom N270 can do HD decoding with the proper graphics hardware installed.

 

[SPBHM]

Unless you're using a PCIe-to-PCI adaptor, that's a fake. The KT400A was/is AGP only...

What are you trying to prove? Even an Atom N270 can do HD decoding with the proper graphics hardware installed.

the VGA have the bridge chip on the PCB, I have a 8400GS like that, with PCI connector...

it works fine for DXVA, but it's bad for gaming and even things like youtube because of the low bandwidth,

his duron is like XP 2200+ with 1/4 the l2 cache....

I've seen people using sub 1GHz p3 with one of these cards (with DXVA support) for 1080p video.

OT:
Tralalak, have you been able to run windows 7 with that VGA?
can you run final reality benchmark to see what is the transfer tests result?
also the OpenCL test from the latest AIDA, just to compare with what I get with my 8400GS PCI, the transfer speed on final reality is really bad, a lot worse than my PCI Voodoo 4.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

the VGA have the bridge chip on the PCB, I have a 8400GS like that, with PCI connector...

This is PCI graphics card !!!

I wasn't aware anybody had made a PCI version of the GT520...

The newest PCI graphics I've seen was HD5450/GT430's. Granted I haven't used PCI for graphics cards since my Voodoo Banshee, so it been a while since I've looked in that direction...