VX Pro Socket 7 chipset? Ever heard of it?

[Athlon4all]

A Friend was just given a old Socket 7 Mobo and the chipset thats on it is one I've never seen. Its simply called the VX Pro. No manufacturer name or anything. I can't even identify the mobo maker. Anyway, it does say Taiwan on the chip, Anyway, anyone heard of it? Its your typical Socket 7 chipset it seems. Only 66fsb (it came with a K6-2 400 running at 66fsb) No AGP, PCI support, no int. graphics,I am not certain whetehr it supports SDRAM. It does have 4 SIMM slots with 2 DIMM's, but the only vmem options are 5v and 3.3v (is SDRAM 3.3v? Cant remember at the moment). Anyone know anything about it?

P.S. Oh, the lowest vcore that I can put it on this board is a whopping 2.8v:Q, is this going to significantly decrease the lifespan of this K6-2 (its 2.2v 400Mhz K6-2)? I dunno how long the guy who gave my friend itwas running this CPU in it. Thanx

 

[hardwareguy1241]

That is a crap PC Chips brand motherboard.
The chipset is even slower than the original Intel VX!
IT IS NOT AN INTEL CHIPSET!
Your K6-2s days will be numbered at that voltage.

Find more info on it at www.redhill.net.au

 

[hardwareguy1241]

SDRAM is 3.3v
Get rid of that mobo, it will cause you much pain.
It is a masochist's board!!

 

[Athlon4all]

Thanks man for the info!!! At least he has a ECS P5SJ-B that'll be better! You gotta be kidding me, fake cache chips? lol!!! I'll tell him to get that K6-2 out of there for now!!!

 

[Peter]

Athlon4all, don't believe the parrots. True, it's a PC-Chips board (M537), but it's not a bad one, and it doesn't have "fake cache chips" either.

VXpro is VIA's Apollo-VP1 paired with VIA's 586A south bridge. This chipset is perfectly on par with Intel's VX. Either chipset has a 32-MByte limit on SDRAM DIMM size, useless today. With EDO RAM, it'll make a neat box. Lowest voltage is 2.5V btw, but doing that to a K6-2 still is asking for trouble, both in stability and CPU lifespan. Put a 2.9V Cyrix in.

You sure it isn't a VXpro+ aka VIA VPX/97? That'd be M537DMA33 then, supporting DIMMs up to 128 MBytes, plus UDMA33 IDE, and 75 MHz CPU bus (with 33 MHz PCI). Still no 2.2V.

regards, Peter

 

[Athlon4all]

Well, thanks for the input Peter. I think that in any case this K6-2 is going in a different mobo. He's got a P5SJ-B that fortunately does have support for 2.2v that has been working great for a few months now, so, but I guess we'll set this board aside and take a look at it and see what its worth. Thanks as always Peter!!!

 

[Peter]

P5SJ-B ... hmm ... an ECS board from pre-PC-Chips-merger times ...

SiS 5598 integrated-VGA all-in-one chipset - That'll be 75 MHz max, 64 MBytes per DIMM side, 4 MBytes shared to 2D-only SiS 200 graphics unit (or no shared-memory VGA if yours has the 5582 chipset flavor). Not bad for an internet and word processing box either, my mom still uses a similar one (PC-Chips M571).

The one caveat is that this chipset must be kept at 66 MHz with AMD CPUs, 75 MHz is Cyrix-only here unless you want to screw with PCI clock.

The K6-2/400 will do 6x multiplier at the jumper position shown for 2x, so you can do 400 anyway.

regards, Peter

 

[Athlon4all]

Thanks. Although I do have one question. Would the Video be better than a Trident TGUI 9460 (Trident '94 I believe)? Thats what hes had in there now, because we don't have the VGA Port Bracket (where would we buy one?). Thanks

 

[Peter]

It'd hardly be better, but no worse either (those Trident thingies were incredibly slow), and you'd gain one of the only three PCI slots back.

Contact Elitegroup in your country for where to buy that VGA slot bracket thing.

regards, Peter