Old hardware combo

[elgummo]

I recently got my hands on 2 P3 systems which I am gonna combine to make a home server to be able to quickly get important data from any location without having to store it online, use it as a mailserver, etcetc.

One CPU is a 500Mhz Katmai model, the other one is a 400Mhz Coppermine. I've been reading up a bit and it seems the Coppermines are a lot better then the Katmais. Notice however that in this case the Mhz of the Katmai is 25% more then that of the Copperfield.

One motherboard uses the VIA Apollo Pro133 chipset while the other one uses the Intel 82440 BX chipset.

Now my question: Which combination would give me the best performance?

I was thinking of using the VIA chipset and the Coppermine but I don't know if that would be the best setup. So instead of spending all day benchmarking both setups (i can only boot/bench one at a time) I figured I'de ask here if someone has any ideas on this.

Thanx in advance!

 

[joefriday]

Never heard of a 400MHz coppermine. Sure it's not a PII Deschutes? Intel doesn't list a 400 MHz coppermine either. What's the S-spec #?

As far as boards are concerned, stick with the 440BX.

 

[jimmysmitty]

What Joe said. The Intel chipset will be the best. If that truly is a coppermine it would probably OC well too.

 

[elgummo]

Thanx for the replies, I got the CPU name and Mhz from a gentoo live CD, the owner of the PC had no idea what it was.

These are the numbers on the outside if the CPU (in the platic encasing which has "pentium III" on the back):
533EB/256/133/1.65V S1
00020733-0390 COSTA RICA
i(encircled "m" symbol followed by the copyright symbol) '99 SL3N6
This is the number printed on the CPU chip itself:
L952A261

Having looked these number up, it seems this "533EB/256/133/" part should tell me it's a 533Mhz Coppermine. The coice is pretty clear then it seems

Kind of strange though that gentoo gave me a wrong speed on the newer type, the katmai was reported correctly.

I'm going to go with the coppermine/intel combo then, thanx for the pointers guys, much apreciated .

 

[joefriday]

The reason why the coppermine came out as a 400MHz CPU is that it must be running on a board that cannot accept 133 bus processors. That 533MHz Coppermine has a 4x mulitiplier, so if it is put on a 440BX board that cannot recognize 133 fsb (some could, some could not, if they could they were then running out of spec b/c the 440BX was never meant to run at 133 fsb, and so the AGP bus was overclocked, requiring either a card that could operate in the overclocked AGP slot (most Nvidias at that time could) or a PCI graphics card, as miraculously, the 440BX chipset had the correct divider for the PCI bus, meaning that at 133MHz fsb, and PCI cards would not be overclocked at all), the board would default it to 100MHz fsb, ending up with a 400MHz coppermine CPU.

Either way, the coppermine runs quit a bit cooler, and the integrated L2 cache makes it quite speedy over the previous Katmai. I think that even at 400MHz, the coppermine should beat, or at least equal, the Katmai at 500MHz.

Good Luck

 

[Wisecracker]

I think the VIA Apollo Pro133 is the way for you to go ... I'm not certain about your specific version but the initial 440BX was limited to a 100-MHz system bus.

The 'EB' designation on the SL3N6 means that the CPU had a bus speed of 133MHz with ATC - or Advanced Transfer Cache - meaning that the L2 ran at the CPU speed ...

 

[elgummo]

Indeed, fitting the Coppermine to the VIA motherboard did indeed give me the correct Mhz for it. So thats what I'm currently running it on: VIA+Coppermine+384 MB PC133 Ram. I just installed a bare minimum debian along with the needed servers. I have to say it's running alot smoother then I expected.

Thanx everyone;

 

[MU_Engineer]

Indeed, fitting the Coppermine to the VIA motherboard did indeed give me the correct Mhz for it. So thats what I'm currently running it on: VIA+Coppermine+384 MB PC133 Ram. I just installed a bare minimum debian along with the needed servers. I have to say it's running alot smoother then I expected.

Thanx everyone;

It should run just fine. I got a few systems out of the junk pile and one of them was an i810 unit with a Celeron 533 (Medocino) and 256 MB RAM. It ran Debian Lenny just fine, but I swapped the Celeron 533 out for a Celeron 900 (Coppermine) that was in a dead Apollo Pro 133 mobo I found as well. It's quite a bit faster and does basic desktop work and plays back video (it's my HTPC) about as well as any other computer I have, which speaks volumes about the efficiency of Debian as my other units are a X2 4200+/4 GB RAM and a C2D U7500/3 GB RAM.