IDT Winchip 2-3D

For the sake of putting the Winchip 2's incredible backwards compatibility to the test, AnandTech took the 225MHz Winchip 2 used in the review, and popped it in a few of the more popular Socket-7 HX and TX boards of the time. Even without any BIOS upgrades, the systems booted up just fine, although in most cases the processor was detected as a "66MHz CPU" or a "80486DX at 66MHz."

Obtaining BIOS support from most manufacturers for the Winchip 2 was a bit of a problem, even the highly supported ABIT AX5 (Socket-7 TX motherboard) failed to properly identify the speed of the Winchip 2, this was after AnandTech flashed the BIOS on the two year old motherboard to the latest revision on ABIT's Taiwanese website. The performance of the processor was not hindered by this oversight, however it can be a bit annoying, so before venturing into a Winchip 2 purchase, be sure that you can obtain a BIOS upgrade for your current motherboard with support for the processor.

AnandTech also installed the Winchip 2 in a more recently manufactured motherboard, the FIC PA-2013, which properly recognized and configured the processor as an IDT Winchip 2 running at 225MHz, however benchmarks improved by only a few tenths of a point when running at 100MHz x 2.0 on the PA-2013 in comparison to the 75MHz x 3.0 setting on the older AX5 TX motherboard. Bringing us to the next point, overclocking. The Winchip 2 225 simply would not overclock at all, even with increased cooling, the 240MHz setting was a possibility but definitely a dream before a reality as the test system would crash before starting Windows 98. Considering that you're going to be spending less than $50 for a Winchip 2 running at 225MHz, you can't really complain about not being able to overclock the chip to 240MHz.

The Socket-7/Super7 Test System Configuration was as follows:

• AMD K6 233, AMD K6-2 350, AMD K6-3 450 (engineering sample), IDT Winchip 2 225
• ABIT AX5 Revision 2.23 (TX Chipset 512KB L2 cache) FIC PA-2013 w/ 2MB L2 Cache
• 64MB PC100 SDRAM
• Western Digital Caviar AC35100 - UltraATA
• Matrox Millennium G200 AGP Video Card (8MB)
• Matrox Millennium PCI Video Card (4MB - for TX tests)

The Pentium II comparison system differed only in terms of the processor and motherboard in which case the following components were used:

• Intel Celeron 300, Intel Celeron 300A, Intel Pentium II 400, Intel Pentium II 450
• ABIT BH6 Pentium II BX Motherboard

The following drivers were common to both test systems:

The benchmark suite consisted of the following applications:

• Ziff Davis Winstone 98 under Windows 98
• Ziff Davis Winstone 99 under Windows 98
• Ziff Davis Winbench 99 under Windows 98
• Quake 2 v3.17 using demo1.dm2 and Brett "3 Fingers" Jacobs Crusher.dm2 demo

All Winstone tests were run at 1024 x 768 x 16 bit color, all gaming performance tests were run at 800 x 600 x 16 bit color. 3DNow! support was enabled.

For the in-depth gaming performance tests Brett "3 Fingers" Jacobs Crusher.dm2 demo was used to simulate the worst case scenario in terms of Quake 2 performance, the point at which your frame rate will rarely drop any further. In contrast, the demo1.dm2 demo was used to simulate the ideal situation in terms of Quake 2 performance, the average high point for your frame rate in normal play. The range covered by the two benchmarks can be interpreted as the range in which you can expect average frame rates during gameplay.