How do I detect CPU Speed?

[jonssonj]

Hello!

I was rather confused when I ran the ATA3.driver preferences program from Elbox. It shows the type of accelerator you have in your computer. On my computer it showed that I have 603e/160 060/50, but I ordered the 603e/210 from Vesalia. How do I determine the speed for sure of the 603e processor?

/Jörgen

[Karlos]

Dont even bother using the values reported by the bppcs' firmware. They are just values written into the flashrom and there is no guarentee they are correct. The actual speed is determined by your ppc's clock crystal and a multiplier, both of which are set in hardware and not adjustable from software.

If you want to know for sure, you need to check your crystals on the bvision and also know what clock multiplier is used on the ppc. The multiplier is tricky to judge, there are 4 surface mounted resistors just below the crystal that determine it. I can't remember of the top of my head how they are configured, but you can find out (search goodgle for "blizzard ppc overclock").

Alternatively, have a look under the PPC heatsink to see what the ppc chip is rated at. If it's 200MHz+ you can be reasonably sure it's not a 160MHz version :-)

[jonssonj]

Thanks! My card is a 210MHz...    YES!!!!!

/Jörgen

[odin]

Hmmmmmm....I think you *can* detect the correct clockspeed by software. At least I first had a 160MHz Bliz (66MHz bus) which was very unstable. So I sent it back to P5 (well...twice....due to them {bleep}ing up, even back then their support was horrible ;-)), and they changed the busspeed to 50MHz and changed the multiplier so in the end my clockspeed was 175MHz. And both clockspeeds were correctly reported by some system info tool. Can't remember which one though.

[Piru]

I was rather confused when I ran the ATA3.driver preferences program from Elbox. It shows the type of accelerator you have in your computer. On my computer it showed that I have 603e/160 060/50, but I ordered the 603e/210 from Vesalia. How do I determine the speed for sure of the 603e processor?

newppcgetattr.lha
This program (newppcgetattr/test) read the PLL multiplier (from the hardware HID1 register, or by querying ppc.library, and working around some old bug, if present), and queries the CPU speed from ppc.library (also ppclibemu works), and then calculates the busspeed.

Both ppc.library (PUP) and powerpc.library (WOS) calculate the CPU speed by timing short loop, so CPU speed measurement is always accurate.

If 160MHz is reported, the card you've been sold really is 160MHz, or is defect.

[EDIT Ok, the card appears to be 210MHz indeed. Elbox's SW just sucks eggs, I guess... No news there.]

[Piru]

Dont even bother using the values reported by the bppcs' firmware. They are just values written into the flashrom and there is no guarentee they are correct.

That's not true. At bootup ppc.library calculates the CPU clockspeed, and then uses PLL multiplier (hw) to divide the blockspeed to get busspeed.

Old ppc.library had a bug in PPCGetAttr PPCINFOTAG_CPUPLL however (PLL was reported in upper 4 bits not lower 4 bits, that is >>28 was missing). To my knowlege, PPCINFOTAG_CPUCLOCK has always reported correct value.

Often the "problems calculating PPC busspeed" were in fact programmer's inability to read documentation. Many times PLL was considered direct multiplier, when it in fact is index to CPU specific multiplier table.

Naturally this was blamed on ppc.library bugs, rather than actually consulting the documentation. For example one of the DOOM PowerUP ports had speed issues because it could not determine busspeed. The problem was blamed on ppc.library...

[Karlos]

It that's true, why does my 240MHz version (the chip is a 240MHz rated part, 60MHz xtal, 4x multiplier) fails to report the correct speed with at least 4 different revisions of the firmware?

It always falls back to reporting 160MHz, but I can quite assure you it is a 240MHz card :-?

[Piru]

@Karlos
Try newppcgetattr.lha

What does it output, exactly?

[Karlos]

Piru wrote:
@Karlos
Try newppcgetattr.lha

What does it output, exactly?

Okies, I will try it when I get home.