Re: VIA C3

Thus spake Gerrit K?hn (gerrit_at_pmp.uni-hannover.de) [18/06/03 11:00]:
> > If you have a 'Samuel2' core, then you have a Samuel2 core.  It's neither
> > Ezra nor Ezra-T -- those two are the successors to Samuel2.
> 
> Well, all I can say is, that I bought it as "Ezra" and there is "Ezra"
> printed on it. FreeBSD identifies it as Samuel2, though.

And I bought my Ezra as a Nehemiah.

Via (VIA) has no clear distinction between the cores, even though there are
some pretty big differences (full speed FPU, SSE support).  It would have
made sense to call it C3 then C4 then C5, or some other way to distinguish
between the different chips.  Resellers seem to have problems figuring out
which chip it is that they're selling.

All I know is that the product line went:

Samuel -> Samuel2 -> Ezra -> Ezra-T -> Nehemiah

However, one page seems to indicate that the product line went more like:

Samuel (C5A) -> Samuel2 (C5B) -> Ezra/Samuel3 (C5C) -> Ezra-T (C5N) -> Eden -> Nehemiah

where Eden is really just a bundled chip (with a specific VIA north/south
bridge).

So maybe they do have a way to distinguish the chips.  Dunno -- at the very
least, it's not marketed.  And the Samuel2 is definitely not an Ezra.

FWIW, the best way I've seen to figure out which chip you're using (at least
between Ezra/Ezra-T and Nehemiah) is to look at the clocking -- Ezra/Ezra-T
seems to be 100*10.0, whereas Nehemiah seems to be 133*7.5.