Trade-off...RAM or Speed?

[stuman74]

Hello,

I have an old notebook computer which has a TX motherboard and a K6-266 on it. I had 64 MB EDO RAM in it and when I would run the benchmark it would do right about where I would expect.

I filled the second ram bank and upgraded it to 128 MB which I would think helps a slow system liek that a lot, but my benchmarks are roughly cut in half!

I recall with the old TX desktop mobos that crossing 64 MB ram kills the cache or something like that. Is that what is happening to me?

Which configuration am I better off? The extra ram or the higher benchmarked score?

Thanks!

 

[MadRat]

Perhaps you put a 5v stick in with a 3.3v stick?

Or maybe lower is simply better. Whats the benchmark?

 

[oldfart]

The TX chipset can not cache more than 64 meg. Putting in more mem will slow it down since Windows is running in uncached space.

 

[stuman74]

They are both 3.3 v edo sodimms.

I ran the Norton SI and the CPU and memory benchmarks on Sandra 2001.

The difference in Norton SI was 78 to 43 in favor of the 64 MB config. The mem bench in Sandra was the same, but the CPU in Sandra was about 20% higher for the 64 MB config again.

 

[toph99]

what oldfart said. the TX could only cache 64mb, and for some backwards reason, windows always uses the uncached space first, which means that you will get poor performance from it.

 

[stuman74]

So am I then better off with LESS ram in this thing?

 

[oldfart]

Strangely enough, yes.

 

[jsbush]

I've got a 430tx motherboard, that I'm goign to use as my backup web server. So what your saying is that it will run better if I use 64megs of ram instead of 128? I'm going to be running win2k server on this (don't forget this is only goign to be a backup).

 

[BA]

sell me the so-dimm! Actually, hrm, wonder what chipset my laptop is...

 

[Mountain]

Tom mentions the 64mb barrier for TX chipsets in his book. buy it.

 

[MadRat]

His "How to Pick Up Chicks" Book mentions the TX chipset? How sexy.

 

[esung]

I had a similar problem with one of the notebook before. Installed a total of 128MB EDO RAM on the notebook, and find out the hugh performance drop, went to check notebook's specs. And cross check with Intel's design docs, and confirmed that TX board can only cache up to 64MB of RAM (it's direct mapped).. so return the extra RAM...

You are better of with just 64MB EDO RAM.

 

[stuman74]

I guess the best bet is to just go and buy another laptop maybe.