Win2k+430TX: To RAM or not to RAM?

[Demon-Xanth]

If you came in here expecting something dirty, you need to clean out your gutters, I think your mind's in there

Here's the deal, I need to upgrade a 430TX based system to Windows 2000, the system currently has 64MB RAM but I can add another 64 MB of RAM (no cost issue)

Here's the deal:
The 430TX chipset will have a signifigant slowdown with more than 64 MB of RAM
Windows 2000 will be slowed down by having 64MB of RAM vs. 128

What'd cause the bigger performance hit? I guess it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Only semi-temporary thing though.

 

[Blain]

"The 256MB maximum memory limit of the TX chipset is blurred by its meager 64MB cacheable memory area which takes us back to the old days of the FX chipset."

"RAM only cacheable up to 64 MB. Hence you should forget about using more than 64 MB RAM, because it will do a performance impact of about 5% and you will not be able to use any RAM error correction."

 

[Agamar]

Why don't you try and see if your board will take a tag ram chip, that will allow you to up that memory to something like 512M...I think it worked for VX chips too. Been a long time though...Didn't even know people still had those boards.

 

[AndyHui]

Both the VX and TX chipsets had a TAGRAM that was not upgradeable.

The HX chipset's TAGRAM was upgradeable. The cacheable limit for the TX chipset is fixed at 64MB.

That being said, you are better off getting more RAM, as uncached RAM is still much faster than hard drive paging.

 

[Peter]

It ain't as bad as it looks. First of all, the RAM isn't entirely uncached, it's just not covered by the mainboard's level of cache. The CPU internal cache(s) will cover all the RAM.

Then of course, as the others said, W2K with not enough, but fully cached RAM is quite a lot worse than using plenty of, but partially L2-uncached RAM. The general rule is, for best performance put just as much RAM in as your applications require, no more.

regards, Peter