I don't think any of these chipsets has the required signals to drive 4 GB memory. The datasheets are clear: 1 GB buffered memory in 4 DIMMs for the BX and 2 GB buffered memory in 4 DIMMs for the GX. For more you can try a workstation with the 840 which uses the the MRH (with RDRAM on MECs), or something using the Reliance ServerSet chipset (up to 16 GB SDRAM). I don't remember seeing a Slot 1 motherboard with the Apollo Pro 266/266T but these also do 4 GB.

4GB in anything with a 440BX or 440GX chipset is plainly impossible, the memory controller just isn't up to the task. However, if all you want is a lot of RAM with a Slot 1 system, your only logical choice is a Tyan Thunder 2500:

http://www.tyan.com/archive/products/html/thunder2500.html

Serverworks HE chipset, 133FSB, Dual Slot 1, 8 DIMM slots supporting 8GB of RAM (Fully Addressable with a PAE-Aware OS), SDRAM interleaving giving near DDR levels of memory bandwidth, 64-bit PCI and 66mhz PCI slots, onboard SCSI, onboard Intel 10/100 LAN, onboard SB-compatible Ensoniq audio, 3.3/1.5v AGP Pro slot, and an ISA slot just for good measure. Its only downsides are that the board is a bit flaky without the right hardware, AGP performance on Serverworks chipsets is frankly god awful, and no one has ever attempted to run Tualatins on it. Also, its rare, very nearly as rare as the Supermicro P6DGH or the Asus P/I P65UP8, you're best off scavenging them from old SGI Zx10 Workstation systems if you want to find one.

Who said p65up8? You got one for sale? I have an P6DGH i might trade for it

That said, my 440GX system has 2gb of ram (4x 512mb) It will not take higher.

Yea, that Tyan board is pretty awesome, but I paid only 15 dollars for my lesser Tyan Thunderbolt - http://www.tyan.com/archive/products/html/thunderbolt.html
And that's with the two 1000MHz Coppermines and 2GB of ECC PC100.

An upgrade I've been considering is 133MHz FSB 1.13GHz PGA370 units with slotkets and ECC PC133. Not sure if that will mess the timings up on the AGP or PCI bus though...

I like how there's still an ISA slot with all of that high tech goodness. I hope to one day own a dual slot 2 board like that. I've got the Xeons ready and waiting 🤣

Dant wrote:

4GB in anything with a 440BX or 440GX chipset is plainly impossible, the memory controller just isn't up to the task. However, i […]
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4GB in anything with a 440BX or 440GX chipset is plainly impossible, the memory controller just isn't up to the task. However, if all you want is a lot of RAM with a Slot 1 system, your only logical choice is a Tyan Thunder 2500:

http://www.tyan.com/archive/products/html/thunder2500.html

2007_tyan_thunder_2500_0001.jpg

Serverworks HE chipset, 133FSB, Dual Slot 1, 8 DIMM slots supporting 8GB of RAM (Fully Addressable with a PAE-Aware OS), SDRAM interleaving giving near DDR levels of memory bandwidth, 64-bit PCI and 66mhz PCI slots, onboard SCSI, onboard Intel 10/100 LAN, onboard SB-compatible Ensoniq audio, 3.3/1.5v AGP Pro slot, and an ISA slot just for good measure. Its only downsides are that the board is a bit flaky without the right hardware, AGP performance on Serverworks chipsets is frankly god awful, and no one has ever attempted to run Tualatins on it. Also, its rare, very nearly as rare as the Supermicro P6DGH or the Asus P/I P65UP8, you're best off scavenging them from old SGI Zx10 Workstation systems if you want to find one.

When you say AGP performance is godawful, how awful are we talking? Would it make a difference for 3DFX cards that only use the AGP slot as a glorified PCI slot? Also, is that ISA slot DOS compatible?

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

When you say AGP performance is godawful, how awful are we talking? Would it make a difference for 3DFX cards that only use the AGP slot as a glorified PCI slot? Also, is that ISA slot DOS compatible?

Anandtech did a review of the HEsl chipset (which is kind of a refined version of the HE, AFAIK) back in 2001 http://www.anandtech.com/show/715/7 Their conclusion pretty much was that the AGP was awful; 40% slower with a Geforce 2 GTS than every other test platform they had at the time. Maybe there were later AGP drivers, and maybe the HE didn't have that exact problem, but this is making SS7 ALI boards look like they have good AGP support 🤣 I'm guessing its bad enough 3DFX cards would be affected as well, TBH

Every ISA slot is "DOS compatible". You're probably actually thinking of ISA DMA, in which case, it is!

The problem was with the HEsl, I don't think the WS (aka HE+CIOB-G) was affected (the only implementations I know are the Tyan Thunder 2500 motherboards and the HP p-class A6034 and x-class A1280 workstations). But it seems HEsl was also patched in XP SP2: http://ixbtlabs.com/articles/pentium4xeonsmp/

manbearpig wrote:

So I saw the 8gb in a 939 system thread, and was wondering if anyone has tried 1gb ECC pc133 sticks in their 440BX/GX system. I have a GX system that's a 2GB currently but it would be crazy to get it up to 4. Even crazier if I could find the Tualatin adapters to put my dual 1.4s in...

Yes, in the 440GX datasheet wrote that max memory size - 2GB. But in the VIA694X/T datasheet
wrote same max memory size, but really these chipsets keep 1GB memory modules. I didn't check
full memory size (4x1GB), but at least 1GB stack-reg-ECC module(Kingston KTH8265/1024) works
without problem. I checked it in the my Tyan Tiger 200(VT82C694X) and Tyan Tiger 200T(VT82C694T)
motherboards.

For you info, examples of Slot1 Systems with VT82C694X north bridge -Tyan Tiger133(Dual board),
ASUS P3V4X.

On i440GX systems. Unfortunately I have no i440GX motherboard, but probably I440GX also will
work with 1GB modules, at least I saw item(at the ebay) Slot1 motherboard with 1GB module(archive
pictures from ebay are attached).

Please remember that only stacked("double floor") 1GB modules are supported.

Even if the VIA 694X chipset can take 1GB DIMMs, I doubt you would be able to use all of it even with PAE enabled. This reminds of AMD K7 which supported PAE but no chipset that actually supported 36-bit addressing was probably ever released (I think API and Hotrail was going to release some before they cancelled their projects)

yuhong wrote:

Even if the VIA 694X chipset can take 1GB DIMMs, I doubt you would be able to use all of it even with PAE enabled. This reminds of AMD K7 which supported PAE but no chipset that actually supported 36-bit addressing was probably ever released (I think API and Hotrail was going to release some before they cancelled their projects)

VIA694X/T doesn't support PAE. Even ServerSet LE-3(that has official support for 1GB SDRAM
modules) doesn't suppot PAE. But with lucky you probably will able to get 3.2-3.5GB of RAM
(1GB x 4) or 3GB(1GB x 3). I guess it is not too bad:)

The Serverworks chipsets were intended for servers. Servers don't care about anything beyond basic video so it's not surprising their AGP sucked.

The tech docs for VIA 694T say 2GB max and 8 banks max. It is not -advertised- as supporting Registered RAM at all. Only ECC.
I think part of the reason for the 2Gb limit is that 1Gb modules only came as Registered at that time.
.

PCBONEZ wrote:

The tech docs for VIA 694T say 2GB max and 8 banks max. It is not -advertised- as supporting Registered RAM at all. Only ECC.
I think part of the reason for the 2Gb limit is that 1Gb modules only came as Registered at that time.
.

The VIA694X/T and even 693A (693A with a limit for memory density) really have
excellent support for registered memory. My boards ASUS P3V4X, Tyan Tiger 200,
Tyan Tiger 200T works flawlessly with registered memory. And even more - registered
modules even more desired, since these modules reduce load to address lines of chipset.
The VIA datasheet has the description about registered memory settings(page 27-28).
I attached datasheet.

Support for 1GB memory is not written in datasheet, but it really works. BTW ASUS
CU4X-DLS even has official(!) 4GB memory size support

PC133 SDRAM / VC133 VCM / HSDRAM Support: Equipped with four
Dual Inline Memory Module (DIMM) sockets to support up to 4GB of memory
using Intel PC133/100-compliant or NEC’s VC133-compliant Virtual Channel
(VC) SDRAMs, and Enhanced Memory System’s High-speed DRAMs
(HSDRAMs).

i386 wrote:

The VIA694X/T and even 693A (693A with a limit for memory density) really have excellent support for registered memory. My boar […]
Show full quote

PCBONEZ wrote:

The tech docs for VIA 694T say 2GB max and 8 banks max. It is not -advertised- as supporting Registered RAM at all. Only ECC.
I think part of the reason for the 2Gb limit is that 1Gb modules only came as Registered at that time.
.

The VIA694X/T and even 693A (693A with a limit for memory density) really have
excellent support for registered memory. My boards ASUS P3V4X, Tyan Tiger 200,
Tyan Tiger 200T works flawlessly with registered memory. And even more - registered
modules even more desired, since these modules reduce load to address lines of chipset.
The VIA datasheet has the description about registered memory settings(page 27-28).
I attached datasheet.

Support for 1GB memory is not written in datasheet, but it really works. BTW ASUS
CU4X-DLS even has official(!) 4GB memory size support

I know. That's why I stressed -advertised-

For PC133 1Gb registered pulls about 10.6 watts/stick and 512Mb unregistered pulls about 4.1 watts/stick so just because it will run on a board that doesn't say it's okay doesn't mean you aren't overloading the VR or traces or something. The numbers are from Kingston datasheets.

That it's been tested on one or even 20+ boards and it was okay doesn't make it valid to say it is safe on -all- boards.
About the time you do someone with a board no one has tested will show up and fry their board because it has a weaker VR or thinner traces.
.

PCBONEZ wrote:

I know. That's why I stressed -advertised- […]
Show full quote

I know. That's why I stressed -advertised-

For PC133 1Gb registered pulls about 10.6 watts/stick and 512Mb unregistered pulls about 4.1 watts/stick so just because it will run on a board that doesn't say it's okay doesn't mean you aren't overloading the VR or traces or something. The numbers are from Kingston datasheets.

That it's been tested on one or even 20+ boards and it was okay doesn't make it valid to say it is safe on -all- boards.
About the time you do someone with a board no one has tested will show up and fry their board because it has a weaker VR or thinner traces.
.

Problems like that can be found pretty quickly during tested if the board is not in the case, simple thermal camera or good old finger test does the trick. Have yet to run into the issue where the board traces were not to the grade when it came to current loads except for cheap crappy adapters from China that easily blue smoked.

VR issues can be nasty if not treated early especially on modern hardware (graphics cards and cheap boards).

i386 wrote:

VIA694X/T doesn't support PAE. Even ServerSet LE-3(that has official support for 1GB SDRAM modules) doesn't suppot PAE. But with […]
Show full quote

yuhong wrote:

Even if the VIA 694X chipset can take 1GB DIMMs, I doubt you would be able to use all of it even with PAE enabled. This reminds of AMD K7 which supported PAE but no chipset that actually supported 36-bit addressing was probably ever released (I think API and Hotrail was going to release some before they cancelled their projects)

VIA694X/T doesn't support PAE. Even ServerSet LE-3(that has official support for 1GB SDRAM
modules) doesn't suppot PAE. But with lucky you probably will able to get 3.2-3.5GB of RAM
(1GB x 4) or 3GB(1GB x 3). I guess it is not too bad:)

Found this pic from about 4 years ago when I had my CUV4X-D + Tualatin 1400 setup still kicking. I remember very well dem 1GB ECC Buffered sticks would get really hot quite easily! Available RAM and memory count speed at POST was heavily dependant on what I was using on the AGP slot. GeForce cards for example would only let me use 3.25GB and make the board take forever to finish POSTing whereas with a G400 I'd have much better results overall. 3.95GB usable is still a good number I say 😀

Question: While using 4Gb in a P3 system is useful in a server with several clients how is it useful for retro gaming?
.

PCBONEZ wrote:

Question: While using 4Gb in a P3 system is useful in a server with several clients how is it useful for retro gaming?
.

As you say, not particularly useful on any way, even less gaming but must of us here get enjoyment out of playing with old shit and we can do it, so why not? 😀

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

PCBONEZ wrote:

Question: While using 4Gb in a P3 system is useful in a server with several clients how is it useful for retro gaming?
.

As you say, not particularly useful on any way, even less gaming but must of us here get enjoyment out of playing with old shit and we can do it, so why not? 😀

I certainly build things that are overkill to play with just because I can.

I'm not much of a gamer though so I don't understand why gamers would be interested in dual P3 with 4Gb or care about the AGP as in some earlier posts.

It's fine. I was just curious why.
.

PCBONEZ wrote:

I certainly build things that are overkill to play with just because I can. […]
Show full quote

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

PCBONEZ wrote:

Question: While using 4Gb in a P3 system is useful in a server with several clients how is it useful for retro gaming?
.

As you say, not particularly useful on any way, even less gaming but must of us here get enjoyment out of playing with old shit and we can do it, so why not? 😀

I certainly build things that are overkill to play with just because I can.

I'm not much of a gamer though so I don't understand why gamers would be interested in dual P3 with 4Gb or care about the AGP as in some earlier posts.

It's fine. I was just curious why.
.

Haha, no problem buddy, it's all fine here too. Maybe it's just the challenge of building and getting to use an oddball setup that would've costed a good share of money back and was probably most people's wet dreams back when a kid like me probably had no more than a P3 500 at most or an MMX with 64megs and onboard video for like 7 years. 🤣