I recently got a 386/40 system. It has a Biostar motherboard with a Macronix chipset that has 8KB cache built into the chipset but no external cache memory. The board currently has 8x1MB 80ns 30-Pin SIMMs. Will replacing the 80ns SIMMs with 60ns SIMMs make that much of difference, since the board only has that 8KB cache?
Depends if you can set memory wait states in BIOS. Usually faster chips could work with tighter timings.
Requests are also possible... /msg kixs
kixs wrote on 2020-12-04, 19:02:Depends if you can set memory wait states in BIOS. Usually faster chips could work with tighter timings.
The board does have options for wait states.
If the BIOS has memory timing options (not all do) with the 60ns RAM you will be able to tighten them. The performance gain will be measurable and big, especially when having a small cache.
Interesting m/b, it doesn't even have sockets for L2 cache or are they empty? If it's the latter you can gain even more by adding some.
You can try faster timings even with 80ns memory but it will probably hang at boot. Sometimes chips were actually faster and even "80ns" would work with fastest timings. I suppose you don't have any faster ones at hand... to swap and test.
Requests are also possible... /msg kixs
Here is a link to my original post on this board which contains a picture of the board.
If that is the photo of your board... the memory looks like 70ns (9-chip simms). The 3-chip simms are harder to read, but looks like 60ns!?
PS:
Looks like we joined Vogons on the same day 🤣
Requests are also possible... /msg kixs
kixs wrote on 2020-12-04, 20:11:If that is the photo of your board... the memory looks like 70ns (9-chip simms). The 3-chip simms are harder to read, but looks like 60ns!?
PS:
Looks like we joined Vogons on the same day 🤣
The board originally had 70ns SIMMs. 4 1MB & 4 256KB SIMMS. I swapped out the memory with 8 1MB 80ns 30-Pin SIMMS from another board as they were all identical and prefer all the same chips for my setups if I can do that.
My join date is one day after yours, accounting for the time zone difference:)
I decided to order some 60ns memory and give it try. I will do some before and after benchmarks and post the results.
jasa1063 wrote on 2020-12-04, 22:15:I decided to order some 60ns memory and give it try. I will do some before and after benchmarks and post the results.
I got side tracked for a bit over the holidays, but here results of the 60ns vs 80ns in my 386/40 using SpeedSys. I was able to lower the latency to the lowest possible setting with the 60ns memory installed. 2 CAS read and 1 CAS write. I had to run with Auto Configure with the 80ns memory. There was a pretty decent performance increase as a result.
jasa1063 wrote on 2020-12-31, 01:06:2 CAS read and 1 CAS write. I had to run with Auto Configure with the 80ns memory. There was a pretty decent performance increase as a result.
Seems like you swapped the images. Currently, it shows 30MB/s write speed for 80ns modules and 25MB/s write speed for 60ns modules.
mkarcher wrote on 2020-12-31, 10:49:jasa1063 wrote on 2020-12-31, 01:06:2 CAS read and 1 CAS write. I had to run with Auto Configure with the 80ns memory. There was a pretty decent performance increase as a result.
Seems like you swapped the images. Currently, it shows 30MB/s write speed for 80ns modules and 25MB/s write speed for 60ns modules.
Sorry, my bad. I updated the descriptions accordingly. Thanks for the heads up.
