Memory Interleaving should be available by default in the DFI K6XV3+/66's BIOS, on boards which have this option disabled (and not visible) in BIOS setup you can always use George E. Breese's Memory Interleave Enabler 0.15 which is also available on my website (soggi.org - tools).

With a AMD K6-2+/K6-III/K6-III+ there shouldn't be a performance decrease as they always increase the Cacheable Area to 4 GiB by degrading the on-board L2 cache to L3 cache with their faster on-chip L2 cache.

kind regards
soggi

soggi wrote on 2022-01-03, 07:30:

Memory Interleaving should be available by default in the DFI K6XV3+/66's BIOS, on boards which have this option disabled (and not visible) in BIOS setup you can always use George E. Breese's Memory Interleave Enabler 0.15 which is also available on my website (soggi.org - tools.

Thanks, I'll give it a try when I get the chance in a few months and report back (this PC is now in storage in another city) 😁
The latest DFI K6XV3+/66 BIOS that I flashed does not have this option, see the screenshots in this post.
Anyway, I do have other VIA MVP3 PCs with me, so I'll test memory interleaving with these.

soggi wrote on 2022-01-03, 07:30:

With a AMD K6-2+/K6-III/K6-III+ there shouldn't be a performance decrease as they always increase the Cacheable Area to 4 GiB by degrading the on-board L2 cache to L3 cache with their faster on-chip L2 cache.

There is a performance hit when using more than 128 MB of RAM or when completely disabling the external (L3) cache. It's not nearly as bad as it is with regular K6-2 chips, but it's still measurable (5 - 10%, depending on the application).

I own the DFI K6XV3+/66 by myself and thought there is a Memory Interleave option!? But last tested it over one decade ago... As said above you can always use Memory Interleave Enabler 0.15 on those VIA chipsets and you'll get a great memory performance hit.

Tested the VIA boards with various memory configurations back then and can't remember such a performance decrease with more memory then standard Cacheable Area...but don't take this for granted.

kind regards
soggi

I just fired up one of my K6-BV3+/66 boards with BIOS version "April 12th 2000" and the Inteleave-option isn´t present, no matter if I populate 1, 2 or 3 RAM slots.

I´m sure I tinkered with this option a lot back in the days, but meanwhile all of my DFI boards are running the latest BIOS.

Probably the manual setting for Interleave has been removed at some point and Interleave is turned on automatically now if more than one RAM sticks are present.

Here´s page 36 of an older manual for K6-BV3+ (without ATA66 support):

https://www.manualslib.de/manual/651649/Dfi-K … us.html?page=36

and the option is clearly there!

majestyk wrote on 2022-01-03, 09:25:

I just fired up one of my K6-BV3+/66 boards with BIOS version "April 12th 2000" and the Inteleave-option isn´t present, no matte […]
Show full quote

I just fired up one of my K6-BV3+/66 boards with BIOS version "April 12th 2000" and the Inteleave-option isn´t present, no matter if I populate 1, 2 or 3 RAM slots.

I´m sure I tinkered with this option a lot back in the days, but meanwhile all of my DFI boards are running the latest BIOS.

Probably the manual setting for Interleave has been removed at some point and Interleave is turned on automatically now if more than one RAM sticks are present.

Here´s page 36 of an older manual for K6-BV3+ (without ATA66 support):

https://www.manualslib.de/manual/651649/Dfi-K … us.html?page=36

and the option is clearly there!

mem_int.JPG

I have an Epox MVP3G which has the interleave option in the BIOS, and I recently did an experiment; I measured the memory bandwidth with SiSoft Sandra, then I disabled interleave in the BIOS and measured again (noticeable reduction even though it has just one RAM module). I then I installed the Via interleave enabler, and the bandwidth tested the same as it did when four way interleave was enabled in the BIOS.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-01-03, 11:18:

... I then I installed the Via interleave enabler, and the bandwidth tested the same as it did when four way interleave was enabled in the BIOS.

That's how it should work, it just enables the same chipset registers like the BIOS option.

kind regards
soggi

soggi wrote on 2022-01-05, 05:33:

That's how it should work, it just enables the same chipset registers like the BIOS option. […]
Show full quote

Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-01-03, 11:18:

... I then I installed the Via interleave enabler, and the bandwidth tested the same as it did when four way interleave was enabled in the BIOS.

That's how it should work, it just enables the same chipset registers like the BIOS option.

kind regards
soggi

Yes. I brought it up because that would be a good way to test if the interleave is enabled by default or not since the option to do it in the CMOS settings has apparently been removed on this motherboard.

Some years ago I did a roundup with via 4in1 and the mvp3 chipset, unlucky I didn't test the version 4.17, but according to my results the best version was the v4.26
Here is the post: Re: VIA 4-in-1 driver experiences

Back in time the general consensus was that the best version was the 4.35.

Just tested it too on a Shuttle SpaceWalker AK32A (VIA KT266A) motherboard (which also has the memory bank interleave option in the BIOS). The Via interleave enabler works too and it gives the same performance. Very nice!
In the following days, I will test it on SS7 on an Azza PT-5VMD motherboard and see how well it works (and if it affects stability or not).

Now I'm actually wondering if maybe something similar also exists for ALI Aladdin V (not sure if that chipset supports bank interleaving, though).

This one?