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First post, by nemail

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Hi

I'm currently struggling with my experimental 486 DX4-100 (overdrive) build.
Please see the attached speedsys results. The only thing I've made was to set "external chache scheme" in the bios from "write back" to "write through". The speedsys with the higher memory bandwidth is the one with "write through".

1) why is L2 missing in the faster results screenshot?
2) isn't write back supposed to make things faster?
3) isn't this quite slow for 486DX4-100 with 72 pin FPM memory?

thanks!

Reply 1 of 1, by elianda

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Write Back is not necessarily faster than write through. It adds additional latency time when data from the CPU should be written to main memory. If the code is arranged the way that it takes write back into account preventing unnecessary flushes of cache lines to main memory then it can be much faster.
On my tests with a 486DX2-66 with WT and WB it showed that most DOS games run a few percent faster with WT. However on a DX4-100 the clock is higher and thus latency time lower. This favors WB mode.

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