bertrammatrix wrote on 2025-08-20, 15:52:

[...]

I never realized it supported the use of only one SIMM, yikes. Imagine the performance penalty if you did that AND used the onboard video.... I suppose in some applications (office/low cost/industrial?) a minimalistic setup like that could make sense

Technically: no way. You'd be better off getting a much older system with full memory bandwidth.

But commercially... most people chose (and choose) systems based on price and CPU speed. No matter what else was in there and what effect that had on performance. The cheapest system with a fast CPU would be one with an integrated VGA chipset and the cheapest way to implement that would be with a single SIMM 😦

Still, even though Packard Bell was notorious for making exactly this kind of system, they never shipped Pentium systems with less than two SIMMs. No doubt some cowboys did though.

dionb wrote on 2025-08-20, 19:44:

Still, even though Packard Bell was notorious for making exactly this kind of system, they never shipped Pentium systems with less than two SIMMs. No doubt some cowboys did though.

I suppose it was priced to make this unviable, but imagine if cheap PC manufacturers refreshed their PC line up in mid-1995 by putting the (Socket 3) Pentium OverDrive on their new 486 PCs and calling them Pentium systems and getting to use the actual Pentium branding, rather than having to settle for a "586" (using the Am5x86 or Cyrix 5x86)