the 64mb limit applies "mostly" to early intel chipsets. Meaning if you put more than 64mb of ram into that system you would lose performance.

Basically if you have a high quality motherboard you wont have this issue. For example, I have a dual socket 7 with an intel chipset but the board was manufactured by Tyan. Tyan is one of those companies that make server/workstation boards and they make sure that that their board will cache more than 64mb. In fact, I just put a 512kb cache card in it and it will cache a full 512mb of ram.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/cache/charCa … eability-c.html

that link goes a bit more in depth, and should answer any more questions.

Actually, all of the Socket 7 and older chipsets have this limitation to varying degrees and it's usually related to the mobo cache's tag RAM capacity. There is a lot of info out there if you search for "cacheable RAM" of a specific chipset.

Once the CPU manufacturers took over L2 caching, they effectively took away this limit. Pentium II "Deschutes" and AMD K6-III can cache their full RAM address space of 4GB. Pentium II "Klamath" however has a 512MB limit.

swaaye wrote:

Pentium II "Klamath" however has a 512MB limit.

So this means no more than 512mb ram on a Klamath system then? Strange....

sgt76 wrote:

swaaye wrote:

Pentium II "Klamath" however has a 512MB limit.

So this means no more than 512mb ram on a Klamath system then? Strange....

But an improvement non the less! 😁
And anyway, Deschutes > Klamath 😜

I thought I read somewhere that Klamath has the best cache ram chips of any PII - better than Deschutes?

Thank you for all of your answers!
Mine is Triton II, so according to the link above it will support >64MB of cacheable RAM. But unfortunately 64MB RAM is the maximum allowed by the EDO RAM slot (4x16MB). There is actually a SDRAM slot, but it takes 5V SDRAMs which are very rare 🙁

Edit: My PC's manual stated that the maximum cacheable RAM is just 64MB, although it uses Triton II. Is it abnormal? (The manual book page is attached)[/img]

Maybe it lacks the necessary amount of TAG RAM to cover more than 64 MB. One some boards this is upgradeable.

Odd that your board won't take 32MB EDO simms, those were pretty common back in those days (though the 16MB simms were all over the place).
And in general you could say that virtually all (non-Super) Socket 7's (and Socket 5's for that matter) have a maximum cacheable area of 64MB, except for the i430HX.

Yeah 430HX boards sometimes only have the tag RAM for 64MB cacheable. And it's not always socketed.

sgt76 wrote:

So this means no more than 512mb ram on a Klamath system then? Strange....

You could use more but it would be uncached above 512MB. Klamath chips were usually in EDO boards and 512MB was extremely rare and ultra expensive at the time. This was '97. 64-128MB was probably the most common range.

Intel was still trying to sell Pentium Pro chips at the time. I think they initially planned to gimp the P2's cacheable limit. PPro caches 4GB. But the gimping went away right after Klamath.

Edit: My PC's manual stated that the maximum cacheable RAM is just 64MB, although it uses Triton II. Is it abnormal?

Which chipset do you have, though? The 430HX was the Triton II, but the 430VX was also often erroneously called the Triton II. The fact that you have a DIMM slot makes me think you have the VX, which is a whole different animal from the HX.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

Edit: My PC's manual stated that the maximum cacheable RAM is just 64MB, although it uses Triton II. Is it abnormal?

Which chipset do you have, though? The 430HX was the Triton II, but the 430VX was also often erroneously called the Triton II. The fact that you have a DIMM slot makes me think you have the VX, which is a whole different animal from the HX.

He did mention his DIMM slots were 5V only, so it's probably not SDRAM but somekind of EDO DIMM?
Though I've never seen i430HX with DIMM slots, that doesn't mean they don't exist.
i430HX doesn't support SDRAM, but perhaps it does support DIMM's if they are EDO DIMM's 😉