anyone has VP3 board experience? \ VOGONS

anyone has VP3 board experience?

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First post, by noshutdown

Posted on 2013-07-23, 06:52

noshutdown Offline

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i just got one and not sure if its working or broken, and i want to know if it supports 256mb dimms(the smallest i have) or not.
the model is superpower v586a and i couldn't find its manual, but manuals of several other VP3 based boards(from dfi, epox, tmc, tyan and probably others) all claimed that they only support 128mb dimms, can someone confirm this?

Reply 1 of 4, by kokornov

Posted on 2013-07-23, 14:40

kokornov Offline

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VP3 doesn't support 256mbit chips density. So the maximum it can eat is 256mb 16-chip dimms with 16Mx8 organization (they are marked on eBay as "Low density"). Anyway dimms with higher chip density should work fine, the board just won't be able to detect their full capacity (i.e. 256mb 8-chip dimms are likely to detect as 128mb or even 64mb).

EDIT: oops mistake in organization

Last edited by kokornov on 2013-07-25, 19:35. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 2 of 4, by noshutdown

Posted on 2013-07-25, 01:56

noshutdown Offline

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kokornov wrote:
VP3 doesn't support 256mbit chips density. So the maximum it can eat is 256mb 16-chip dimms with 32Mx4 organization (they are marked on eBay as "Low density"). Anyway dimms with higher chip density should work fine, the board just won't be able to detect their full capacity (i.e. 256mb 8-chip dimms are likely to detect as 128mb or even 64mb).

thanks man, i've already got two 128mb dimms(8-chips single sided dimm so they are 128mbits chips), and it powered on! unfortunately its expected to only cache 128mb of ram with its 512kb cache.

Reply 3 of 4, by kokornov

Posted on 2013-07-25, 19:45

kokornov Offline

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Cacheable range depends not only on L2 size, but also on tag RAM type: http://pclinks.xtreemhost.com/chipsets_pentium.htm#pentium (see "VIA VP, VP2, VP2/97, VPX, VPX/97, VP3 L2 Cacheable Range" table).

Reply 4 of 4, by noshutdown

Posted on 2013-07-26, 01:22

noshutdown Offline

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kokornov wrote:
Cacheable range depends not only on L2 size, but also on tag RAM type: http://pclinks.xtreemhost.com/chipsets_pentium.htm#pentium (see "VIA VP, VP2, VP2/97, VPX, VPX/97, VP3 L2 Cacheable Range" table).

i've seen that, unfortunately the board seems to have only one 8bit tagram chip. 😒

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