So just wondering, with my K6-3 do I have to stay at 256mb or can I go to 768mb like the board supports?
The board states it only caches 256mb of ram with its 1024k L2 Cache
If your chipset is VIA MVP3 then you will see some performance loss, if it is ALI Aladdin V then you wont see much performance loss.
Going by the cachable range your chipset is VIA MVP3?
New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.
Staying under 256 MB means that all memory will be under a 3-level cache system, going over it means that excesso memory will be using only 2 levels of cache. From what I've read there is no steep performance loss from going over cacheable memory, but I'm not sure you'd ever need more than 256MB on a Win9x/Win2k system anyway, and a K6-3 isn't the ideal platform for Windows XP.
yea MVP3 and L3 is off, it was unable with it on, I think my board has damaged SRAM chips so the external L3 is off
wrote:yea MVP3 and L3 is off, it was unable with it on, I think my board has damaged SRAM chips so the external L3 is off
Well then maxing the memory wont hurt the performance at all. (In theory, in reality you have to bench to be sure)
New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.
The K6 chips with on-die L2 cache up to 4GB RAM themselves.
so no worries then ok
If you plan to overclock your FSB, you might have improved stability if you disable the motherboard's cache, especially if maxing out the motherboard's memory.
Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.
Bench it just to make sure.
I tried installing some 256MB modules on a Tyan VIA MVP3 board and found that while it ran, it became very slow for some reason. The difference was immediately obvious in memtest86.
I can only assume that the BIOS was doing something strange in response to the amount of memory that was installed. As long as I used 128MB or smaller modules, it performed fine.
In the case of that board, it's documentation only claimed to support 128MB modules.
Weird shit happens if you install RAM modules that aren't supported, just because it boots does not mean it works.
PC#1: K6-III+ 400 | 512MB | Geforce4 | Voodoo1 | SB Live | AWE64 | GUS PNP Pro
PC#2: 486DX2-66 | 64MB | Riva128 | AWE64 | GUS PNP | PAS16
PC#3: 386DX-40 | 32MB | CL-GD5434 | SB Pro | GUS MAX | PAS16
Think you know your games music? Show us: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=37532
Try telling that to modern day software developers.
wrote:Weird shit happens if you install RAM modules that aren't supported, just because it boots does not mean it works.
It should be tested regardless of whether the book says it works, in case it has a similar performance issue as the board that I mentioned (which has the same chipset). Owner's manuals can both be overambitious and overcautious at times, or unwilling to commit on things that weren't available at the time of production. They shouldn't be completely trusted whether you are inside or outside of what they recommend.
I can't remember how late a BIOS I was running on that board - I know some later hacked BIOSes exist for it so I might try that sometime.
