Sounds like normal behavior,
Intel vx doing Intel vx things.

If you can EDO is easier to work with.

Single 64mb VX specific SDRAM IS MASSIVE with a double decker of low density chips on both sides.

8 and 16mb sdram is guaranteed to work, 32mb needs to be double sided low density, it’s getting rarer than EDO simms.

There was a member of Vogons that found a SDRAM DIMM that read as the full 64 megabytes on a VX board, but it seems they're as rare as hens teeth. EDO SIMM memory is (by far) the easiest way to go with the VX chipset.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2026-07-08, 23:20:

There was a member of Vogons that found a SDRAM DIMM that read as the full 64 megabytes on a VX board, but it seems they're as rare as hens teeth. EDO SIMM memory is (by far) the easiest way to go with the VX chipset.

I have a massive vx specific 64mb sdram, it’s 5v gets unstable at 66mhz FSB (60 is fine) and is keyed in such a way it only fit one board I had.
Not recommended

Take a look at my post. Re: Can u pls help identify motherboard? Detects 64MB SDRAM as 16MB?
You may be able to take a (much more common) 256MB DIMM, add two pullup resistors on the extra address lines that the 430VX does not drive, and use it as an elusive low-density 64MB one.

Thanks everyone, this helps a lot.

Sounds like this is mostly just normal Intel 430VX behavior, not necessarily anything wrong with my board. I didn’t realize how much the chipset mattered when it came to SDRAM compatibility.

At this point I’m probably going to stop chasing random SDRAM sticks. The realistic route with this board seems to be either staying at 32MB SDRAM for now, or switching to EDO SIMMs and trying for 64MB that way. From what I’m gathering, 64MB of EDO is probably more useful for a Windows 95 gaming build than being stuck at 32MB SDRAM, even if SDRAM is technically faster.

This also wasn’t the board I originally planned to use. I had picked up an ASUS TX97-E, but the one I received had issues and had to be sent back. Since then, every TX97-E I’ve found has been way more expensive. I ended up grabbing the Soyo because it was cheap and seemed close enough for what I wanted, but now I’m learning where some of the older/budget chipset limitations are.

Thanks again for all the explanations and chipset info. You probably saved me from buying a bunch more random SDRAM and hoping for the best.

Yes, this is normal 430VX. The VIA VPX is what I have on the board I linked above which has the same issue. 64MB in EDO SIMMs makes a lot of sense. In fact, I have a Biostar 430VX board that doesn't even have DIMM slots on it.

Based on the timings in the 430VX datasheet the EDO is about 20% slower than the SDRAM. But you can always do what I linked above to a 256MB DIMM someday to turn it into a 64. And the cache (especially if you have the 512K model) goes a long way toward smoothing this over as well and 64MB is the cacheable limit (by the way, the 430TX still has this limit!) anyway. Your Pentium MMX has double the internal cache of a plain Pentium as well.

Skazzaks wrote on 2026-07-10, 21:26:

64MB of EDO is probably more useful for a Windows 95 gaming build than being stuck at 32MB SDRAM

😀
Re: Ideal gaming system specs per year? (Esp. 1983 - 1992?)

Probably nothing playable on MMX233 with voodoo1/2 will feel much difference between 32 and 64MB of ram. Your main bottleneck will be CPU followed by graphics with mechanical HDD between the levels.