Cache - RAM

lucernarian

Hi all,

I hav a s*** amd k6 266, chaintech 5agm2, 8.4 gig samsung, ATI rage 2 (m64), WIN 98. Some time back I got a stick of 128mb sdram to try to give it a speed boost. I currently hav 64megs sd pc 100 or 66. The guy in de shop had no pc100s so i got a 133 instead. Wen i put it in only half the extra memory was recognised (128 instead of 192). I guess this has something to do wit de system frequency being (roughly) half its rating?

Wen the pc continued 2 boot I noticed that it was slower. I timed it with and without the extra ram and even when the significantly longer memory count was not counted the pc still booted a bit slower.

I hav a new pc now and i only hav the old one as a relic of bygone days and as a backup. I never found out the exact reason for it but i read on the net somewhere dat if dere's too little cache then extra ram wont help much. Is this true?? I c people wit up 2 a gig of ram but dey hav no probs(apparently). Does anyone know wats going on??

Col_Loki

Did you try putting the biggest (ie 128mb) dimm into the first slot and then put in the other 2?

lucernarian

Yeah, it didnt matter where i put the dimms or if i put them in a particular order

SouperComputer

the PC 133 ram is the wrong density, you need to get PC100 im afriad. Could you throw it back at the guy you got it from, maybe exchange it against PC100 if you have to wait.

most of the S7 mobos would not properly cache more that 256MB RAM. So dont go over that.

On a side not, I have a few 300 & 500MHZ chips that should run with your board, but youll need PC100RAM. €25 for one of em if you are interested.

astrofool

lol, wrong density ? perhaps if it was made of polystyrene it's density would be sufficiently reduced so it would work

Some motherboards are picky about the ram they use, i had an old-ish dell (at the time), that would only recognise half of one brand of memory and would recognise another brand with no problem.

Try kingston.com or the like, they sell memory for specific computers, or if you could take a look at the old motherboard manual, otherwise it's trial and error.

Getting a pc100 may work, but only because whatever brand it is might be compatable with the motherboard, pc133 from the same manufacturer would also probably work fine. Another dell I had wouldn't recognise memory that was a different stepping number to what it was compatable with (exact same otherwise, the stick was newer than the other one).

PC133 has no problem running at PC100 speeds. In fact if PC200000000 existed in sdram dimm format, it could also run at PC100 speeds.

lucernarian

Hello again!

SouperComputer, wat type of chips r dey? The mb was made in April '98 so the manual only describes settings up 2 a 333 amd k6/2.

The chipset of the mb is a bit quirky. when i hav dma enabled for the cd drive, the computer crashes whenever a cd is put in. Also, even though i hav both ide channels enabled, the 2nd one dosen't work.

Can anyone tell me why just an extra 64 megs of memory SLOWED IT DOWN? The mb says it can handle up 2 384.

SouperComputer

PC133 has no problem running at PC100 speeds. In fact if PC200000000 existed in sdram dimm format, it could also run at PC100 speeds.

yea, if its the correct density. Those numbers on the chips do actually stand for somthing you know! 16mx32, 32mx32 Ring a bell?

Wrong density, more than likely means it will only see half the RAM!

Also Most S7, LX and BX Based motherboards will reject PC133 RAM.


TBC:

You need PC100 RAM mate CL2 ideally as its a little more forgiving too, ill put money on it!

on the K6 chips, I think your mobo might be limited to 66mhz FSB, do you know if it goes to 100? The multiplier isnt locked on the K6, so you could run a 300 @ 333 with a 66fsb no probs.

lucernarian

The fsb does go up 2 100 mhz (its a super socket 7). I tried overclocking it slightly to 83 x 3.5 but the bios recognised it as 300 Mhz. Does that still mean that its running at 290? I cant run it at 300 as some games used to crash.

How much ram is it worth using with 512k cache or does the cache even make much difference?