Date: 18 Feb 1998 19:03:24 +0100 From: dag-erli@ifi.uio.no (Dag-Erling Coidan Smørgrav) To: Fred Gilham <gilham@csl.sri.com> Cc: FreeBSD hackers list <FreeBSD-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: opinions requested on new mainboard purchase Message-ID: <xzp1zx03i4z.fsf@hrotti.ifi.uio.no> In-Reply-To: Fred Gilham's message of "Tue, 17 Feb 1998 14:59:22 -0800" References: <199802172259.OAA11624@snapdragon.csl.sri.com>
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Fred Gilham <gilham@csl.sri.com> writes: > With the ASUS T2P4 you have to make sure you buy a tag ram chip that > the board doesn't come with. This chip is necessary to allow the > board to cache more than 64meg. Bzzzt, wrong. This hasn't been necessary since at least mid-1996, when COAST 3.0 became widespread. ASUSTek T2P4 motherboards requires an extra tag chip *or* a cache module newer than mid-1996 (ASUS CMU 3.0 or newer, or any module compliant with COAST 3.0 or newer). When I bought my T2P4 (a P/I-XP55T2P4 rev. 1.3) in December 1996, i bought a 256 kB ASUS CMU 3.1 cache module to go with it, bringing the amount of L2 cache to a total of 512 kB. Of course, if you *don't* want to add cache to the motherboard, you *will* need a tag chip. But i honestly can't see why you'd want to do that, since an original 256 kB ASUSTek COAST module costs somewhere around $50, and makes a significant difference in performance in >64M systems. But all this is really academic since, to the best of my knowledge, ASUSTek stopped producing T2P4 boards at least half a year ago. If you *do* find a T2P4 floating around somewhere, then by all means, go for it. It's one of the best Pentium motherboards ever made. But make sure it's a rev. 3.0 or newer, since older boards don't have split voltage (i.e. don't support MMX processors) and classic Pentium processors are getting hard to find. I am definitely *not* going to buy a new motherboard / processor until the Slot II Deschutes hits the market and high-end LX motherboards become affordable and reliable. -- "I have a closed mind. It helps keeping the rain out." (Michael Press on a.s.r) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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