Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 13:40:09 +0000 (GMT) From: Stephen Roome <steve@visint.co.uk> To: Kees Jan Koster <dutchman@tccn.cs.kun.nl> Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: SIMMs and DIMMs Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.971212133107.1355B-100000@dylan.visint.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <34902AB7.41C67EA6@tccn.cs.kun.nl>
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On Thu, 11 Dec 1997, Kees Jan Koster wrote: > I recently replaced my Expertboard 8661 (VX chipset) with a shiny new > Abit PX5 (TX chipset). I've always been told that TX chipset boards were > supposed to be faster than VX chipset boards, hence the difference in > price. The TX chipset is a replacement for the VX chipset (it would seem), The advantages of the TX are the ability to use SDRAM DIMM's and Ultra DMA ATAPI drives. With a TX board you can reach a theoretical maximum of 33MB/s transfer speed from an IDE drive, using ultra dma. With a VX board this wasn't possible and you were limited to using some slower (PIO mode 2/dma mode 4) transfer mode. Which was either limited to 13MB/s or 22MB/s if you had a good motherboard (doubtful any VX boards gave 22MB/s athough my old SiS 5513 based board managed this). > However, I could not measure any difference in speed at all. I used > bonnie and build the generic kernel and used two cpu benchmarks. Of > course, I replaced none of the other hardware (133 MHZ intel pentium > cpu, 60ns SIMMs and SCSI/VGA controller boards). You may find also that your memory bandwidth has changed. try this: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null bs=1m count=100 You can get a fair estimation of your memory bandwidth, although it will depend very heavily on the BIOS timing you have set for your memory and these settings for memory timings will depend on the memory you have. > So, could someone explain to me what it is that I did wrong here? You didn't necessarily do anything wrong, you just may not be able to harness any new power yet. If you get an UltraDMA ide drive you may or may not notice the difference. If you're sure you did something wrong it's that you bought an Intel chipset, personally I'd go take a look at the FIC PA2007 motherboard based on the VIA apollo VP2 chipset. More cache as well. > Anyway, I wasn't done yet. My next step was to replace my 60ns SIMMs > with a 10ns DIMM. I was told that this would make a difference too. > However, again I was told wrong. I could not measure any speed > difference. Sensible, make sure you buy quality though, there's been a lot of people saying that they've had problems with DIMMS they bought from someone non reputable or certain manufacturors DIMMS that just won't work with certain manufacturors boards. > Ok, so I'm a sucker for sales stories. What am I doing wrong? beleiving marketing hype is a bad idea. Steve. Steve Roome - Vision Interactive Ltd. Tel:+44(0)117 9730597 Home:+44(0)976 241342 WWW: http://dylan.visint.co.uk/
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