From owner-freebsd-hardware Fri Sep 11 19:19:32 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id TAA14080 for freebsd-hardware-outgoing; Fri, 11 Sep 1998 19:19:32 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from laker.net (jet.laker.net [205.245.74.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id TAA14069 for ; Fri, 11 Sep 1998 19:19:25 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from sfriedri@laker.net) Received: from nt (digital-pbi-129.laker.net [208.0.233.29]) by laker.net (8.9.0/8.9.LAKERNET.NO-SPAM.SPAMMERS.AND.RELAYS.WILL.BE.TRACKED.AND.PROSECUTED.) with SMTP id WAA27389; Fri, 11 Sep 1998 22:18:58 -0400 Message-Id: <199809120218.WAA27389@laker.net> From: "Steve Friedrich" To: "Manar Hussain" , "spork" Cc: "freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG" Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 22:18:58 -0400 Reply-To: "Steve Friedrich" X-Mailer: PMMail 98 Professional (2.01.1600) For Windows NT (4.0.1381;3) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: "Cacheable memory"?? Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Fri, 11 Sep 1998 19:58:08 -0400 (EDT), spork wrote: >Does anyone know what determines how much RAM is cacheable? I've seen >different amounts with the same size cache. Is it a chipset issue? We >have a few machines that would really like about 512M of RAM, is it a >waste if it's not cacheable? Yes, it is a chipset issue, as in, which Triton chipset or ALI, Alladin, etc. You can read about these chipsets at www.tomshardware.com and it appears that the new BX based motherboards for PIIs don't have these considerations. Also, it's not a waste if it's not cacheable at the L2 level. I've seen the performance hit expressed as anywhere between 2% and 15% for a cache miss at the L2 level. You'll still be getting many cache hits at the L1 level. Up until Intel released the latest Celeron WITH cache, I would have easily recommended the K6 over any Intel chip. But the 300a Celeron is extremely overclockable and appears to be quite stable when overclocked, and of course, it's much cheaper than the rest of the PII line. I'd avoid the original Celeron like the plague (the version with NO cache). To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message