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Date:      Fri, 11 Sep 1998 22:18:58 -0400
From:      "Steve Friedrich" <SteveFriedrich@Hot-Shot.com>
To:        "Manar Hussain" <manar@ivision.co.uk>, "spork" <spork@super-g.com>
Cc:        "freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG" <freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: "Cacheable memory"??
Message-ID:  <199809120218.WAA27389@laker.net>

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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).


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