chipset question

Hi--
Sorry if this has been covered and I missed it. I have an Intel Pentium III 664 MHz. It originally had 128 MB RAM - I've loaded on an additional 128 MB RAM. There's still an open slot but will it matter adding more RAM or have I maxed out its usefulness?

From reading other posts it seems like the chipset info is important, but I don't know how to find that.

Thanks for any help.
Ed

 

Ed,
Since you didn't list the Board Mfgr. the only general information I can pass on is as follows.

Processor, Chipset, & FSB determine the max. So if you have access to the Board Manufacturer, that information will be given to you. For example I have one Board in one of my Systems that has a Pentium, 133Mhz, 430VX Chipset and the Max Ram for that chip is 64Mb. (If I try to add more than that, my whole system is subject to slow down.) My newer System is a PIII, 800Mhz, VIA Appolo Pro Chipset, and the Board Manufacturer lists a max DRAM of 1.5Gb.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for the info...but where would I find that? Literally on the board inside the box, or is it accessed through windows somehow?

Thanks for the help.

Ed

 

Ed: Download and install AIDA32 , it will tell you all you ever wanted to know about your system. Download the "Enterprise" version.

 

Ed, Here's two others to try also.

http://www.evertech.com/

http://www.powerleap.com/

 

thanks all...

I'll do this tomorrow and report back!

Ed

 

Hi all.

You'll need to post the manufacturer and model number of your motherboard for a comprehensive answer to the amount of memory it can handle. It might even handle more than the manufacturer says it can.

The limiting factor is the chipset. The cpu (processor) and the FSB doesn't have anything to do with the maximum amount of memory that a motherboard will accept. The FSB (front side buss) determines what speed the memory has to be. For example, PC66 memory is designed to run in a motherboard with a FSB of 66Mhz and probably won't work in a motherboard running a 133 FSB.

The memory cache of a motherboard doesn't have anything to do with the maximum main memory also. Some good reading on this is:

http://www.oempcworld.com/generic40.html
and
http://www.scantips.com/basics10.html

The 430VX motherboard is designed for 64Megs of cache but the motherboard itself will take much more main memory that 64Megs. For example:

http://saleonall.com/cat/memory/ram/0752/435796/oneproduct.html

I have a computer with an Abit BH6 (one of the original 1.0 versions) with a 440BX chipset, whose manual clearly states that it will accept a maximum of 128Megs in each of the three memory slots and will run a maximum of 384MB of main memory. I'm currently running 256 in slot 0, 256 in slot 1, and 128 in slot 2 for a total of 655Megs of main memory. I think the board was designed before 256Meg memory sticks existed and they just happen to work fine. Might even try a 512 one of these days.

irdreed is right, more memory in a 430VX board might slow it down but I would add it anyways. Slow down in memory speed is extremely small compared to slow down in hard disk access. You'll speed up that system overall greatly even tho you'll lose a smidgen in memory access. More memory rules.

If you're running Win95 or Win98, you can control your memory cache for the hard disk with settings in [vcache] in the system.ini and speed things up considerably and reduce disk access in the process.

That AIDA32 program is very good JohnB. Thanks for the pointer. I'll get a lot of use out of that.

Hope I didn't step on any toes. That wasn't my intent.