Sis530 and > 64MB cacheable area

[Tetrium]

Do they exist?
So far all SiS530 boards I've come across were made for budget systems and included only 512kb cache on the motherboard.

Do any SiS530 based boards exist that cache more then 64MB RAM?
I'd be interested in having one so I could match it with (don't laugh please ) a Cyrix MII 2.2v CPU

Thanks!

[Jim]

Don Pedro is the guy to ask that one.

[moondog]

Hi,

as far as I know there are several boards that came along with more than 512 KB cache, just as the PC Chips 598LMR and 599LMR, the Soyo 5SSM or the Matsonic MS6380SG. Those were available with 1 MB cache too or even only. The problem is that they are damn hard to find... at least here in Germany. I was searching for them over some time via Ebay but somewhen I gave up...

Greetings,

Eric

[Tetrium]

Thanks for the replies

Sorry for being a bit late, I had temporarily lost my login already

I've been looking for SiS-530 boards myself but these seem to be harder to find then one would expect for a board that was used quite often in Packard Bells.

[HMBR]

I have 2 PC Chips M598LMR... both only have 512k it seems...
there is only one chip onboard and an empty space....

I don't know if it's because of that, but performance on Windows XP using 128mb ram is terrible, much worse than another board (a Mitac board from compaq using the MPV4 chipset) I have (with 1mb) and the same CPU/Mem

anyway, just tried super pi 1m on this m598 with a k6 2 533 and 64mb of PC100 memory, Win98 and the result is 11m 42s, this with the onboard video enabled, on XP with 128mb I think it's over 14m

[DonPedro]

I tried for years to find a sis530-board with 1 or 2 mb of onboard cache but with no success.

@hmbr:
I can't imagine any system (even the new ones) running windows xp with only 128mb of ram satisfactorily - this is way too short of memory.

BUT:
once you use a k6-3 or k6-2+ cpu you do fine with their on-cpu cache. they are able to cache 4gb of ram and you will not see (feel) a considerable speed improvement because of any size of mb-cache. admitted some applications do benefit if there is support from an accompanying mb-cache but this is in the 1-digit percentage range.

[HMBR]

I tried for years to find a sis530-board with 1 or 2 mb of onboard cache but with no success.

@hmbr:
I can't imagine any system (even the new ones) running windows xp with only 128mb of ram satisfactorily - this is way too short of memory.

BUT:
once you use a k6-3 or k6-2+ cpu you do fine with their on-cpu cache. they are able to cache 4gb of ram and you will not see (feel) a considerable speed improvement because of any size of mb-cache. admitted some applications do benefit if there is support from an accompanying mb-cache but this is in the 1-digit percentage range.

I know that 128mb is far from enough for XP, but I can tell you the Mitac board with 128mb + k6 2 533 is much faster than the 598 with the same memory and CPU, it's MUCH more responsive, even in basic tasks like opening windows explorer or starting windows...

I don't have any k6 3 or 2+... only 5 K6 2...

anyway, I think there is something wrong with these 598lmrs that I have, to many BSODs and issues...

edit
I would just like to update this, one of my m598s simply can't run stable with FSB higher than 83! but at 83 (max clock of 366) it's actually quite stable, this boards is stable enough to boot and run some basic tests at 100Mhz, but it's easy to hit a problem,

the other board seems to have some sort of bios issues, it allows me to select 97 or 100, but it will always work at the maximum of 95, but at least is totally stable at 95, and I'm using it at 95x5.5 quite comfortably...

unfortunately as I said, it's a 512k board, but the empty space for another cache chip makes it clear that there is some m598s with at least 1MB...

apart from that, one of the main reasons XP felt so bad was related to the IGP, using a PCI card it feels much better, it's strange because on 98 the IGP works well enough.

[KenB]

Tetrium,

Have you considered using 98Lite or XPlite?

I never used them, but read about it a few times over the years. These were modular forms of 98 and XP where you could install/uninstall various features and components of Win98 or XP so that memory and CPU cycles were used more efficiently, thus improving security, stability, and speed. It sounded really interesting for older computers. You might want to check that out.

[Tetrium]

98lite isn't a free program last time I checked. I'm quite comfortable with using XPLite though

However, imo you can't tweak XP enough for it to actually be faster then 9x and besides, using only XP gets boring fast