RAM question

[Edward Glowacki]

Quoted from Jo Dillon on Fri, Nov 16, 2001 at 03:31:50PM +0000:
> On Thursday 15 November 2001 21:50, Benjamin Minshall wrote:
> > Hi Mark,
> >
> > This could be an issue related to "high-density" or "low-density" 256MB
> > DIMMs.  I don't know a lot about it, but I ran into some machines that were
> > only rated for 128MB chips, yet could use low-density 256MB DIMMs.  Perhaps
> > someone else could (in)validate my speculation?
> 
>   Another possibility is it only has enough cache for 512MB worth of memory.
> In that case it'd boot and recognise the memory but any access that happened 
> to hit the high 512MB of memory would be extremely slow. So the system would 
> appear (possibly intermittently) about as fast as a 386 ;)

I don't think this is correct, it doesn't make much sense.  Cache
and main memory are independent, and caching algorithms generally
work fine for any combination of the two.  You'll get better
performance with bigger cache, but you won't get worse performance
with bigger memory.


-- 
Edward Glowacki				glowack2@msu.edu
GLLUG Peon  				http://www.gllug.org
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
                -- Jules de Gaultier