KennyR wrote:
Oh, I didn't get a chance to thank you for finding my PC motherboard details earlier (the Quake2 thread). With your help I was able to bite the bullet and quickly pick a 512MB DIMM for the PC. It's much more responsive now (namely it no longer takes 3 minutes to load IE). Thanks!
No problems…
Just note that, a VIA KLE133(e.g. MSI-6378) will have to share its memory bandwidth with the GPU (in this case, an “Integrated Trident Blade 2D/3D video accelerator”) and the CPU.
From Sisoftware’s Sandra 2003, a VIA KLE133's memory throughput is around ~586Mb/s. A MSI-6330 V3.6 (VIA KT133A) has a memory throughput of ~898~910Mb/s (with BIOS V3.6).
PS; A VIA KT133A reference board has a ~1012MB/s (aggressive memory timings, BIOS's settings permitting).
To illustrate the impact speed penalty in regards to memory bandwidth refer to the following scenario.
Try 'MPEG 2 (DVD resolution and quality) to Divx 5.0(~DVD resolution and quality)' conversion (via Flask) on VIA KT133A (with 512Mb 133Mhz SDRAM) vs nForce II (with 512Mb 266Mhz DDR SDRAM) (both was installed with a similar CPU i.e. Athlon XP 1800+(~@1.53Ghz)). The VIA KT133A (MSI-6330) can only reach ~12~14 Fps, while nForce II reaches +26 Fps.
That performance gap widens farther IF the machine employs 333Mhz memory/FSB bandwidth. Of course an Athlon XP 2600+** (@~2.09Ghz) will help in that regard. **333Mhz FSB variant.
FSB and memory bandwidth may have some impact on emulation's speed.
