PCTech Forums

I have a microstar 5169 motherboard and am looking to upgrade to more memory and a faster processor. I have read that I shouldn't expand more beyond the cacheable system memory. Can I find this information in the BIOS? Or do I determine the cacheable memory from the chipset that is on my board?

The hardware shows that I have the following chipsets:
Ali M1533 PCI to ISA
Ali M1541 CPU to PCI
Ali M1541 PCI to AGP

How and where can I find out what my system's cacheable memory is?

Once I determine that, should I only upgrade the memory to what is cacheable...i.e. cacheable memory 512MB then only upgrade to 512MB system memory. The board can support up to 768MB using three 256MB DIMMS, but from what I understand you shouldn't go beyond the cacheable memory.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.
-Dman100-

Let us know if this article solves you problem: .
brad

Hi Brad,
Thanks for replying to my post and posting the URL to the article. That helps clarify that I shouldn't go beyond my system's cacheable memory limit with a main memory upgrade. Understanding that, how do I determine my system's cacheable memory?

From the article, if I understood correctly, the cacheable limit would include both the processor L1 cache and the L2 cache on the chipsets?? Am I understanding that correctly?

So, which chipset do I identify for the L2 cache size? Listed in my previous post...is it the CPU to PCI chipset or all three chipsets? Where can I find this information online. I did some searches, but couldn't find any cache size information for the chipsets.

Then do I add the L2 cache size from the chipset to whatever the L1 cache size is for my AMD K6-2 processor to obtain the system cacheability?

Thanks again for your help and the information.
-Dman100-

In my opinion, you can use the 768 mb. I choose the amount of memory based on the Mobo. I've read your Motherboard specs. and it supports 768 mb ddr ram. You could run to see what it recomends.
Here's what has to say about your Mobo. (Scroll down to the bottom to see specs.)
brad