I just spent a whole day trying to figure this memory tweaking thing. I'll try to explain my conclusions....I used three different chips, 128meg, Kingston, PNY/Hyundi, PNY/Toshiba. I used Win98 and Win ME, a V2, V4, V4b, a Winchip2, a Pentium200mmx, an AMD K62-400. For the Benchmarks I used Sandra 2001 pro.
It was immediately obvious the memory benchmarks were independent from the CPU and the OS and the I-Opener version.
George Breeses memory interleave program helped the score on only the PNY/Toshiba chip.
Using SoftFSB, at a setting of "70", raised the scores on all three chips.
Changing the BIOS settings helped all three chips....The PNY/Toshiba scored almost 50% greater than when I started with the following settings:
3 Bank timings.....medium
Sdram cycle lenght......2
Other settings posted above....These were the best settings with all three chips.
The Kingston chip did not respond much to any changes in the BIOS, SoftFSB helped it, however. Memory interleave..no.
The PNY/Hyundi was helped by BIOS changes, and SoftFSB. Memory interleave..no.
Here are the best scores, with those tweaks:
Kingston.....ALU 53...FPU 70
PNY/Hyundai....ALU 59...FPU 78
PNY/Toshiba....ALU 64...FPU 88
My conclusion at this point....It's the chip that makes all the difference, interleave works on some, not on others. Your individual BIOS settings have a big effect. Try changing the ones mentioned, benchmark each change. Your best settings with your own chip may be different from mine. SoftFSB helps all scores, memory benchmarks as well as CPU benchmarks. If various BIOS settings give you similar scores, go with the less aggressive setting, your system may be more stable.
FWIW....I did 10 hours of benchmarking on three different machines without one crash, proving to me the Breese interleave program is at least stable, helping some chips....not hurting the others. There are other BIOS settings that may help out, more tweaking to come........One more thing, I guess it benefits you to pay more for a better chip, ram prices being as low as they are. I want to see a benchmark using a Crucial/Micron chip.
