#5% faster for $20
5 messages in this thread
Hi PC users,
many modern and cheap mother boards don't have a "dirty tag RAM". The board
will run without it, but the memory performance is little slower. Usually the
board design shows the additional chip, they just didn't put it in.
In a computer magazin I read about how to add the missing chip. So I went into
a shop, bought the chip and a socket and took my soldering iron. Right at that
moment a friend called me and when I told him that he just said "you are
nuts!". I ignored his waring, soldered the chip on the board, reasambled the
computer and booted without any problems. After activating the new chip in the
BIOS setup I benchmarked the memory performance with a special test program.
It was up to 20% faster! Ran Imagine and trace time of a complex scene in
low res was 5% faster. I think scanline should be a bit more than 5% faster
since it uses more memory.
Ok it's not a big difference, but then the cost of this upgrade was only $20
(and the sweat on my forehead when soldering on the motherboard <g>)
-David
David,
One word of caution. The next time you add a chip to the mother board add a
socket and plug the chip in the socket after you are done.
Soldering the chip directly can damage them through heat or static discharge.
They can also die after you insert them of be bad when you get them through no
fault of your own. In any of these cases, you will have to desolder the chip
and solder a new one. That is a lot of extra soldering on those delecate
motherboard connections and you run a great chance of damaging them.
-Marco
Marc, he said he bought a chip and a socket……
Marc,
you are right. Everyone who has ever tried to desolder a 28 pin chip will have
learned from that. I *did* use a socket and pluged the chip into that.
-David
Oops,
Must have blitzed through the socket part of your message. Sorry for the
tutorial ;=)
-Marco