On  7 May 98 at 17:49, Mark C. Barron wrote:

> What I do know, is that with 512K of L2 cache, only the first 64M
> of RAM will be cached. This has nothing to do with the CPU itself.
> Motherboards with 1024K L2 Cache have been coming on the market for
> at least 6 months any they will definately be the standard soon,
> since a lot of people are putting more than 64M in their system.

  This is incorrect.  It's pretty likely that all 256K caches are
limited to caching 64MB, but how much a 512KB cache can handle will
depend on how much "Tag RAM" is provided.  On my home machine with
512K cache (Abit IT5H motherboard), the tag RAM was included.  On my
work machine with 512K cache (Asus T2P4 motherboard), I had to
install an extra $3 tag RAM chip to cache beyond 64MB.
  [My IT5H blew a voltage regulator SCR a couple of weeks ago, and I
now have a Shuttle HOT-603 with 1MB of cache.  I don't expect to see
that on any Intel chipset (TX) boards any time soon.]

  All PII's to date, except the new Celeron bogosity, include 512K
of cache, and can cache up to 512MB or 1GB [I can never remember
which is the PII and which the PPro....]  Our PII servers are full at
256MB of installed RAM, and its all cached.

David G