[comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware] Speed of memory off motherboard

burkley@cod.NOSC.MIL (Joe Burkley) (01/23/91)

I have been following a discussion in the MS Windows group
regarding a performance degradation which seems to be traced
to having memory in an expansion card.  My system is a 33 Mhz
386 which has 4Meg on the motherboard and has the option to
drop and additional 12 Meg in a 32 bit expansion card.  My 
question is will the memory in the expansion card suffer from
a slower access time than the motherboard memory?  Email
replies are fine.

			-Joe
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| Joe Burkley              | O_O |       "It's not enough that I succeed,   |
| burkley@cod.nosc.mil      \/_\/            everyone else must fail."      |
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dag@persoft.com (Daniel A. Glasser) (01/25/91)

In article <2731@cod.NOSC.MIL> burkley@cod.nosc.mil.UUCP (Joe Burkley) writes:
>I have been following a discussion in the MS Windows group
>regarding a performance degradation which seems to be traced
>to having memory in an expansion card.  My system is a 33 Mhz
>386 which has 4Meg on the motherboard and has the option to
>drop and additional 12 Meg in a 32 bit expansion card.  My 
>question is will the memory in the expansion card suffer from
>a slower access time than the motherboard memory?  Email
>replies are fine.

This speed degradation is linked to memory on ISA (16-bit) or 8-bit slot
expansion boards.  The 32-bit memory expansion slot does not have this
problem, since it is a full 32-bit buss running at full memory buss speed.
(Actually, it is an extension of the on-board memory buss in most cases.)

So, no, memory on the 32 bit expansion card will not degrade system
performance.
-- 
          Daniel A. Glasser  |  Persoft, Inc.  |  dag@persoft.com
                "Their brains were small, and they died."