P4t533 Max Ram

[John Smith]

Hi, I have 512 mb of RDRAM in an ASUS P4T533 running XP Pro with a P4-2.4
533 processor and ultra 160 X15 SCSI drives. I have had bouts of
'sluggishness' and high CPU usage at times, which I find is solved by
re-booting and reloading what I am working on. I don't know if you can
call me a power-user (which sounds hokey) but I frequently have many
programs and documents open at the same time and I mean MANY...., maybe 6
Word docs, 3 Excel files, sometimes 3 IE6 windows, Outlook, mapping
programs, well you get my drift...along with the usual assortment of
security programs, firewall, virus, ad stopper, and spam stopper. Maybe I
am a STUPID user not realizing the limitations of my system and over running
its potential I don't know.

That said, I just loaded XP's SP2 and definately do see an improvement in
that the sluggishness is minimized, but it is still there ever so slightly
on heavy use. I just increased my paging file to a minimum of 1024 (2x)
and a max of 2048 (4x) and am still observing to see if it makes any
differences.

1) Will the ASUS P4T533 take 1 GIG of RDRAM?
2) If I buy new RDRAM, how do I make sure that it is compatible with the RAM
that I have? I have two sticks of 256 MB RDRAM, is it advisible to buy
1-512 MB stick and pair it with an existing 256 mb stick to net 768 MB?
The only way to get to 1 GIG is to buy 5-512MB sticks, will the take 2-512
MB sticks and remain stable, I had heard that this board will not take 1 GB,
is that true?

I know this RDRAM is expensive, but upgrading to a new motherboard is also
expensive, maybe its cheaper to go to 1 GIG if it solves my problems and
improves performance, what do you guys think? Mike

 

[Hawkeye]

1) Will the ASUS P4T533 take 1 GIG of RDRAM?

Yes Running one with 2 512 sticks in it. P/N MD-16R162GDF0-CT9

2) If I buy new RDRAM, how do I make sure that it is compatible with the RAM
that I have? I have two sticks of 256 MB RDRAM, is it advisible to buy

RDRAM has been unavail for some time now from retail sources

1-512 MB stick and pair it with an existing 256 mb stick to net 768 MB?

Shouldnt be a problem adding 512 to an existing 256 that works

The only way to get to 1 GIG is to buy 5-512MB sticks, will the take 2-512
MB sticks and remain stable, I had heard that this board will not take 1 GB,
is that true?

As I said running 2 512 stick with no issues

I know this RDRAM is expensive, but upgrading to a new motherboard is also
expensive, maybe its cheaper to go to 1 GIG if it solves my problems and
improves performance, what do you guys think? Mike

Last time I purchased a 512 it was $230.00

 

[John Smith]

Thanks Hawkeye, do you think increasing to 1 GB of ram will provide a
performance increase?

Also do you think this ram fit if I can get it from zipzoomfly?
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80480

THANKS, MIKE

 

[Hawkeye]

Thanks Hawkeye, do you think increasing to 1 GB of ram will provide a

performance increase?

No reason why it shouldnt be an improvement, providing your issue isnt
cause by some other source.

Also do you think this ram fit if I can get it from zipzoomfly?
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80480

Thats where I bought mine back when they were googlegear.com
ZipZoomFly Part#: 80480 is the same Ii ordered and the PN is correct.
I am surprised they show it back ordered

 

[John Smith]

Thanks Hawkeye, I am on their email notification list, if they get it in I
will be notified. Thanks much for your help, Mike

 

[jaf]

Hi,
With 6 word docs & excel workbooks open, popup the task manager. (right
click the task bar)
There you can see how much memory each session is using.
Add them up, including every thing else running. If it approches 400k then
windows is most likely swapping out to the HD every time you activate a
window.

Office usually installs that memory cache trash in control panel.
That and Outlooks journaling feature turned on will kill any computer.

 

[Barry Watzman]

First, let's deal with your last question:

The P4T533 has only 2 memory slots and takes only 232-pin 32-bit RDRAM.
The two speed grades are RIMM 3200 (800MHz, aka PC800) and RIMM 4200
(1066 MHz, aka PC1066). Convention is to use the "RIMM xxxx"
designation for 32-bit 232 pin RDRAM and "PCxxxx" designation for 184
pin 16-bit RDRAM.

The only commonly available modules are 256 MB per module, which will
max out the board at 512 Megs, the configuration that you currently have.

512 Meg modules definitely do exist, and they show up on E-Bay. Two of
them would give you one gig. However, they are expensive, usually over
$200 each, and they are VERY RARE. Sometimes, months will go by without
a single one showing up (although, on rare occasions, I've seen 4 or
more at once available). By the way, yes, you can mix sizes, that is,
you could have one 512 and one 256 for 768 megs of memory.

According to the Samsung catalog, 1 gig and even 2 gig modules actually
were made and sold, but I have never seen one of either size. Never,
and I work with this particular motherboard a lot.

I love the P4T533 motherboard, it's incredibly fast and it's incredibly
stable, more so, I think, than later motherboards using dual channel
DDR. It makes me sick that industry politics killed a memory system
that was far superior to the system that ultimately prevailed.

But, that point aside, you can buy a new motherboard AND memory for less
money than what it will cost to upgrade your P4T533 to one gig. And the
new motherboard will support faster CPUs and FSB's, although the memory
system (DDR 800 dual channel) is actually slower.

So, to that extent, you have to make some decision as to how you want to
proceed, and what various things are worth to you.

Now, however, let me go off on a different tangent.

I don't think that you have the problem that you think that you do, or
that upgrading from 512 meg to 1 gig will help you (or help you much).

What you are doing is not really that demanding. When you open "x"
documents in word (whether "x" is 1 or 20), there is only one copy of
word itself running and loaded into memory, and the documents themselves
take up almost zero space (in most cases, only 50k to 400k). Basically,
as long as you are just running "office" applications -- and nothing
that you've listed is outside those parameters -- memory just is not
going to be your issue. 512 megs is plenty, probably beyond the point
at which more memory will make much of a difference. I do everything
that you do plus video capture and editing, and DVD burning, with the
same system that you have (P4T533 with 512 megs). And the system is
very fast.

I susepct, rather, that your system has just become "dirty". Meaning
that your disk is fragmented, your registry is a mess, your temp file
directory overfloweth, you have adware / spyware and MABYE virus', and
WAY too many programs are loading and doing things at startup.

If that's the case (and I'm about 85% sure that it is), adding memory
won't help, while some time spent cleaning up your system might do
wonders. The ultimate cleanup is to reinstall windows on a freshly
formatted disk drive, but I won't deny that this is a LOT of work.

Also, if you have a large drive (more than 80 gigs) with only a single
partition, you might consider partitioning things down. Simply, it
takes time to search the disk drive data structures when the disk gets
big, and this applies to both FAT and NTFS, although there are
differences in the relative efficiency of the two file systems (FAT is
better with small drives, NTFS is better above about 16 gigs; but both
systems slow down as the size of the drives increases, especially if
they are also badly fragmented).

Hope that this helps.

 

[Barry Watzman]

I would be surprised if they EVER get it back in again. Reportedly
Samsung has stopped making it. The P4T533 was the only high-volume
motherboard that used this memory type (there actually were about 3
others, but they are relatively obscure). The best source is E-Bay.

 

[Barry Watzman]

Opening 6 word DOCUMENTS does not open 6 copies of Word, it opens one
copy of word and six data segments. 512 megs of memory has generally
reached the "point of no return" for performance improvement with OFFICE
applications (which includes web browsing also).

 

[Tim]

The best thing to do before you start spending cash is to get to know what
task manager can tell you about what your system is doing.

Since you say that it bad response happens occasionally while you are
working, if you are not doing something or causing something to do something
intensive then it is likely to be due to some service running in the
background IE Indexing service, perhaps a disk defragger, you know what you
have installed.

As mentioned by jaf, you get to see Task Manager by either right clicking on
the task bar and clicking on Task Manager there, or you can start it via
Ctrl Alt Delete. task manager shows how memory is used on a Per application
basis by viewing the Process tab - so you cqan see what is gobbling memory
or CPU, or overall by viewing the Performance tab - to see if memory is an
issue at all - it could be Disk IO's, but with 15K rpm SCSI thats not too
likely. At the bottom of the performance tab the Total Commit Charge is the
total amount of memory in use. If it is over the Total Physical Memory by
much then you *might* benefit from more memory. However before adding memory
I would go to the Process tab and check what is using it - there will be
many services running as shared programs as svchost .exe(several copies) -
stopping services that you Know you never use will reduce memory use and
some of the svchost.exe's will shutdown. Overall, if you tinker with
services expect to have to restart if you close down a service you actually
need to get it back (worst case). For those services that must not be
stopped, you are not allowed to stop them. EG if you don't need or use the
inbuilt IIS Server, stop it, stop the WWW service, stop messenger, stop
imapi if you never burn CD's, stop Alerter, stop Clipbook, stop network dde,
stop telnet (always disable telnet unless you use it), stop the Task
Scheduler (only if you do not ever use it directly or indirectly - Windows
boot optimisation apparently uses it). For each service that is running
normally that you decide not to run and don't want to run, change its start
to Manual (if it is needed by something else, it will be able still start).

Another useful tool is Perfmon.msc. click Start, Run Perfmon. If you click
the + toolbar icon you can add in numerous measures to display stats for.
One of the interesting ones is Physical Disk IO - for this, click +, in
Performance Object select Physical Disk, the choose whichever you want to
observe. Note that there are all sorts of scaling options - check the Help
for it in case the numbers are off the default scale.

Background tasks can be the culprit - I always kill the Indexing service.
Click Start, Run, Services.MSC <enter>. I disable the Indexing service as it
can do exactly what you describe - if you use it you are likely to know
about it already.

HTH

- Tim

 

[John Smith]

Thanks John, thats a great tip, I did not know that, Mike

 

[John Smith]

Oh I hope that they get it back in again. I did go to EBAY and there were
quite a few 512mb and 1 gig sticks available. Will the board work with a 1
gig stick by it self? I love this board and like that its a little
different with its RDRAM.

 

[John Smith]

Barry, when you say point of no return, do you mean that adding ram up to 1
gig will not improve performance?

 

[John Smith]

I agree with your comments on the board and the RDRAM, I love this board.
That is the reason why I am considering spending the money when the same
money could by me a new board and ram.... It is probaby a silly decision to
invest money into this setup, however let me tell you about my 96 Cadillac
Eldorado ETC, lol...

Let me tell you a bit about my system in response to your observations:
1) I have a new Windows XP Pro installation as of April 2004
2) All patches are installed up to SP2
3) I use Ad Aware 6.0 Pro and run it daily at noon (its up to date)
4) I use Norton AV 2004 it runs at 6 PM every night
5) I run defragment every friday night, after doing disk clean-up
6) I have Spam Bully 2.0 guarding my Outlook mail (this program is a hog I
think)
7) I have an ASUS FX 5600 video card running Nvidia's most recent drivers
8) I have 2 Seagate X15 Ultra 160 drives with an Adaptec 39160 adaptor
9) I am using two 7,200 IDE drives for automatic back-ups and video editing
10) I changed my PAGING FILE to a minimum of 1024 and a max of 2048
11) I am trying to figure out how to put the paging file into its own
partition so that there is no defragmentation

However I do have one problem that I have been unable to fix. My Adaptec
SCSI adapter shares IRQ 21 with my LAN card and NEC PCE to USB Open Hose
Controller, NOT GOOD!!! Now what do you think? When I say sluggish I mean
that I will type and there will be a LAG in it appearing on screen, VERY
ANNOYING....and my MOUSE will STUDDER..... Now what do you think? Mike

 

[John Smith]

Tim great information, Thanks a lot, I will read through this in more detail
when I get more time. If you get a chance I posted a bunch of information
about my system above. You mentioned Disk IO problems, what do you think of
my IRQ share with the adaptec scsi adaptor, Thanks a lot, Mike

 

[Barry Watzman]

Re: "I did go to EBAY and there were quite a few 512mb and 1 gig sticks
available."

I believe that you are under that type of misunderstanding that will
cause a catastrophically wrong purchase.

First, I suspect that many of the auctions that you were looking at were
for 184-pin, 16-bit RDRAM which will not work in your computer. There
is LOTS of confusion on this point, and people throw the names around
without understanding what they mean and what they are, and often get
them just plain wrong.

Second, people will advertise "512 meg {whatever}", and when you get
into the detail of the ad, you might find out that yes, they are selling
512 megs -- in the form of two 256 meg modules.

I have RDRAM on my watch list, and I don't believe that there is ANY
232-pin 32-bit RDRAM larger than 256 megs being offered at this moment.

If a picture of the actual memory is included (be careful, lots of
people use "stock photos" or photos lifted from other ads), look for
pins, not blank areas, in the center of the chip (there will be one key
and a blank space where a 2nd key might have been, but no a full inch of
edge without pins). The photo does more than a description by people
who don't know what they are selling.

What I've heard is that Samsung has discontinued all production of this
form of RDRAM and that there will not be any more made, ever. I can't
say for certain if this is true, but if it is, E-Bay is effectively the
only source.

 

[Barry Watzman]

I mean that with your applications mix, yes, I think it's likely that
adding more RAM (above 512 Megs) won't significantly improve performance.

 

[Barry Watzman]

Your system sounds good and should be pretty clean. What I'd look for
now is tasks and services running at startup and in the background that
hogging the CPU without your knowledge.

I have a trick that I use which seems to help things, but many people
can't use it. The trick is to defrag the Windows XP hard drive using
the Windows 98 version of Speeddisk while the system is running Windows
98 rather than XP. Run in this way, speedisk will (if you select the
options) defrag the swap file, which, by the way, I "fix" in size (for 1
512 meg system, 1 gig should be adequate). It will also optimize
folders (directories) and put them all at the start of the drive. It
can't or won't do this if run from XP, it considers these and other file
areas "unmoveable".

However, there are some "gotchas":

-You need a dual-boot system (I have 98SE on C: and XP on D
-You need FAT32 hard drives (I keep D: down to 16 gigs, but ALL of may
data, including "My Documents" has been moved to E:, a data partition
shared by both 98SE and XP -- all programs installed on both partitions
(including E-Mail and web browser) use the same data files located on
E:, which, for some programs, takes a bit of effort to accomplish).
-Some programs create XP file names that are "98 invalid"

It works for me, but it doesn't work for everybody.

 

[Tim]

To put a page file on its own partition.
1. Create the partition / assign a drive letter. In your case, make the
partition the size you want the page file to be.
2. Confirm the drive is present in My Computer.
3. In Control Panel, System. Advanced, Performance, Advanced, Virtual
Memory, click the new drive above and set a custom size = to free space on
the above new drive. For other volumes with page files on, you can set the
size to Zero (click the drive, Click No Paging File). There is no point in
setting an Initial Size for a page file and a Maximum Size - this can only
result in a lot of extra disc IO's to extend the page file when it is
needed, then later somehow it is contracted pointlessly - so set it high and
leave it high.

If you want performance, do not place the partition on the same drive as the
C drive since the C drive is likely to be at the front of the disc - putting
a partition further down the disc for a page file will only guarantee longer
seeks to get to the file = slower system. If it is the only active partition
on a drive, then it doesn't really matter.

I recommend you either use Perfmon to verify the disc volume with least IO's
(if your page file is this important) to determine where the page file can
be placed, or configure a disc drive with this specifically in mind EG on
the front edge (fastest part) of one or both of your backup discs - so long
as the backup discs are both Master IE separate IDE channels (they will
compete otherwise for the IO channel if Master / Slave). Modern IDE drives
are OK for this as they have good IO bandwidth, even though the seek time
may be somewhat less than SCSI. NOTE: if you optimise your page file, you
may steal performance from other parts of your system to the point where
"system" goes well, but "application" now has suffered a penalty. In short,
if Total Commit memory is not near Total Physical memory, your page file is
probably not a problem. A very important clue that memory is or has been
stretched is that if the Available Memory in the Physical section (task
manager of course) heads towards 4MB, then you have had a very low free
memory situation and Windows memory scavenger process has or is about to go
and pinch memory of other applications to feed the hungry one - try loading
your system up severely and watch the memory stats; open say a huge graphics
file when the Commit charge is near Physical and watch what happens - you
will see a big shuffle of memory resources between applications. 4MB is a
trigger level to the VM memory scavenger process (sorry forgot what its
called).

Many claim that the page file gets a lot of IO's. It can *seem* to get a lot
of IO's on a lightly loaded system. There are several metrics in Perfmon you
can learn about to analyse your page file usage. It is important to
understand the metrics as a superficial understanding will lead you to
entirely wrong conclusions. EG Virtual Memory Page Faults are normal in
Windows, some types of VM Page Faults can cause page file operations, *but*
not all. Most VM Page Faults do not result in touching the page file, so a
drill down to understand the workings of the VM system is a good idea.

From your description of application usage, it does not sound like your
applications are huge memory gobblers.

As for IRQ sharing. If it is working, if you are not getting errors in your
event log, if all else is OK, then don't fret about the IRQ sharing. However
the stuttering you describe is *bad*. This is often due to poor HDD drivers,
ill configured HDD drivers - not using DMA, or not using the best UDMA
settings. It can also be due to recovered Reads on a failing disc drive. If
you have a SMART enabled bios, then turn it on. I am sure that if the
problem was due to disc IO issues then you would know about that already.
Nearly always the drive DMA settings come up correctly, so the thing to do
is to search around to find out what the active settings are (IE the UDMA or
PIO mode of the drives, watch the CPU in task manager during intense IO - if
it goes high during say a backup, then PIO may be being used so performance
will suffer and needs fixing). Sorry not sure there - there is usually a
utility somewhere: try device manager, check device manager settings, check
bios settings, check... It *is* in situations such as this that others
report no choice but to force Interrupts apart - but most usually sound
cards. If there are hardware devices not in use EG firewire, disable them in
bios, remove unnecessary PCI devices, try moving the SCSI card to another
slot.

- Tim

 

[John Smith]

Thanks Barry, Barry, what do you do, I often see you here over the years,
Mike