RAM is making the news. Not only many industry insiders expect prices to climb due to tense relations between China and Taiwan, but we also have the ever going tale of the chipsets' incompatibilities...

While in need of 1GB of RAM, I was in a great position to understand how the market is behaving these days. And I have bad news...

DIMMs (Dual In-line Memory Module) are today's most common installed RAM. DIMMs are selling "cheap", relatively to the prices of >= 1 year ago, but they still cost more than they did in late 1999, just previous to the Taiwan earthquake.

A new quake is here, but this one is about memory technology... You can now go out and buy "PC-800" memory, ie memory that can handle front bus speed up to 800 Mhz... but you have to be rich to do it, and the most probable scenario sets you back to "PC-133" hardware, which, in practical terms is only of any use if your motherboard can support such FSB speeds.

Motherboards using the INTEL's i820 chipset and VIA's Apollo Pro 133 family can handle it, but each has its problems. Straight to point STEER AWAY from INTEL's i8x0 based boards, and beware with your operating system, if using VIA's technology. Neither solution is perfect.

INTEL's i8x0 is terrible about memory:

#1) ECC (Error Correction Code) hardware is NOT supported at all, ie you can install it, but the ECC will be disabled; but while that probably doesn't affect your DIMMs (ECC is much more expensive), there are worrying limitations about exactly how many DIMMs and of what kind, can be used.

#2) For example, imagine you just bought a i820 motherboard, with 4 DIMMs slots. Since the highest capacity DIMMs (I know of) are of 512 MB capacity, you might expect it to be possible to cram in 2 GB of RAM. Well, you can't do it. In fact, when using DIMMs, you can't expect to have more than 1 GB of RAM on a i820 board, and that will be possible only when using 2 x 512 MB modules. The board's manual might even write that it is possible to address over 1 GB, but in practical terms that is a lie. Why?

#3) INTEL's hardware address translator hub has recognized bugs, but I don't understand those bugs and I don't need to go that far to tell where the problems will arise, when trying to get past the 1GB barrier... The i820 limitations, impose you to insert never decreasing modules, ie if your first inserted DIMM has a 128 MB capacity, all the others that follow must be >= 128. But that is not all: if you insert double sided DIMMs (DD) on the first two banks (512 MB DIMMs are always double sided), you can only use one more single sided DIMM (SD), on just one of the remaining banks...

This means that after inserting 2 x 512 MB DD DIMMs, you are expected, to insert no more than one single 1 x 512 MB SD DIMM... and that DOES NOT EXIST. So 1 GB DIMMs is an absolute barrier on i8x0 boards... and that why all the INTEL boards based on INTEL's own i8x0 chipsets, only have two DIMM banks, contrary to some Mardi-Gras alternatives, like Asus' :)

Want to have 1 GB RAM? Can't find 512 MB modules (welcome to the club)? Go for a VIA based board, but beware with your operating system (OS)!

"Old" VIA (http://www.viatech.com) hardware is not very well supported... there are problems, no matter your OS... you will have problems with certain software and hardware.

However, the recent Apollo Pro 133 and Apollo Pro 133A chipsets from VIA, are a wise choice!, correctly supporting UDMA66, AGP 4x and PC133. Buy one of these, and you won't have the headaches brought by the i8x0 alternatives.

Still, Windows 9x - the world's most popular OS - doesn't support ANY (absolute terms) VIA based board 100% OK. The main problems are with the USB and AGP buses.

By visiting VIA website, you are advised to download the so called "4-in-1 patch", that should fix the major situations. Still, expect to have problems with AGP, with interesting hardware, like the superb Creative Lab's GeForce 256 DDR based card... Straight to the point, I can't use Windows 98 with a GeForce DDR and 1 GB of RAM. I did use it, zero problems, previous the 1 GB, but never since. Strange.

In order to keep using Windows 98, I must #1) boot with the "init PCI display first" set on the BIOS options, #2) disable the AGP GeForce card, and then #3) use a PCI device as the primary graphics card. I am using the world's best PCI graphics card: the 3DFX Voodoo 3000 PCI.

That does it, but I still have uncomfortable situations, so I only go to Win98 on my main PC, when I really need to do it, ie to play a Windows 2000 incompatible games :)

Under Windows 2000 all my hardware is 100% supported. I simply love Windows 2000, and I think that - ironic as it may sound - now that Microsoft has legal problems, they indeed deliver - by far - the best OS! Windows 2000 is really, really great! More on that, soon.

Dual Graphics Card feature + Stuff to Come

Why do I use 2 graphics cards (GeForce DDR + Voodoo 3000)? What do you need to use 2 graphics cards? What problems might arise when using such hardware? Are there performance gains / losses?

These and more questions will be answered very soon, on their own article. Stay tuned.

Plus, I will create a local forum for online questions / answers, related to any subject ever covered on the site. Everyone can post questions and answers, in any language.

I am receiving over 100 e-mails / day, and I simply can't answer to everyone on time, plus it is unfair NOT to reply by order-of-arrival and some of you don't understand that.

Once the forum is created, your doubts should NEVER be e-mailed, but, instead POSTED to the forum. Stay tuned...