ScoobyJawa

In my display setup on XP along with Hardware acceleration it has a checkbox to say Enable Write Combing. Whats that then? My card is a TNT2 32MB, is it worth having on or off?

Cheers
Neil.

Fosters

Writes to video memory are often done in "chunks" less than the external
system bus width - bytes, words, dwords. Write Combining accumulates these
writes for uncached memory regions, like video memory, in a buffer until
there is a full 64-bits to write - so you can reduce system bus activity
considerably.

One of the problems with Write Combining is that data writes can be
accumulated in the buffer, and therefore completed as far as the CPU is
concerned, while at the same time main memory writes get stalled due to the
chipset's main memory buffer being full. This means that the writes to
main memory and the video memory can get out of order. Depending on the
video drivers and the video hardware this can cause problems with some
video cards. The K6-III has a mechanism for specifying how these
situations should be handled - there are three levels from "strong
ordering" (lowest performance) to "weak ordering" (highest performance).

ScoobyJawa

Sounds like I should have it turned off then?

Mr Footlong

iTrader: (7)

LOL, where did you rip that from Fosters?

ChrisB

Judging by the reference to the K6 III, something written eons ago

jbryant

Well it may refer to the K6-III but the TNT32 is no newbie (good card tho')

Joolz

ScoobyJawa

Joolz,

Nope its no newbie, nor is the ancient P3 450 (clocked to 502) that its running on. I even have a whole 11Gig of HD space 256MB Ram. I know I need a new system, but thats a few months away yet

So, what do you all think, on or off?

ChrisB

If you stopped modding the cars, the bike and the dishwasher mate, you'd have plenty of cash spare

ScoobyJawa

You forgot the Tumble Dryer you cheeky g!t

LOL - Quite true though, although I fear this is the year for change, I'm getting old