DOS ain't dead

UX with nVidia GTX 970 (Users)

posted by Zyzzle, 03.08.2022, 06:31

> My experience is that the freeze happens when the WC region overlapps an UC
> region. To avoid the overlap is way more difficult to achieve on Intel
> machines, because they lack the TOP_MEM and TOP2_MEM MSR registers of the
> AMD machines.

Same as my experiences. Very hard to impossible to avoid the overlap! It couldn't be done in my experiences.

As to modern AMD systems, even from the Ryzen 3 released in 2017-18, yes, avoiding WC region overlap is possible, so write-cache combining can be enabled. However all "modern" AMD systems castrate the onboard video BIOS so as to completely eliminate sub-640x480 VGA resolutions (even 320x200 and mode 13, as well as all VESA 8-bit resolutions like 640x480x8bit are excised), so only DOS programs or games utilizing VESA modes in 15-bit (16-bit) or higher work. This is an even worse castration than memory-overlap preventing WC on intel core gen 6-12, since at least the sub-640x480 and 8-bit modes still work! (OOPS, I just checked a 10th gen i5, and all VGA resolutions are cut, *and* wc-catching doesn't work, either, hangs). So, intel gen 6-12 are "worthless" for any bare-metal DOS work at all.

Complete thread:

• UX with nVidia GTX 970 - RayeR, 27.07.2022, 16:31 (Users)
  • UX with nVidia GTX 970 - Oso2k, 28.07.2022, 04:49
  • UX with nVidia GTX 970 - Zyzzle, 30.07.2022, 02:34
    • UX with nVidia GTX 970 - Ringding, 30.07.2022, 08:50
      • UX with nVidia GTX 970 - Zyzzle, 30.07.2022, 09:36
        • UX with nVidia GTX 970 - Japheth, 31.07.2022, 02:34
          • UX with nVidia GTX 970 - Zyzzle, 03.08.2022, 06:31
            • UX with nVidia GTX 970 - RayeR, 16.08.2022, 19:20
              • UX with nVidia GTX 970 - Zyzzle, 17.08.2022, 02:46
                • UX with nVidia GTX 970 - RayeR, 17.08.2022, 15:38
                  • UX with nVidia GTX 970 - Zyzzle, 20.08.2022, 07:44
                    • UX with nVidia GTX 970 - marcov, 20.08.2022, 14:01