amd nvidia and mem=nopentium

[Nicolas Turro <Nicolas.Turro@sophia.inria.fr>]

Hi, i have system dual athlon  XP 1900+ system and a nvidia graphic board :

PCI devices found:
  Bus  0, device   0, function  0:
    Host bridge: PCI device 1022:700c (Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]) (rev 17).
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.
      Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf0000000 [0xf7ffffff].
      Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xef800000 [0xef800fff].
      I/O at 0xe800 [0xe803].
  Bus  0, device   1, function  0:
    PCI bridge: PCI device 1022:700d (Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]) (rev 0).
      Master Capable.  No bursts.  Min Gnt=8.
  Bus  0, device   7, function  0:
    ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-768 [??] ISA (rev 4).
  Bus  0, device   7, function  1:
    IDE interface: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-768 [??] IDE (rev 4).
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.
      I/O at 0xd800 [0xd80f].
  Bus  0, device   7, function  3:
    Bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-768 [??] ACPI (rev 3).
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.
  Bus  0, device  16, function  0:
    PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-768 [??] PCI (rev 4).
      Master Capable.  No bursts.  Min Gnt=4.
  Bus  1, device   5, function  0:
    VGA compatible controller: PCI device 10de:0202 (nVidia Corporation) (rev 
163).
      IRQ 11.
      Master Capable.  Latency=248.  Min Gnt=5.Max Lat=1.
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xe6000000 [0xe6ffffff].
      Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xe8000000 [0xebffffff].
      Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xe7800000 [0xe787ffff].
  Bus  2, device   0, function  0:
    USB Controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-768 [??] USB (rev 7).
      IRQ 5.
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.  Max Lat=80.
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xe5800000 [0xe5800fff].
  Bus  2, device   4, function  0:
    Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CM8738 (rev 16).
      IRQ 10.
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.  Min Gnt=2.Max Lat=24.
      I/O at 0xc800 [0xc8ff].
  Bus  2, device   6, function  0:
    Ethernet controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] 79c970 [PCnet LANCE] 
(rev 68).
      IRQ 10.
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.  Min Gnt=24.Max Lat=24.
      I/O at 0xc400 [0xc41f].
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xe5000000 [0xe500001f].

I need to use the mem=nopentium kernel parameter in order to run X without
crashes. I'd like to know :
1- what are the consequences of  'mem=nopentium' ? Any performance loss ?
i intend to use a gigabit ethernet adapter on this box.
2- is there any fix going on that i should monitor ?

Thanks in advance..

Nicolas