64 mb ram vs 128 mb in a 233mmx computer

[Sophia]

I have and 233mmx computer hanging around (extra email/internet/word processing machine). I can give it 64mb or 128mb of memory. I recall that older computer were said to do best with 64mb, but is one of those amounts clearly better than the other?

 

[Adul]

64 MB should work just fine. Anything more may not be cached properly

 

[benjamit]

i use a 200 mmx everyday at work and it would work better with 128
as it is now it has 64 edo
but finding extra edo memory is rather expensive considering the old technology
the machine i use also has rimms for newer memory chips but i have yet to get them to work right with sdram dimms
the problem may be the mem chip speeds

 

[AndyHui]

Unless your motherboard has an HX chipset, motherboards designed for the Pentium/Pentium MMX can only cache a maximum of 64MB of RAM. Because of Microsoft Window's "top down" memory structure, all of the important stuff will be loaded at the top of memory, outside the cached area, resulting in possibly degraded performance.

Whether or not you will see any advantage in going to 128MB of RAM depends on your usage patterns. If you are using Win95, and use the computer for only light multitasking, like word processing and surfing the net, chances are you will see better performance with only 64MB of RAM.

If you are a heavy user with Win98, Photoshop and many applications open at once, you will probably be better off with 128MB of RAM. In such cases, even though the important stuff is loaded in the uncached area of memory, the fact is that there will still be headroom for the program to be loaded in RAM, rather than needing to be accessed from the pagefile on the hard disk, which is much slower. Win98 is much more of a RAM hog than Win95.

 

[steelnewfie]

For the uses you describe, 64 will suffice....

 

[4824guy]

I fully agree, for those programs that you are using, 64 meg is enough. No need to get more ram.

 

[Priit]

64Mb should be just enough unless you are using some memory-wasting OS like W2k. Win9x'es are doing just fine with it. BTW that 64Mb cacheable memory limit only applies to Intel chipsets (exept some HX-based mobos): VIA's VP-2,VP-3,VPX and MVP3, ALi's and SiS chipsets are able to cache at least 128Mb with 512Kb L2. Intel somewhy (probably for boosting P2 sales) castrated it's TX chipset (HX follower) only be able to cache up to 64Mb...

 

[cparker]

64 is fine for what you want to do. use w95 or 98 or 98se and you will be happy.

 

[mithrandir2001]

I have a 200MMX with the Intel FX (430FX?) chipset. I was also told of this 64Mb cache limitation. Basically, people felt that 128Mb would result in a faster Windows machine than 64Mb, but something in between - say, 80 or 96Mb - would be slower than simply having 64Mb. My system has remained at 64Mb.

If EDO RAM cost as little as SDRAM, I'd go for more memory. But it is amazing how expensive EDO RAM is. Cheapest I've seen is $25 for 32Mb stick. Why can't I find cheap, old, used sticks from people who ditched 'em when they moved to PC66/100 years back? Even on e-Bay, EDO RAM is a lot of money. I just want to pay $8-10 for a 32Mb stick...it makes no sense to pay more for such an old machine.

Why is e-Bay (without a dash) a forbidden word with the forum software? NO idea there...