How much RAM does Windows need?

[Skoop]

Win98 or Win ME--can they use more than 128MB? Many gamers put 256MB in their PCs. Is that overkill, or what?

 

[Brian48]

Of course Windows can use more than 128mb. There has never been a memory limation with Win9x. As to whether or not 256mb is overkill, that depends on what apps you normally run.

 

[kursplat]

don't know how much ram is too much, but i sure notice the differance from 128mb to 256mb.
to me 256mb is minimum for fun and games.

 

[Eug]

What do you notice?

I've been thinking of going from 128 to 192 Mb, for two reasons. 1) More memory (obviously 😛). 2) Get rid of my 8 ns 64 Mb stick and go with a 7 ns one.

The one thing I notice with games is sometimes, my computer will hang for a second in a frag fest when I am killed online, because I think I'm accessing the hard drive or something else, but I'm not sure. Happens both with UT and Q3.

 

[han888]

128 should be enough for windows 🙂

 

[Fingers]

if you don't have a lot of stuff running in your taskbar 128 should be plenty. I only have 64 and it doesn't affect my quake3 playing unless i'm playing single player and decide to have a 20 player botmatch, but other than that it is fine.

 

[Dyflam]

Too much RAM... that's a funny thought. I think you should have as much as you can afford. I think windows only requires 32mb though... not sure.

 

[Shudder]

Windows 9x itself will take up about 30 something megs of Ram.

128 is just peachy for Windows 9x. For 2k, it's whatever you can afford, 128 MINIMUM.

 

[Bignate603]

Depends what version of windows. You technically can run windows 95 on 16, but that would be painful. If you have the ram, windows will find some way to use it, within reason. I have no idea what windows would do if you had a gig of ram in the system, i have no clue if even windows could use that much, no matter what you run.

 

[tigger80]

once you get to around 128 you should be looking at RAID or something like that, then overall you will see more performance.

 

[hans007]

in win2k there really isn't a difference above 256 megs unless you are running a database server or something. For just a web browsing, work use, gaming system not using lightwave or 3dsmax 192-256 is ideal.

 

[GoaTCoW]

um, i read once and have heard mutiple times that windows 95 can only use 64mbs of ram then it starts making swap files and 98 can only use 96mb, 98/95's was code in this fashion becuase it was easier and due to the price of ram at the time. as for ME im not sure but anything running the latest NT kernel(w2k & nt4.x) should be able to handle up to 2gbs of ram. if i am making an ass out of myself with this post, please tell me...though i may ask for your evidence

 

[Moving Target]

I did a test in 3DMarks2000 with 128MB,196MB and 256MB, and saw very little diff in performance. IMO 64MB is bare MIN and anything over 128MB is a waste. Spend that money some where else and get a better return on your investment.

This is on Win98SE, not sure about 2000 or ME.