How much RAM is enough?

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nightowl

Golden Member
Oct 12, 2000
1,935
0
0
I would say that 256mb is the sweet spot right now for most applications. I already have 256mb and at any given time I am using 110mb to 130mb in Win2k. I am just trying to decide whether or not I should jump to 512mb. Decisions...decisions. :) The only thing is that I would have to get 2 256mb pieces because I aready have 2 128mb pieces and the 815 chipset only supports 2 banks of PC133.
 

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
22,709
3,003
126
I have 192 MB in my system and it works well. I'm definitely going to buy some more RAM soon but I can't decide between getting another 64 MB or another 128 MB RAM.

Whitedog:

BFG, shuddup!

LOL! I've now heard 64, 128, 256 and 512 as supposed limits for Windows 9x/ME. Who says you don't learn anything in the forums? ;)

shawnmos:

Doom 3????

Yep. :)
 

Wuming

Golden Member
Dec 14, 2000
1,030
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have 256 mb ram, add the line ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1 in the 386Enh section in your system.ini, and let windows manage your swapfile size.
 

stso

Platinum Member
Nov 17, 2000
2,528
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I think I've read a advertisement on a magazine long time ago, but I forgot what brand it was.
It says "MORE RAM, MORE SPEED" ;)
Hehe, you will never have enough.
 

Molochi

Junior Member
Jan 13, 2001
5
0
0
I recently saw some benching (god knows where) showing a ~50% increase in office app performance if you go from 64mb to 128mb. Going from 128 to 256mb only netted about 10%. Going above 256mb gave negligable benifit. They didn't test 192mb.

Changing your memory timings from 3-3-3 to 2-2-2 should net you a noticable system performance increase. Overall maybe 10%.

I just looked at your Rig "monsterbox". It has 256mb on it which is more than enough imho. before shelling out 170 bucks for a garanteed cas2-2-2 stick, see if that crucial memory in your box will do it... I wouldn't be at all surprised if it did at least 3-2-2 at 133MHz.

ME GOING INTO OVERKILL
I just went from 128mb cas2/2/2 to 384 cas2/2/2 and it does make a diference but not in frame rate (well maybe 5fps). I did a full spread of benchmarks and didn't see a huge increase in benchmarks, but then I didn't expect to. I Increased the amount of SDRAM on my system so I could increase my disk cache (improves the way large files under windows apps behave) and Decrease my permanent swap file (in fact I'd get rid of it altogether but some UT maps are huge memory hogs (or have leaks) and crash if I have less than 512mb of total memory). The main thing I was trying to cure were annoying pauses in the middle of games, that interestingly don't seem to affect benchmarks. They are all gone. DX8's texture thrashing and Mechwarrior 4's jerky behavior... GONE. And UT only takes about 1/2second to go from front end movie to main menu (tho loading the umpty hunded maps still takes a while). Tommorow I'll pull out the Mushkin ECC and see if there's any decrease, or maybe not (I like that tiny swap file.)