How much RAM is really useful?

[xjad]

I currently have a system on order that includes:
A7V133 w/RAID
Thunderbird 750
256MB Micron CAS3(wasn't worth the extra $50 for CAS2)
MSI 818 GeForce 2MX w/TV out
......

Anyways, since ram is quite cheap, I am wondering how much more RAM I should buy. I'm thinking of either going for an additional 256 or 768. I would have to sacrifice getting a hard drive for awhile, but I'm sick of running low on ram with my older computers. Will Win98SE/ME use 512MB-1GIG of RAM efficiently?
I'm sure Linux would, as that would be my alternate OS.

 

[johneetrash]

it'll use it, not efficiently, use win2k

 

[jehh]

Can you use more than 256MB of RAM? Sure, but not often.

I've been able to run enough to fill up 256MB of RAM on my Win 2000 system, just not very often.

Check Task Manager to see how much RAM you're using, if it isn't over what you have, save your money, in another month or two, the price will be down another 20%.

Jason

 

[bacillus]

I doubt that you'll see much of a difference in win98/ME by getting more ram, unless of course you play around with really big files.

 

[Boonesmi]

i use win98 and quake3 loaded alot faster when i went from 256mb up to 512mb of ram, but that was about the only difference i saw. (q3 game play was the same, just the time to loadup a game was fast)

 

[A2KLAU]

Win 2K will manage it well! But I use 384MB Ram with Win 98 and its more than enough! I want to get Win 2K... but I will stick with my Win 98.

Albert.

 

[eyez]

if you do a lot of photo/video editing, load up as much as you can. I've seen recommendations as high as 1g. The system I'm building now is going to get 512 to start...when a 512 stick goes down a little, I'll bump it up to a full gig.

 

[eyez]

Another observation I've made is that my system crashes much less when handling huge photoshop files on my current system when I went from 128 to 384.

 

[Quickfingerz]

Save your money! don't spend all this money trying to get more ram when you don't need it. unless you're running programs like 3d studio max or any other graphics rendering program, you won't need the extra ram.

 

[xjad]

I am planning on doing some video capturing, I doubt I could do 640x480x24 encoding in MPEG-4 on the fly, so chances are just 352x240x24. That and a little UT/Q3/etc... here and there would be the most intensive I would be doing. In the way of graphics, it would probably be small animations for webpages.

Thanks for all your guy's input, pretty fast response too. I'll be thinking 512 in total then, I should have 2 dimm slots if I need to upgrade later. Plus I'm not fond of the overhead and slower drivers(in most cases) for Win2K.

 

[TheBigZ]

with the prices the way they are, I'm runnin all my boxes to the max. Might be overkill now, but when WinXP comes out... we shall see.

 

[Kingofcomputer]

What?
$50 extra for cas2?
Even Crucial 256M is just $2 difference between cas2 and cas3.
You're being ripped off.
Don't buy that overpriced generic Micron, you can almost get 512M Crucial cas2.
Go for 512M, 256M is just barely enough for Win98.

 

[xjad]

As a matter of fact, yes. But that's cause the 256MB was on-sale plus I did a price match. Living in a small town and in Canada does have some of its difficulties when it comes to computer prices. It was $175 for CAS 2 w/Micron board, or $125 w/Micron chips CAS 3, of which I got an additional $5 off...

Keep in mind, I'm talking CDN dollars.

I was previously running a Celeron 366@413mhz w/128MB of RAM, which I sold for shortly after I got it. Since it was going for the Harddrive too much, I decided 256MB would be decent for a Thunderbird 750 still running Win98SE.

Time will tell, but I'm leaning towards 256MB of RAM, like suggested, I'll wait for 1GB.