RAM compatability issue

[icefire]

Yea, I have no money right now so I'm still running Win 98. I've heard that it can't support large amounts of ram, that after a certain amount, it actually starts to slow it down. Exactly how large is 'large'? Right now, I have 512, and it does ok on boot up, but when I try to open a big program, such as office, it takes it about 2 minutes just to open a stupid word document. I didn't have this problem when I had my 128 stick in there. Does anyone know what the limit is?

 

[Heisenberg]

Here and here are a couple articles that are relevant.