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Windows 98 and over 128Mb of RAM.

R

rbenq

Member
I´m planning to upgrade my system (memory, processor, etc.) but I have always heard that Win 98 does not work well with over 128Mb of RAM. Is it true? Does it have anything to do with the motherboard or a system with old drivers or BIOS?

Thanks in advance.
 
I believe it was if you wanted more than 512MB of RAM in Win98 that you would have problems, not more than 128MB. If you wanted say 256MB you should be fine. We have a few machines running 98 with 256MB here at work and they run without any problems. If you search MS help and support site you should be able to find a case or two about it...
 
Actually, anything over 96 megs of ram is not utilized as well in Win98 due
to poor memory management built-in to the kernel.

Thats not to say its bad to have more ram, but it is not used as efficiently as Win2k\WinXP in that regards.
 
Wow, 96 megs is worse than I thought!
Sometimes I have problems with large video capture tasks (system hangs.)
So, after this Lilith post, I think there´s no solution instead of moving to XP...

thanks everybody.
 
I wouldn't go that far. I ran Win98 with 512MB for over a year with no problems and no noticeable performance loss before moving to XP, and now that I have XP I kind of wonder why I switched.
 
Ok...Ok

first step: upgrade to 512Mb in Win98
if system gets better
then "relax and save some money"
else goto "second step"

second step: pray...
update BIOS
pray...
update processor
pray... pray... pray...
update OS to XP Pro
install tons of drivers
if system gets better
then "relax"
else "use DVD instead of Divx!"
 
I run Win98se with 512MB RAM. That's basically the limit for Win98. Modern games run just fine, too.
 
If i was u I'd add these lines to my (EDIT: ) system.ini (when u get over or at 384 MB of RAM)

[386Enh]

MinSPs=8
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
PageBuffers=32
DMABufferSize=64
PerVMFiles=200

[vcache]
MinFileCache=0
MaxFileCache=65536

 
I just got 2 x 256Mb SDRAMs!
With 128Mb I´m using 256 Mb for the swap file.
What is the recommended for 512 Mb ? 1Gb? No, way!!! hehehe
 
Hey BlackMountainCow, I read your post about the win.ini modification. When I go into msconfig I don't see [386Enh] or [vcache] under win.ini. They are under system.ini. Is that where I make these changes? Or am I doing something wrong

Thanks
 
Originally posted by: LiLithTecH
Actually, anything over 96 megs of ram is not utilized as well in Win98 due
to poor memory management built-in to the kernel.

Thats not to say its bad to have more ram, but it is not used as efficiently as Win2k\WinXP in that regards.
Click to expand...

LiLithTecH's point is not that it fails with more RAM - just it performs tasks slower with more RAM. e.g. in finding a empty memory page.

The strategy 98's VMM uses is optimized for a small amount of RAM. (back when I was a lad 96Mb was all a man could ever need in a life time <g/> )

This was rejigged a little for WinMe up to around 128Mb and that was about it on the Win9x line.

The NT VMM uses data structures optimised for more physical memory. It less efficient in constrained (<80Mb) sizes but quickly improves as memory size grows.


 
Basically it's not so much as to how much RAM Windows 98 can utilize, it's how much it can effectively utilize. Once you go over 256 megabytes of RAM with Windows 98 there's basically less of a performance gain the more you go up. In this day and age I'd recommend going with Windows XP if you plan on doing any serious photo or video editing because frankly Windows 98 is holding your system back.
 
Originally posted by: THUGSROOK
ive been using 1gb in Win98se for almost a year.
thoroughly tested and works perfectly.
verified that all 1024mb are being used along with swap file.

link to thread

🙂
Click to expand...
Hey Thugs, have any idea why all of the links at the bottom of your linked page aren't any good anymore🙁? I'd LOVE to get my hands on a few of those updated files.
 
I have 512MB of ram in my nforce 2 with win xp pro, and i have swap file set to 1024 minimum and 1024 max MB for the size. Works great.
 
rbenq wrote:
Does it have anything to do with the motherboard or a system with old drivers or BIOS?
Click to expand...

You didn't mention what the PC consists of hardware wise, but YES, it does matter.
An older motherboard with newer video cards, controllers is not as efficient as a newer/updated version.

You can run Windows 3.11 on a 2.8GHz with a Gig of ram (provided you had all the drivers) and watch it fly, but why?


Mostly what I am trying to point out is, put the extra Ram in, and as long as it works don't worry about it.
 
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