OmniStrata wrote:has 2 cpus with Win98SE and both of them run with a Gig of DDR RAM...
>_> <_< hmmmm, no one mis-interpreted anything, you gave out mis-information sir. Two computers each with 1GB of ram. >_> <_< Would have been more concise!
(from http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3 ... 598,00.asp)Top Tip: Is there a RAM limit in Windows 98?
Tips used for Top Tips come from the ExtremeTech forum and are written by our community.
Question from tessiemoe :
"I have a K7vAt3 ECS motherboard and Windows 98 SE. It works fine with 512 M of DDR ram but when I put in another 256 (of the exact same brand, Samsung) Windows wouldn't work. Is there a limit on Ram in Windows 98?"
Answer from kgwagner14 :
"Actually, 512 meg is too much, unless you're running an application like Photoshop that has it's own memory manager. Generally speaking, you won't see any improvement in performance once you get over 128 meg. M$ themselves admits to there being a problem in this area, particularly with lockups on machines with 512 meg or more of physical memory, and treats it at http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... US;q253912&
This problem exists with all their 9x OS's. "
Answer from tcohrt :
"I'm not going to go look it up because the last time I did it took me a half an hour to find it, but you can over RAM a 9x system real fast. This issue is addressed on MS Technet.
Physical RAM vs. What the system can address & actually use.
9X can only efficiently use about 160 Mb. Anything over 256 will actually slow the system down in most cases. [ depending on the motherboard & BIOS ] When 98 first came out, most systems were running 32 to 64 Mb of memory & 128 to 256 sticks were in servers. It wasn't built to run large amounts of RAM like NT 4.0 / 2000 / XP was.
We've benchmarked 98 & 98SE with from 32 to 512 of memory & see a definate increase in performance up to the 160 mark. It drops off up to 192 & is about totally flat above 192. Anything that will grab & use anything from 192 & above will usually crash most 98 systems."