Is this a rumor or true?

[Trey]

I've heard that W98 only utilizes 128MB or RAM. Everyone I've asked says they have heard it before and they aren't sure, or they haven't ever heard that. Anyone know?

[SPARKI1]

yeah i heard something along those lines on www.server.counter-strike.com (http://www.server.counter-strike.com) somewhere in the tutorial on setting up a CS server. But at Uni i had a mate who had 512mb and that thin was amazing it never crashed good rip cd's play mp3 and host a cs server to 4 players all at the same time with not much effect. (ok the mp3 slowed sometimes but not)

[BFlurie]

This has been addressed here quite a few times. W9X itself can use any amount (up to 2 GB) efficiently. The limitation is in the mobo/Cpu combo's RAM cacheability (write allocate) limit -- anywhere from 64 MB (old mobos) to 512 MBs or more (newer ones).
Perhaps you're wondering at what point more memory doesn't do any good because the OS doesn't need it? Depends on your apps & OS. My W95 system never uses the full 128 MBs unless I force it. Your mileage will vary.......

[stylin19]

Actually, Windows95/98/ME has a vcache restriction that causes problems with more than 512 RAM.

Insufficient address space because of Vcache (http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q253/9/12.ASP)


here's another decent article re: how to use an entry in the system.ini file to get all RAM available to windows: ( I've tried it both restrictive and inclusive, but I show no measurable performance difference with my 384 mb Ram)

MaxPhysPage (http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q181/8/62.ASP)


[This message has been edited by stylin19 (edited 01-04-2001).]

[scotter]

stylin19 is correct 512 megs max over that and you will get not enough memory errors and a few other strange things happening with any version of windows 9X

there are work arounds though as described on a few web pages

[Warthog]

That's not quite the whole story...

Windows only efficiently utilizes up to 128mb of RAM. After that, the performance increase begins to drop.

Warthog