truth about having too much ram?

[chipbgt]

I have heard some say that it is possible to have too MUCH ram in your computer and it can slow things down. I am currently running win98 se with 196 megs of pc100 ram. Does anyone have any links to any hard evidence for or against this theory? thanks.

[codybear]

In my last system a p 3 500 I was running 512mb for quite a long time and in my opinion it helped...my drive didnt run as much and the graphics programs as well office and ...well everything was a lot smoother...slower?? not for me anyway

if ya got it stuff it in

[Eli]

The "too much ram" thing really only applies to the old TX chipset, which did slow down when more than 64 megs of ram was installed.

[LED]

It also applies to the VX chipset and when running Win95/98 but NT is fine with more RAM

[BBA]

The VX had a 512M ram cache buffer. The TX had only 64.

I use 128M on a TX server just to eliminate drive thrashing...and this does improve performance, just not as much as 128M of cached ram would.

More ram in general will not slow a system down...even a TX system! (it's just because in order to stop disk thrashing you need more than 64M...esp for playing almost any games. and a TX PC still is helped more than hurt)



[This message has been edited by BBA (edited 12-27-1999).]

[Nathan]

Well said BBA. I get kindof tired of saying the same thing basically. If you have it, use it.

[Sweeper]

I had 128 then added 64 megs more and didn't notice a bit of diference. Used several bench-marks and none proved to me that the additional ram was worth it. It's now in my other system and I am back to 128. Personaly anything over 128 (unless you are running a server or spread sheats or photo imaging alot) 128 is just fine.

[Dave2]

I upgraded from 128MB to 256MB. It made no difference in games. In fact I got a slow down of 1 point in Sandra 99 memory benchmark and for some strange reason that bencmark too much longer to complete than with 128MB. At least I bought that extra 128MB when it was cheap.

128MB is adequate for games now. However, by the year 2001 I predict that 128MB will not be enough for future games.

[bdunn]

Eventually you wlll maxe out the amount of cache that a given board will support. If you put in more ram than the board can cache things will slow down a little bit

[EVGTech]

Having multiple sticks of memory can cause problems. It is better to get the memory on one stick of possible. Multiple sticks can cause bus contention problems. if you remember having 4 dimms in some of the early BX boards caused instability.

[Axel]

Here are a few pointers -
you can't mix SIMMs and DIMMs - I haven't seen a system work that way yet - but someone here may have a board I haven't seen yet.
Mixxing different speeds or RAM typically spells trouble for the system.
When it comes to SIMMs, they have to go in sets of two which should be matched up.

If you are stuck with SIMMs, try to get all the same speed (60ns is the fastest SIMM I've seen, but again, there may be faster stuff out there)

If you have DIMM/SDRAM slots, then it is generally best to get as much RAM as you can on one stick and get it as fast as you can. 10ns << NanoSecond > is pretty good stuff - then it's a matter of maxing out what a board can handle. The current plateau appears to be 100mHz clock speed SDRAM, however some of the newer boards are seeing 133mHz and the high-end stuff is out there at 166mHz bus speeds, all of which speeds things up.

There are other special features out there with different caching schemes and a few technical tweaks particular to a few boards.

Other things to consider once you've touched on the hardware side of things is what operating system you have.

Win95 doesn't really effectively use much more than the first 64MB of RAM you give it. I'm not exactly sure what the tolerances of win98 are. WindowsNT, however, will eat as much RAM as you give it and typically comes back smiling and asking for more.

Lastly - part of your RAM equation after that has to do with what junk you run all of the time that stays in the back-ground.
I like my system running with only explorer and systray in my task list until I tell it to go and do something else. I typically also have Seti@Home running on my stuff, but that's an informed personal choice I turn off when I'm gaming.

Basically - if I don't run it each and every single time I turn on my computer - it doesn't get loaded automatically.

And that the bare bones of what to consider about RAM. (someone put in the win98 stuff for me;0)

[BBA]

Ummmm.....Any board that supports 3.3 and 5 volt dimms will allow mixing. This includes the Shuttle Hot-569 for one and the A-Open AX5T for another, and I have used 5V DIMMS and EDO SIMMS on both of them at the same time with no problems. The only bad thing is hardly any newer board will even work with a 5V EDO DIMM nowadays!

[daveleau]

You don't necissarily have to have pairs of SIMMS either. I have seen boards run with one SIMM. The board had 3 72 pin slots. Very odd. I have no idea what board it was though. I must say it was old.
Dave

[kongkong]

I have 3 DIMMS of RAM(two PC66, 1 PC100 on BP6),the first one (32MB) bought three years ago, another one 32MB, last year, the last one, just weeks ago 128MB. I am running NT, and play games all day long during last two weeks... well from 64 to 192, the difference is *HUGE*!!!

However, the Memory benchmark is even lower than before and something else. Well, what I can say. All those benchmarks are just crappy programs like M$ products, and even worse, why don't you just trust your own feeling?

192 is still not enough though, from the NT task manager, I saw that the memory usage peaks at 270MB sometimes, after I play Quake3. Well, I might have too many IE windows opened at the background... http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

if you feel you have too many Ram, I can take care of one of them...... need a mailing address? let me know... http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by kongkong (edited 12-28-1999).]

[LED]

Some VX chipset specs @
http://www.hwupgrade.com/chipset/intel430vx.html
and for more info on results of the TX chipset running on more than 64MB with Win95 look @
http://www.tweakit.com/mblink.html
Oh... and the FX chipset also has 64MB cache.
http://www.hwupgrade.com/chipset/intel430fx.html
The HX chipset has 512 megs to be cached.

**** keyboard http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif




[This message has been edited by LED (edited 12-28-1999).]

[welsh wizard]

Just a small,point here if you are mixing 66MHz and 100MHz sticks always put the fastest in bank 0 and the slowest in last bank to be filled, other wise you may tend to get eratic memory errors, only just found this on a system with a Jet board this week,
WW

PS that doesn't mean leaving any unfilled between the must run up the banks in fill order, only adding this cuase had a customer do this on a A16NLX ATX mobo, he used bank 0 and bank 2 (left bank 1 empty and wondered why he had problems)

[This message has been edited by welsh wizard (edited 12-28-1999).]