TOO MUCH RAM ?

[GOOMER]

Could having too much ram in a machine make it run slower ?, I seem to remember reading somewhere that having 256mb would not be a good idea.

[chipbgt]

For the most part, its a myth. What do you plan on using your computer for? gaming, photo/video/audio editing, general browsing and word processing? It is true that once you get to a certain level of memory the increase in speed by adding more decreases compared to the increase before......but if you have more memory lying around, shove it in there http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[wtp]

yeah, i've heard that having 256MB on Win98 will slow it down since Win98 is not designed to handle 256MB of RAM, and designed for 128MB. But... my dad has 256MB of RAM on his, and his appz are way faster than b4.. just more myths i suppose..

wtp

[neo_otyugh]

i think it is just the performance increases are not as noticeable. the best to do would be to run something like 512 megs of ram, then create a ramdrive that is 256 megs and set the swap file on the ram drive...then when you get swap file hits it is as fast as your ram....

[SpookyEddy]

I've heard that this is only an issue on some older chipset motherboards.

On these systems RAM is only cached upto a certain level, therefore anything over this runs comparitively slowly.

I dont know how much truth there is to this but it sounds reasonable to me.

[Wilan Wong]

I also heard that older motherboard run slower with more memory because the motherboard can't "cache" it, or something similar to that.

[GOOMER]

O.K, Thanks for your replies, I've just been offered another 128mb for a reasonable price. Dont think I'll bother though. - Goomer

[BBA]

I still see a lot of confusion here on ram.

More is better if your chipset/processor can address it.

Since that the oldest P-2 chip could cache over 4G of ram, I don't see that as a problem anymore.

The only thing people percieve as a problem is file access slows down with more ram...so they think.

What actually happens is the system increases the SWAP file size according to the amount of ram present.

This means that if you have 64M ram, then windows might use a 80M swap file. If you have 512M ram, windows would use a 532M swap file.

The problem this causes is windows also loads data to the swap file as a percentage to the swap file size. This means a bigger swap file will stop all I/O operations while it accesses itself. ANd writing 200MB+ to a hard drive will cause a substantial delay in system response.

So, the end result is, if you have more ram, you have to compensate by manually limiting the size of the swap file, or the system will have response delays from excessive disk writing for the purpose of filling the swap file.

It's a stupid thing windows does. I believe that swap file size should be decreased with more ram, not increased...what the hell was MS thinking?

[Colonel Casio]

You will find info about "Too much RAM" at this site: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q253/9/12.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=g

[NDC]

Yes BBA is correct about the swap file, swap files are much slower than RAM because it is done by writing to your hard disk which is much much.. slower than your RAM. I have 768 MB of RAM on my system and have DISABLED the SWAP FILE (Page File in Window NT4 & NT5) by going into my registery file. I have much RAM because I work with large graphic files. You will only need over 256MB of RAM working with large files such as graphic files or 3D programs such as 3D-Max. But besides that , putting more RAM in your system will only make your wallet smaller and you wont notice big performance gains if you are using your computer for games or simple word processing, and etc. MORE RAM ISN"T ALWAYS BETTER!

[Win_98]

I notice that sisoft sandra take alot longer
to bench a 128meg memory then a 32meg of memory about 4 times as long
I sit there for 5 min looking dumb http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif
More memory is good, I wish I have 512MEG but
boy that about 500 dollars?
32meg of memory took sisoft only 30sec to bench... Wish you can set it so say 4meg-32meg so it wouldn't take as long...
The advice that sisoft give is not alway right, it just their opinion.

[nvksmt]

Maybe there's a pattern? 32 * 4=128.. did you ever think Sandra benches ALL the ram? Possible maybe. Win_98, what is your native language?

[frankpel]

I run 256mb in 4 of my 5 machines. The fifth machine, which is the one I'm on now, has 384mb pc133. None of the machines have slowed down. In fact on this machine(384mb) I will never here my hard drive looking for vr memory. I can open numberous programs at once and never have to go to virtual memory(vr). I have FreeMem Pro running in the background and I watch my memory decrease as I open applications. I have never gone below 150mb.I can open multiple windows while browsing and can download 5 programs at once without running out of memory. I am into digital photography. I have over 2000 images saved on my hard drive. If I start opening many photos at once, my ram gets used up real quick. In fact, I'm thinking of going to 512mb soon. Anyway, sorry to be so long winded, just that I too have heard these stories about too much ram, and disagree only because I have been doing it for some time with no problems.Frank

[Glynn R Harris]

I have 256M right now, want more, but my motherboard is based on the Intel 430TX chipset, and 256M is all it allows.

I too do some graphics work, and so swapfiles, slow as they are, enable me to do what I need to do.

But you can be sure I am shopping mobos right now, minimum requirement: 4 DIMM slots, 1G mem.

That Microsoft document that points out that Win98 doesn't handle >512M well, especially with an AGP video card, tells me I am probably going to Millenium Edition a little faster than I thought.