Max memory in W98

[jray]

Does anyone know if there is a maximum amount of memory recommended for W98se? I've heard Windows gets lost with too much ram. . .

[BipolarBill]

I would set top at 512MB, but I don't recommend any more than 256MB because Windows doesn't know how to use it very well - in my experience.

[NDD]

"Official" "top" is 512MB, indeed.
But with this amount of RAM W2K/XP would be faster then Win98SE, from my personal experience

[jray]

I am wondering if that may be the cause of this issue I am currently trying to figure out. This machine originally had XP Home edition, the guy was having problems so he went to 98se thinking it must be XP. It appears as though the data keeps getting lost. I've checked the drive both with scandisk (surface scan) and Western Digital's Data Lifegaurd, both report no problems with the drive (it's a 100gb ATA 100 7200). The rest of the major specs are:

(oem) Athlon XP1900 (1600 MHz)
ASUS A7V266-E
768 mb Crucial DDR 266 (3X256)
400w Antec power supply

I'm thinking it's either the oem CPU (personally, I would only use a boxed CPU, Intel or AMD), or just too much ram, like you say Windows doesn't know what to do with it. (Let's see now, where did I put that data?. . . . .)

[BipolarBill]

Ya...have him pull half his brains out. That should fix it.

[jray]

or wallet

[Bait Man]

There was an article on M/S site about memory could not locate it to post here, but going from old memory in the head, I believe no more than 384mb something about windows and switch back file that it make up..

[Jimstep]

I run Win98 with 640Mb of 133Mhz SDRAM with no problems. I have my swap file fixed at 256Mb and my disk cache fixed at 32Mb. I believe the problem with Win98 with memory over 512Mb was due to the disk cache. If the disk cache is fixed to something below 512Mb, you should be okay. For extra protection, you can run MSCONFIG.EXE, select the advanced option and set the max memory for Win98 to 512Mb.

The extra memory is good for editing music and large video files.

But this doesn't solve your real problem. You need to isolate why your losing data. I seriously doubt that it is the amount of ram you have, but the type of ram you have can be a factor. If the memory were built on the 4-layer circuit board technology instead of the 6-layer technology, then you could be getting memory failure due to EMI. The faster processors demand the highest quality of memory.

[rextex]

Well there's a lot of stuff about this out there.Supposedly 2 GB physical and 4 GB logical is the limit.And I 've read the rest about 384 ,etc. but never seen any concrete data backing it up.There is this about the 512 issue and related:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...;EN-US;q253912
If you go to this place you read all kinds of + an -'s, rants rves and speculations.But you'll also see there are a few people out there right now using over 512 and it works.http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/20...1002008144.htm

You want to run faster?Well its not as much related to the amount of RAM as most people think, read this:
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/morememory.html

If wanna' ask someone else; How about "Ask an Expert?" ( )
http://www.allexperts.com/getExpert.asp?Category=1061

[Rugor]

I believe the original advice to always upgrade your memory dates back to a time when all available memory was approximately the same speed.

While going to a faster memory type may improve performance more than increasing your amount of slow memory, it is still a good general rule that you can improve overall performance on a system by increasing physical memory to reduce virtual memory usage.

Virtual memory is always slower than physical memory.

My advice, especially for Win9x is get at least 256MB of the fastest memory your system supports. Having said that, if you're running a 133MHz DDR memory bus you're better off with PC2100 that will do CAS2 than PC2400 that's locked at CAS2.5. Memory speed is more than just the highest bus speed it will support.