How much ram to run windows '98 (1 Viewer)

[Miles Lucasso]

Hi all-

Updating an old timer from windows '95 to '98.
Current system has 32mb ram was thinking of going to 64mb.
Will that run the basic programs suffiently?

Also want to add an ethernet card to an open port,
any problems there?

yes know I should buy a new unit and will at some point, but have to make this one last a little longer.

-Miles

 

[JeremyFr]

yeah you want at least 64 for Win98 and a NIC card should be no problem either as long as you have an open PCI slot I would not suggest using an ISA NIC Card.

 

[Miles Lucasso]

Thanks Jeremy-

yes I have 3 open pci slots.
I was thinking linksys as that is the brand of my portal and router and they seem to work well.

nice theatre rig, I run a yamaha receiver too.

-miles

 

[Rob Gillespie]

64 will be OK but 128 will make a big difference. Above that you're not going to see that much of an improvement in Windows 98 and above 256 you may not see any difference at all.

 

[Miles Lucasso]

Thanks Rob,
I wondered if I should go for 128,As long as I'm at it. I just may.

-Miles

 

[teapot2001]

Just go for 128MB. I tried installing more a few years ago, and it actually slowed down my system.

~T

 

[Miles Lucasso]

Thanks thi.
Yes 128 would be the most I would do.

-miles

 

[John_Berger]

Do not run Windows 98 with anything less that 128. In the large numbers of installs that I've done, Windows 98 right after a fresh installation with no additional applications installed takes up 68-70 MB of memory, so with 64 MB you're hitting swap the majority of the time. You will see a significant performance difference with 128. Depending on what you're running, 192 would be a good move as well; however, after that you're probably going to suffer from significant diminishing returns.

 

[Miles Lucasso]

thanks John-

128 it is, now to find antiquated ram,
66mhz 100 pin.


-miles

 

[Nick Graham]

As a man who has worked on countless Windows 98 machines, definitely get 128 MB.....failure to do so will result in suffering. Memory is dirt cheap right now. BTW, in response to the last post, if your motherboard uses DIMMs, then buying PC100 or PC133 RAM will work just fine for you, as they are all backwards compatible.

 

[JeremyFr]

PC100 or PC133 RAM will work just fine for you, as they are all backwards compatible.

Not true, PC100 will typically downclock to 66 and likewise 133 to 100 but 133 will not run at 66mhz and if it does you'll get all sorts of nasty errors "blue screens of death etc" if your board even boots. Then you have som boards that will only use the exact speed they call for, my old PII/PIII board required 100mhz ram if you stuck anything else in it, it didn't work I hated that board. So best bet go to a computer store(you'll prolly have to go to a used puter store for 66Mhz) and get the speed you need to be on the safe side. Also Win98 will only efficiently manage 128MB of ram after that you're just wasting rams as it really doesnt know what to do with it.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

A neat trick with 98 is a registry hack to ensure the OS uses all available physical ram before hitting the swap file. If you run with a decent amount of memory (my box with 98 on has 256) then you can have a 0kb swap file forever

I cant for the life of me remember what the hack is tho!

 

[John_Berger]

I cant for the life of me remember what the hack is tho!

Oh, man! I need that for Windows 2000!! I'm so sick of it bitching about it needing to increase virtual memory when I have 512 MB of memory and only about 200 MB of it is in use!

 

[Rob Gillespie]

John, it's something like ConservativeSwapFileUsage or something similar. Have a search on AnandTech and see if you can dig it up.

Note that the W2K hack doesn't use the same entries as the one for 98.

 

[JeremyFr]

Oh, man! I need that for Windows 2000!! I'm so sick of it bitching about it needing to increase virtual memory when I have 512 MB of memory and only about 200 MB of it is in use!

Unfortunately there is some software out there that requires you use a swapfile no matter how much ram you have in your machine so sometimes you can run into this problem I just set my machine to use a swapfile of 512mb this way it doesnt waste time increasing and shrinking it which helps make things a little bit faster with swapfile usage.

 

[John_Berger]

I just set my machine to use a swapfile of 512mb this way it doesnt waste time increasing and shrinking it which helps make things a little bit faster with swapfile usage.

Yeah, but it's the principle of the matter. If I have 512 MB, then I expect that memory to be used BEFORE it hits the swap file. That's why I have so much memory in the damned PC in the first place!

Sorry. This is Windows we're talking about.

My bad.

 

[David Lawson]

Here's the swap file trick, from a Google search:

Windows 98 added a new feature, PageFile_Call_Async_Manager, that allows the Memory Manager to asynchronously write out page file (swap file) buffers during periods of time when VFAT file system activity is not busy...

You can disable this feature, causing the system to behave as Windows 95 does, at some cost in overall system performance. Add the following entry to the System.ini file under its [386Enh] section:

[386Enh]
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

The "cost in overall system performance" never came up on mine. Things just got better all around.

This tweak will force the notoriously bad Win98 Memory Manager to use your available chip memory for its functions first, and all uses of chip memory are *much faster* than any use of read-write HD file memory.

It's worth a try.

My Win98 computer purrs with this tweak, and is much faster than it was without it, and the swap file, which used to never be less than 40 MB and was often over 100 MB is now almost always zero or nearly zero.

After you add the new line, save System.ini and reboot.
If there's any reduction in performance or any problem, just edit System.ini again to remove the line, save the file and reboot...

The ridiculous Memory (mis-)Manager is now USING your 128 MB of RAM, instead of roaring off to the HD swapfile every time 40% of your available memory has been tapped, and the result is that your swapfile now sits at zero most of the time, while your hard memory is serving all of your needs. If, in fact, you ever push your memory to about 85% usage, a swap file of 10 to 15 MB may be created, but it will disappear when you close down the (30 memory-hungry) things you're running at once and shut down the machine. The next time you boot up, there will be a zero swap file.
If you ever configure a Win98 computer that has 64 MB of RAM or less, this fix probably won't work. It depends on a massive quantity of available memory to work."

I'm trying it as soon as I get home!

 

[teapot2001]

David, how much RAM do you have? I have 128 right now and would like to upgrade to 384 or 512 (the max for my motherboard). I hope the trick really works.

~T

 

[David Lawson]

I have 256 at home, and 192 and 256 in the remaining Win98 terminals at work. I made the registry update on the two work machines before I left for the day, so we'll see how much of an improvement I notice tomorrow.

 

[teapot2001]

Any improvements, Dave?

~T