>
>There is also at least one hardware issue connected with Win9x's
>use of RAM, and that is what chip set is in use.  (I'm a bit late responding
>to this thread, so I don't know if this will be an issue.)  The intel VX
>chipset effectively limits the use of installed RAM to 64 MB, unless
>one is electronically savvy enough to install a TAG RAM chip.  If this
>is a later chip set, this information may not apply.
>Paul A. Shippert

This isn't a Win98 specific issue, it is a hardware issue. Most of the
early...up to but not including HX...Intel chipsets could only cache 64
megs of RAM. I own a VX board on my bench box, and a TX  board in my
Laptop, and both have this limitation. VIA chipsets have never had these
RAM limitations.

Keep in mind that in the socket seven Win95,, NT4, days, 64 megs of RAM was
considered quite a bit, and 128 was a LOT, even for a NT4 server, or high
end workstation. And in 97-98 64 megs of RAM cost many hundreds of dollars.

The issue is not that the RAM won't work above 64 megs, but that the CPU
can not cache it. It's really only a problem under Win 9x/Me which can
suffer a 15 percent performance hit. The cache controller caches 64 MB of
RAM from the bottom up. Win 9x loads into RAM from the top down. So if you
have more than 64 MB of RAM, the OS will always be in an area of system RAM
that isn't cached.

Adding an additional 256 TAG ram chip will help you on a HX board because
256KB of TAG ram can only cache 64 megs of RAM, while 512KB TAG ram can
cache up to 512 megs of system RAM. However,  additional TAG ram will not
help you on a VX or TX motherboard. The limitation is in the chipset ...not
the amount of installed TAG RAM.

For some functions, a VX or TX etc  ..machine with more than 64 MB will
feel slower than a machine with less than 64 MB. For other functions or
applications, you will still benefit from adding more than 64 MB. With Win
NT/2000/XP and Linux, the OS loads from the bottom up, so the problem of
uncached RAM isn't so noticeable.

On my own old 233MMX laptop, I run Windows 2000 with 128 megs of RAM on a
TX chipset and I only noticed a performance increase when I went from 64 to
128 megs of RAM. And a considerable performance increase at that! This was
also the case on my Bench box which runs a Tekram socket seven board, with
a VX chipset, and 96 megs of RAM with Win98SE. I expected a performance hit
when I added the additional RAM but antidotally, this was not the case. I
experienced quite a performance boost. This is because uncached or not, it
is always better to run applications in RAM, rather then swap out to
virtual ram on the hard drive.

In direct answer to the original posters question.... I dual boot my
primary server with 750 megs of ram into Win2000 and Win98 for certain
maintenance tasks. I also run a Win98 Server with 500 megs of RAM. I have
found that unless you are doing something that requires large amounts of
RAM,...for example loading graphic files for editing that are 100 plus megs
in size...... you will not notice any difference with Win98X running above
128 megs of RAM. This is even true of games as most games by design are
coded to run great on 128 megs or less in Win98. And If you are running
such applications that can benefit from large amounts of RAM then you
really ought to be in NT4 or above because these operating systems handle
RAM so much more efficiently.

Rode
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