Does more than 256MB RAM make a difference with Win 98?

The Rusty Gamer · May 16, 2003, 23:35

Does having more than 256MB RAM make a difference with Windows 98. The general opinion seems to be "No" but the reason I'm wondering is that I have just upgraded from a PIII450 to an Athlon 1.6. I thought I'd try this thing out with some big settings on games to see what would happen.

I tried Cossacks: Back to War with biggest map and 8 players. Fine at first but definitely slowed down after a while.

Also, Civ 3 - PTW. 256x256 map and 24 players. Didn't play it for too long, generally smooth but began to notice some delays at end-of turn. May become more problematic towards the end-game.

I ran Championship Manager 01/02 and maxed out on the leagues (all 16). Now, the manual says you can use all 16 with 256MB RAM but it never got to the starting point. It virtually ground to a halt while trying to inititalise the data and when I killed it with an alt-ctrl-del there was a "not responding" message on the task list.

Surely I wouldn't need even more speed to remove the remaining delays. But would more RAM make a difference to the above games? That is the question. Can anyone tell me?

BTW, my graphics card is a GeForce 2 Titanium.

Urban Ranger · May 16, 2003, 23:42

Well, since the Championship Manager test didn't even get to the actual start, it seems like you could use more than 256MB RAM. Since Windows 98 won't use more than 512MB, anymore memory is pretty much a waste.

DrSpike · May 17, 2003, 07:32

I thought win98 wouldn't use anymore than 256MB (or even less, some used to say 192MB).

Why don't you get XP or 2K anyway?

The Rusty Gamer · May 17, 2003, 07:58

Because (apart from costing money) I've read to many things about problems playing games with later versions of Windows.

If you have XP, then you HAVE to get more RAM because XP eats up so much more for itself. Never mind 512MB, proably need 1GB. Again, this costs money. My budget allows for a few future purchases of games and not much else while I'm not working.

DrSpike · May 17, 2003, 08:04

Fair enough..............but I would say that win2k (my personal choice) can be acquired quite easily, and that the driver support these days means there are much less problems than if you tried it soon after win2k was released.

An extra 256MB of ram is not very dear as well, and you wont 'need' 1GB.

Maquiladora · May 17, 2003, 08:57

I have a pretty much identical system to yours rusty, with win98se 1.6 athon xp 256mb ddr and ive seen computers benchmarked on a similar system with winXP get much higher scores on quake3 etc :\ but considering last time i tried winXP it froze up randomly i cant be bothered to route out the problem until i buy more ram. BTW i have no trouble playing all 16 leagues on foreground in cm01/02, most of the time any winblows OS will say CM isnt responding but it just needs to wait, but your wait sounds abnormally slow or mine is unique...

Urban Ranger · May 17, 2003, 09:07

It also could be the case that your HDD is near full, or you have too many programs running in the background.

Standup · May 17, 2003, 19:50

It will make a slight difference but not very much and its probably more cost effective to move to Windows XP. W98 isn't really designed to access more that 256MB, I think the limit for W95 was 96MB. No idea what it is for XP but a lot of motherboards probably put the limit at 1GB.
CM01/02 should run ok with your machine spec - it was fine on my P3 700 with 256MB. I'd try less leagues. I just ran England and Scotland and it wasn't too bad. I also turned off my virus checker and didn't run anything in the background.

The Rusty Gamer · May 17, 2003, 22:50

I don't have anything really much running in the background. Where it slows down is when it gets to calculating shortlists. I suppose I should just walk away and read a book or do something else while it's setting up and see if it finally is ok.

I still have about 20GB (10 on each drive) available so disk space is not a problem here.

Urban Ranger said Win98 will use 512 RAM. Others are saying 256. Who is correct? Who is an authority on this?

And can anyone answer about the slowdown on other games?

Since some people seem to want to be able to play with more than 16 Civs on CIV III (they're talking about 64 with XP2) then I assume these same people do not have a performance problem. What's their secret?

Urban Ranger · May 17, 2003, 23:33

512MB RAM. You could probably stick in more, but not worth it IMO.

The Rusty Gamer · May 18, 2003, 03:12

Thx UR but the question still remains - will games take advantage of the extra RAM if they can?

For instance, in Cossacks, the manual states that they recommend 256MB RAM, especially for the larger (16x, 2x2, 4x4) maps PLUS 150-200MB of spare hard disk space for virtual RAM swapping. But there is no indication that if you have 512MB RAM that the RAM swapping will no longer occur.

BTW, ran CM01/02 again, selected all leagues and left it to intitalise while I took a shower. When I came back, it was ready to begin the game so I CAN play with them all. Saved the game for later. Don't know how long it might take to reload the save though or how the processing speed will be, even with a 1.6GHz.

Urban Ranger · May 18, 2003, 03:31

Demand paging occurs when the OS runs out of RAM when it needs to load something into memory. That means no swapping is needed if there's sufficient RAM available.

Swapping is decided by the operating system, not by programs running under it.

The Rusty Gamer · May 18, 2003, 03:46

Thks again UR. So, in other words, I could speed up Cossacks (and possibly Civ III?) by putting in another 128 or 256MB RAM.

Now I think about it, the slow initialisation of CM01/02 could be because of disk-swapping as well.

Jamski · May 18, 2003, 10:01

I'm running win98 with 512megs RAM, and it seems to help with "big games" like playing civ on a huge map/32 civs

-Jam

DrSpike · May 18, 2003, 10:02

Why the nick change?

Jamski · May 18, 2003, 10:56

Its my IRC, MSN and RL nick. And its more of a real name than "War of Art", which means I get called "War" or "WoA". Instead I can be called Jam, which is more what I'm used to.

I'm happier with it, so you should be too

-Jam

DrSpike · May 18, 2003, 11:07

Well it doesn't really matter what I think.

But for the record WarOfArt was IMO a good nick.

Jamski · May 18, 2003, 11:14

It was, true... I'm kinda missing it already

But onwards we go...

-Jam

Urban Ranger · May 18, 2003, 12:37

Quote:

Originally posted by The Rusty Gamer
Thks again UR. So, in other words, I could speed up Cossacks (and possibly Civ III?) by putting in another 128 or 256MB RAM.

Now I think about it, the slow initialisation of CM01/02 could be because of disk-swapping as well.

There's another thing you can do, which is to optimise your swap file. Try this only if you have more than one drive (either physical or logical available). Assuming the swap file is on C: and the other HDD is D:

1. Make sure there's at least twice as much space on D: as you have RAM. In fact you need a bit more. Defrag D:.

2. Move the swap file to D:, make sure it has both a maximum and minimum size of twice your RAM. Restart.

3. Defrag C:. Move the swap file back to C:. Restart.

alva · May 18, 2003, 22:14

In many cases Win98 will encounter performance slowdowns from using more then 256MB but usually up to 384MB should be OK or even optimal.

Best option; switch to XP

Urban Ranger · May 18, 2003, 22:39

Quote:

Originally posted by alva
Best option; switch to XP

Don't. Some games just won't run under XP. Besides, you need even more RAM and processor power just to drive the beast.

The Rusty Gamer · May 19, 2003, 01:42

Is it a good idea to keep the swap RAM at a fixed length (512MB)rather than letting Windows do it dynamically then?

Carolus Rex · May 19, 2003, 09:17

I run Windows 98 and have 384 MB RAM. Whether the extra RAM helps or not, I cannot tell. But I would be disappointed if it didn't, since I upgraded from 128 about a year or two ago...

As for going higher with the OS. I asked the hackers at the local computer shop about it some time ago and they adviced me not to upgrade from Windows 98. They told me it's mostly eye candy anyway and that it uses the system's resources intensively. Again, I wouldn't know...

Carolus

The Rusty Gamer · May 19, 2003, 09:42

Well, I've done the defragging etc that UR said. The question remains if I should keep virtual RAM fixed at 512MB or let Windows deal with it.

Also, what about Windows 98 Second Edition? I don't suppose that does much more?

alva · May 19, 2003, 09:45

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger

Don't. Some games just won't run under XP. Besides, you need even more RAM and processor power just to drive the beast.

I have yet to encounter a game that didn't run under XP, yes there are a few older ones but it's not like '98 ran just about everything without problems. Oh and XP doesn't crash the way '98 does, I've done two reinstallments in 2 years now (one with a full upgrade), IIRC when using '98 I did more Formats a week

-
Yes, it's needs more resources but at least XP takes advantage of the extra memory.

alva · May 19, 2003, 09:46

Quote:

Originally posted by The Rusty Gamer
Well, I've done the defragging etc that UR said. The question remains if I should keep virtual RAM fixed at 512MB or let Windows deal with it.

Also, what about Windows 98 Second Edition? I don't suppose that does much more?

Yes, a fixid is better then a dynamic one.
-
We are all talking about the SE edition(at least I am), the first is even worse then ME

Urban Ranger · May 20, 2003, 01:26

Quote:

Originally posted by The Rusty Gamer
Well, I've done the defragging etc that UR said. The question remains if I should keep virtual RAM fixed at 512MB or let Windows deal with it.

A fixed swap file is better. The reason is Windows keeps messing with the size of the file if you set it on dynamic, and it may then contain non-contiguous areas. Both events will slow down access.

Quote:

Originally posted by The Rusty Gamer
Also, what about Windows 98 Second Edition? I don't suppose that does much more?

If you aren't using W98SE, I strongly urge you to upgrade to it. If that's still possible, that is.

Urban Ranger · May 20, 2003, 01:28

Quote:

Originally posted by alva
I have yet to encounter a game that didn't run under XP, yes there are a few older ones but it's not like '98 ran just about everything without problems.

I guess it depends on the games.

Quote:

Originally posted by alva
Oh and XP doesn't crash the way '98 does, I've done two reinstallments in 2 years now (one with a full upgrade), IIRC when using '98 I did more Formats a week

Windows 98 could be configured to be quite stable. I haven't reinstalled the Wintel box my SO plays Alpha Centauri on for a couple of years.

DrSpike · May 20, 2003, 05:21

Win98 had to be reinstalled 3 or 4 times a year though...........which was a pain. As long as you have a semi-decent system I think win2k is far more stable and needs far less reinstalling. And it uses large amounts of memory better.

Urban Ranger · May 20, 2003, 06:12

Quote:

Originally posted by DrSpike
Win98 had to be reinstalled 3 or 4 times a year though...........which was a pain.

Not me.