Does more than 256MB RAM make a difference with Win 98? - Page 2

Carolus Rex · May 20, 2003, 06:13

What's all this about reinstalling W98?

I run the second edition on both desktop and laptop, and have never experienced a single crash... But with my usual luck, both will probably selfdestruct the moment I press the "Submit Reply"-button...

Carolus

Urban Ranger · May 20, 2003, 07:16

What, you use it a minute a day or something?

Carolus Rex · May 20, 2003, 14:27

Heh, heh!

On the computer at home I only play games. With the lap top I run all kinds of programs... The only systematic problem I've encountered (ironed out by a patch) is a failure to shut down properly. Guess I've got it coming...

Carolus

alva · May 20, 2003, 14:49

Isn't MS gonna stop supporting W98 pretty soon?

Skanky Burns · May 20, 2003, 17:48

SE IMHO was the 2nd best operating system. My fiance's computer still uses it as the hardware wouldn't be able to handle XP. Of course, for computers that can handle it, XP is by far superior.

Mahdimael · May 20, 2003, 19:22

Just a warning. 512 is a great amount of memory for 98. I had 384, and purchased a 512 stick, and viola, windows couldn't access more than 768MB. I went to XP, which works fine with all windows games I've tried. Just about every DOS game I've tried has failed, however. (I built an old 300MHZ box I had into a DOS 6 box to play old games)

Urban Ranger · May 20, 2003, 23:14

Quote:

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
SE IMHO was the 2nd best operating system. My fiance's computer still uses it as the hardware wouldn't be able to handle XP. Of course, for computers that can handle it, XP is by far superior.

No way, *nix is better. Even OS X is better.

St Leo · May 20, 2003, 23:26

OS X ε *nix

Urban Ranger · May 21, 2003, 04:53

Only the core of OS X came from *nix

Qilue · May 21, 2003, 07:40

I run win98se mostly because I can't afford to upgrade to XP. This is because I prefer OEM versions rather than upgrades of OS's and I can't afford a new HD just now.

Stability, I had a win98se install that lasted for about 30 months and the only reason I did a reinstall was because I upgraded the mobo, ram and cpu. Plus (as a UNIX guru once told me), theere comes a time when you have add 'fixing' to your OS knowledge to compliment 'breaking'.

As to 256 vs 512. No idea, winbugs seems to grab as much as it can whether it needs it or not. Like father like son I guess.

Master Zen · May 22, 2003, 00:51

Why don't you all just dual-boot Win98 and WinXP? It's not that hard.

I have Win98 and WinXP dual booted in my system. I use XP for mostly application work, and post-2001 games like Civ3 and those which I have found to work perfectly or almost-perfectly (Civ2 and SimCity 3000 work fine)

I am a big flight-simulator fan and some of the games don't work on XP like Falcon 4.0 among others. My Win98 drive is 10 GB and my XP drive is 30 GB.

-MZ

Master Zen · May 22, 2003, 00:53

Oh and don't buy all that crap that "local hackers" say about XP. Those guys just like to blast new products apparently (especially if they're from Microsoft). I'm no fan of Microsoft but XP is MUCH MORE stable than 98 or Me and I recommend it infinitely for everything other than pre-2001 games.

War4ever · May 22, 2003, 01:02

98 crashes all the time....take it from me

also there are alot of security issues, again take it from me....

i like xp waaaaaaay better.....but its good to have two machines , one for good games, one for your classics

Nikolai · May 22, 2003, 09:09

I totally agree about Win98. What a piece of crap...

But I personally love XP: Stable, fast and it runs much more games than Win2K.

Since I got XP a year ago, it has crashed something like once every second month, while the 98/ME machines I've used was sometimes crashing several times a day. Not to talk about Win95...

Asher · May 22, 2003, 09:13

XP also has protected memory and pre-emptive multitasking...

The Rusty Gamer · May 22, 2003, 23:18

I don't understand why you would get so many crashes with Win 98. It's not THAT bad. Do you mean crash as in non-recoverable and you have to reinstall everything? I can't say that's ever happened - in general I find Win 98 quite stable, no problems. But I had a PROFESSIONAL EXPERT install it. None of this do-it-yourself cobble bits and pieces together from everywhere stuff. You may save a few bucks in the shortterm but it's not worth it for the months and years of heartache!

Urban Ranger · May 22, 2003, 23:57

Quote:

Originally posted by Asher
XP also has protected memory and pre-emptive multitasking...

So did every vesion of Windows since 95. In theory, that is.

Urban Ranger · May 22, 2003, 23:59

Quote:

Originally posted by Master Zen
Oh and don't buy all that crap that "local hackers" say about XP. Those guys just like to blast new products apparently (especially if they're from Microsoft). I'm no fan of Microsoft but XP is MUCH MORE stable than 98 or Me and I recommend it infinitely for everything other than pre-2001 games.

Windows Me is crap. It's worse than 98, and probably worse than 95. Saying XP is more stable than these OS'es doesn't amount to a whole lot.

Master Zen · May 23, 2003, 00:06

Note that I said MUCH MORE

I had WinMe when I got Civ3 when it came out, the game used to crash every so often. With XP it has hardly ever crashed.

The Rusty Gamer · May 23, 2003, 00:43

With Win 98, Civ III doesn't crash AT ALL!

Asher · May 23, 2003, 00:50

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
So did every vesion of Windows since 95. In theory, that is.

No, only very technically.

Win9x had very limited protected memory, it was only protected in the sense that you couldn't access the lowest 256KB(?) of RAM and in the upper 2GB boundary where the OS resided.

Programs themselves did not have protected memory, whereas they do in WinNT/2K/XP.

Master Zen · May 23, 2003, 04:08

Quote:

Originally posted by The Rusty Gamer
With Win 98, Civ III doesn't crash AT ALL!

Proving once again that WinMe is a piece of crap

Urban Ranger · May 23, 2003, 04:56

Quote:

Originally posted by Asher
Programs themselves did not have protected memory, whereas they do in WinNT/2K/XP.

I am pretty sure they do. After all, programs run in protected mode, and I kept getting the GPF errors.

DrSpike · May 23, 2003, 07:23

Quote:

Originally posted by The Rusty Gamer
I don't understand why you would get so many crashes with Win 98. It's not THAT bad. Do you mean crash as in non-recoverable and you have to reinstall everything? I can't say that's ever happened - in general I find Win 98 quite stable, no problems. But I had a PROFESSIONAL EXPERT install it. None of this do-it-yourself cobble bits and pieces together from everywhere stuff. You may save a few bucks in the shortterm but it's not worth it for the months and years of heartache!

Ever leave your machine on for longer periods of time? Win98 is not that stable in that it has a tendency to crash if you do. And by crash we don't mean have to reinstall everything, but that everything locks up or the machine restarts.

I am surprised to see some knowledgeable people saying win98 was as stable as 2K (or XP)..........my impression from my own use and reading online is that it is pretty much accepted that the newer operating systems are more stable.

Asher · May 23, 2003, 08:57

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I am pretty sure they do. After all, programs run in protected mode, and I kept getting the GPF errors.

GPF errors occured when something tried to access 0x0->0x40000, usually stemming from null pointer errors where the address defaulted to 0, which was protected by Windows.

Standup · May 24, 2003, 21:20

Having recently managed a corporate migration from 98 to W2K i'd say that Windows 2000 is much more stable. Apart from using memory much more efficently it crashes less often and needs less reboots. Yes the two are connected but they impact in different ways.
Apart from anedotal evidence calls to support helpdesks have fallen significantly.
And returning to the orginal point about 512MBof RAm - yes W98 will use this but above 256MB its been more cost efficent (based on corporate experience not gaming) to move people to a another OS - XP/W2K but definately not ME.

Urban Ranger · May 24, 2003, 23:45

Quote:

Originally posted by DrSpike
I am surprised to see some knowledgeable people saying win98 was as stable as 2K (or XP)..........my impression from my own use and reading online is that it is pretty much accepted that the newer operating systems are more stable.

No, it's not as stable, but most gamers don't leave their computers on for days.

The Rusty Gamer · May 24, 2003, 23:51

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger

No, it's not as stable, but most gamers don't leave their computers on for days.

...unless they're playing a Civ-type game!

Panag · May 25, 2003, 19:03

Quote:

Originally posted by The Rusty Gamer
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.

hi ,

think ahead and get more ram , 768 would be the least to get

have a nice day