Problems with W98SE n 768MB DDR memory

[Vasconcelos]

This is for the hardware gods of DAOC community:

I just bought 512MB DDR333 Kingston module, but it seems my beloved W98SE cant handle with more than 700MB memory. I know there r 2 posibilities to fix it:

- Throw W98SE to trash n get WXP.


- The one im looking for: i know there is somekind of tweaking a program file in W98SE to allow this OS to handle with more than 700MB memory, any1 knows something about this issue??


Thx in advance

 

[belth]

It can't handle more than 512MB. It's got fucked up and very limited memory management. You need to make anything above 512 used in some other way (such as a ramdrive, but 256mb these days for storage ain't much )...

Anything that runs with W2k kernel is better. From gaming to writing shit down with notepad

 

[Sibanac]

actualy seen some test that show winME is slower if you add more then 512.
The memory management under the 98 kernel suck and does wierd stuff with the memory above 512

Go w2k or winxp

 

[Alrindel]

Windows 98SE can handle up to 2GB of physical RAM, but you have to make one little setting in your SYSTEM.INI file to manually limit vcache to 512MB, otherwise it crashes everything.

The full procedure is here.

 

[Vasconcelos]

Originally posted by Alrindel
Windows 98SE can handle up to 2GB of physical RAM, but you have to make one little setting in your SYSTEM.INI file to manually limit vcache to 512MB, otherwise it crashes everything.

The full procedure is here.

Problem fixed, Alrindel u r da man :lol:

 

[old.Glendower]

Hmmm..if you do that, is there any benefit then to the extra memory?

 

[Vasconcelos]

Originally posted by old.Glendower
Hmmm..if you do that, is there any benefit then to the extra memory?

Not sure, but dont think so, W98SE simply isnt developed to handle more than 512mb. The only benefit i find from 512 to 768 is that my 256mb module doesn´t get rusty at my desk........

 

[Alrindel]

Originally posted by old.Glendower
Hmmm..if you do that, is there any benefit then to the extra memory?

Yes, of course. Windows 98 uses the memory to run applications in, and can address up to 2 gigabytes of RAM with no problems. It's just that cache that has to be limited to 512MB.

 

[belth]

And a real smart it is in handling the memory... First read it to cache, then copy it to another memory location and then run it

 

[Vasconcelos]

Btw, on that procedure, dont u think 523264 bits its a bit waste of memory??? Could it be solved with 64000 bits of Maxfilecache?


BTW the performance improvement of 256->512->768 mb memory is HUGE, no more graphics lag (except in relic raids :/), game loggs in n out much more faster, downloads btwn zones r almost instant,.....

 

[old.Glendower]

Thank you for the information.

I asked because I dont know =)

I am a master gardner, not a tech

 

[old.FIN]

bah, get XP and 1.5 gigs ddr 333...works better =)

 

[kan-]

Get Win2k

unbeatable OS

 

[old.Glendower]

No thanks.

I have too many games that wont run on anything above 98SE

 

[belth]

Old games, dump em

 

[Gurthaur]

Get another computer and use your old one for old games

 

[lofff]

bah ive been after sum more ram for ages but money goes on weekends ~~

ah, student life is so hard.. gotta stick to 256 kingston ddr333 till sum1 makes me a pressie <makes a dirty look at vasconcelos>

 

[old.Glendower]

Already have two computers, thanks. Want to keep some space in the living room for furniture and such.

Besides, I just spenk about 1k$ each upgrading these =b. That is plenty for a few years.

And I like my games

 

[Vasconcelos]

Originally posted by lofff
bah ive been after sum more ram for ages but money goes on weekends ~~

ah, student life is so hard.. gotta stick to 256 kingston ddr333 till sum1 makes me a pressie <makes a dirty look at vasconcelos>

Ahora esta barata, un modulo 256MB DDR333 kingston 70€ en Appred, 90€ el modulo de 512MB.

Jejejeje eso es 3 fines de semana sin cubatas

 

[old.Anpu]

Originally posted by old.Glendower
No thanks.

I have too many games that wont run on anything above 98SE

W2K has the same w98-compatibility mode as WXP after SP2 or 3.
Havent had any problems with old games and w2k

/Anpu

 

[Lanquid]

Windows 98SE has problems with 3D stuff beyond 512Mb.
As has already been mentioned its a vcache problem.

Limiting the size of Vcache just makes your machine use 512Mb, if you are buying the memory for Daoc its therefore a waste of time, as its only gonna use 512Mb.

Finding ways to use the extra memory for other things (ramdrives, disk caching etc) is pretty pointless.

If you want to make use of the extra memory, buy another disk, install w2k or XP and dual boot.
Disks are so cheap (and unreliable:3-10% fail within 3 years) its worth getting 2 anyway (stick important data or ghost/drive images on each).

My setup is a 1100MHz Duron,512Mb 2100 DDR, a BIG CPU cooler (dont skimp here) and a Nvidia GF3 Ti 200 128Mb card.
The Ti card make all the difference with graphics lag. Through experiments with friends machines we've found that the processor speed is not essential, but a decent graphics card with 128Mb is (GF MX cards dont cut it anymore).

 

[Alrindel]

Just to try once more to make things clear, the preceding post is bunk.

Limiting vcache to 512MB or less does not cap your machine's memory at 512MB with the rest unusable. It only prevents more than 512MB being assigned to vcache which will cause vcache to crash, bringing Windows down with it. One more time: Windows 98 can use up to 2GB of physical RAM. There are other reasons why you might want to consider upgrading from 98 to Windows 2000 or Windows XP but "Windows 98 can only use 512MB of memory" isn't one of them.

 

[old.Glendower]

hmmm...not sure what you meant there about Win2k...you saying they had additional "builds" of it that improved its stability and such? (like 98SE is a "new build" of 98)

My sister had Win2k and it seemed to suck pretty bad...crashing all the time, and so on.

Alrindel, thanks again for posting great info so clearly. It is always wonderful to have a nice resource on a board

 

[belth]

Sucky configuration with the W2k if it kept crashing... I've ran W2k for weeks on end without reboots Going back to it from WinXP once my new mobo arrives, like 2k more than XP.