Hey everyone, I'm running an AMD Athlon 1.4 ghz with 512 mb DDR ram (256mb X 2) with Win 98se. Now a friend of mine told me that windows 98 does not support this ammount of ram, and although i have it, I cannot utilize all of it (kinda like how HD's used to be limited to 512 mb I guess) Is there any truth to this?

Pretty sure the limit is 512, but you can increase it in the registry, not sure how

If my memory serves me correctly (no guarantees!) win98 can only really utilise 256Mb, although any extra will assist with multi-tasking & heavy graphic use.

Win me upwards is capable of utilising substantially more!

I have 98se with 512mb, and didnt have to alter anything, yes its all recognised

I have heard something about 98se and ram....Yes it will recognize the 512 but heard it will not utilize it as well as newer OS's....

I found this on Microcrap's website and it only talks about problems with ram more than 512 megabytes (for example, 768 megabytes) and they say how to fix it. (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q253912) So I don't think you have a problem.

:round::hdspin::hdspin:

"The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck,
is probably the day Microsoft starts making vacuum cleaners."
- Ernst Jan Plugge

Win98 utilizes & handles only 96 Megs of ram well.

After the first 96 Meg’s win98 handles the rest of the ram very poorly and sometimes even slows down.

Actually putting 512 Megs on a win98 machine is just wasting memory since windows 98 doesn’t know what to do with it.

I use Win 98 (no SE) with 512 MB of RAM and it perfectly works for me. The article here above mentioned (from Microsoft) is clear in this matter: Win 98, 98 SE & ME manages 512 MB of RAM.

Win98 will certainly take advantage of at least 512MB. It can use up to that amount for the VCache alone (virtual file cache). Beyond that depending on your processor it can utilize more for functions such as starting DOS sessions and replacing the swap file. If you make the following entry in the [386Enh] section of system.ini:
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

Also set a fixed swap file size, it will avoid using the swap file entirely until the physical RAM is exhausted.

If you are not running applications that will use your memory, of course you will not notice a difference. But if you run applications which opens large files and/ or a lot of multiple apps simultaneously (Like Autocad or 3D Max Studio) you will definitely notice the difference.

Also make sure that with the additional RAM you have the [vcache] MaxFileCache setting is at least 1/4 of your RAM. So for 256 to 512 MB RAM the settings would be

In System.ini [vcache] section
minfilecache=8192
maxfilecache=65536

In [386enh] section
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1