Running a 450 Intel computer complete with Windows 98, what difference should I notice between the two set-ups?
The reason I ask is that in the last week I’ve run my PC with both configurations and can’t see any difference between the two.
What exactly does RAM speed up? How would I know if it’s working? In tinkering with the Bios, I noticed settings for the DRAM, should I change those around?
Well if the 96MB is enough for your system (it should be), then making it 256MB isn’t going to do anything noticeable. You’ll be able to run more programs simultaneously though, before you notice a great slowdown.
For your machine in normal use 96 vs 256 will be largely un-noticable in most cases until you want to have a few memory hog apps open at once. Switching between 5 or 6 large open apps with 256+ goes more smoothly than with 96. Short of some very specialized applications, very few individual win98 apps are going to need any more than around 64 megs for efficient operation if they have the entire RAM space to themselves.
The key is the number of apps open at once. I can have eudora, Palm desktop interface, wordperfect 2000, ms word 2000, a graphics viewer, and 4+ internet explorer pages open at once in typical use. In this scenario the more RAM the better up to about 512 megs at which point additional benefits become small.
It depends on how you use your computer. If you generally like to do only one or two things at a time (you close the browser before opening the spreadsheet) then 96MB should serve just fine.
If, on the other hand, you like to have several programs open at the same time and switch back and forth between them at will, then more memory will generally improve performance, especially if some of those programs are actively doing work even while you aren’t looking at them. This is called multi-tasking. Likewise, if you use certain programs that need a lot of memory to work effectively, like advanced graphics editing, then more memory is better.
Here’s a simplified view of why that is so. When the operating system starts up, it uses some proportion of the available memory for its own purposes. Later, when it goes to run a program that you request, it has to load a copy of the program from the disk drive into memory. When you ask it to load another program, it has to bring in a copy of that one too and so on. At some point in this chain of events, the running programs will fill the available memory. Then the operating system starts swapping. That is, it identifies programs (or parts of programs) that even though they’re running, they haven’t done much lately and it writes them to a special file on the disk drive. The memory they were using is temporarily free for the more active programs to use. Later, when you switch back to that first program, it is reloaded from the swap file back into memory and something else gets swapped out.
That’s where performance really starts to drag because even though disk drives these days are pretty fast, they’re deadly slow when compared to memory.
Thanks!
I haven’t had a chance to overload the thing with apps yet- I’m still in install mode.
When I get everything back to normal (What a friggin’ pain), I’ll start running the computer in a more ‘normal’ mode. ‘Normal’ for me is running five or six seperate apps. at the same time.
I hope to notice my past investment then…
Cheers!
I didnt notice any change after 32megs in W98. But ram is cheap its a nice time to buy some. Be sure your operating system supports that much ram though.
And some appliactions, such as video or image manipulation, are memory hogs and will bring a machine with 96 meg to its knees. It all depends on your typical machine load, as others have said.
aramis pretty much nailed it. Dr. Damage, PC scion supreme at the Tech Report, puts it this way:
I AM THE ALL RAM-HAVING, NO DISK ACCESSING POSSESSOR OF SMOOTHNESS. FEEL MY GLORY!!
Windows 98 is notorious for having a big problem with “memory leak.” That’s where a program is closed, but not all of the memory it was using is freed. On my computers at work, 90% of the instability problems I have to address stem directly from memory leak. With 64 MB running office programs, these grouchy things have to be restarted daily, in order to reset the memory. More memory in W98 means more up-time and less chance of disaster.
Disk hits really, really suck when playing games. It will get your ass fragged in Quake III Arena faster than just about any other hardware-related problem. One game in particular, Crimson Skies, is known to have serious lag and framerate issues on systems with less than 256 MB of RAM. That type of problem may begin to manifest itself more often in the future.
It’s also worth noting that should you ever consider upgrading to Windows 2000, that operating system slurps up RAM like I was chugging Guiness Saturday night.
Memory may never be this cheap again; I say go for it.