Maxing out would be 512 MB 😀

In general I try to use as few memory sticks as possible for stability reasons. So usually I got with 256 MB.

I would say that 256 mb is a minimum for a P3 Windows 98 gaming build.
512MB is good to have if your HDD is period correct (slow), less important if you use a faster drive.

What Pentium III? For the games a 450MHz Katmai would play, I couldn't notice any difference between 128 and 256MB. So, 256MB just to be sure 😀

If we're talking about a 1.4 GHz Tualatin, dual-booting XP comes to mind, because it would run much more current games. In that case, 512MB would be the sweet spot for me.

Sweet spot implies there's a downside to having more.
I'd just install as much RAM as can be cheaply acquired and doesn't strain stability or force you to slow down timings. But in the case of Win98, there's normally a 512MB limit.
If a game has a memory leak, it will crash less often if you have more RAM, because it takes longer to run out of it. I know I've had that problem with Morrowind, but I don't know any other specific examples.
For most P3/Win98 uses though, I imagine 256MB would be plenty.

+1 to what shamino said. Install as much as you can without problems; usually 512MB is going to be that limit. If you're limited by physical space (e.g. you only have 1 or 2 DIMMs), resources (you can't buy more memory), or whatever else, install whatever you can - be it 128MB, 256MB, etc. There's nothing wrong with having 512MB over 256MB, even if it isn't used - it doesn't hurt anything unless you've had to make compromises to stability/timings/etc to install it (that is, the extra capacity by itself never hurts).

With SDRam being so cheap these days, I'd recommend going down the 512mb route. I use 512mb in most of my retro rigs without an issue. At least you'd never have to worry about not having enough. Just make sure you buy double sided ram as opposed to single sided ram as I've only just recently discovered. A lot of P2/P3 boards will only detect half the memory on a single sided stick. This occurred in both my socket 370 Gigabyte GA-6BX7+ and slot 1 Intel SE440BX-2 motherboards. May also cause stability issues.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Maxing out would be 512 MB 😀

In general I try to use as few memory sticks as possible for stability reasons. So usually I got with 256 MB.

This.

Personally I stick with 256MB for a faster P3 rig. I don't often use more then 256MB since it doesn't seem to have any benefit to install more in my case.
If I have to or want to use more memory sticks (for example if I don't want to use too many of the larger sticks due to not having that many large SDRAM sticks available) then I always try to match the 2 memory sticks as closely as possible.
Also I try to use as few memory banks as possible, especially when using more then 1 stick of RAM (so I'd rather use 2 single sided sticks then use 2 double sided sticks).

I've found that starting at 512 MB I already have to use the tweaks that limit disk cache size, or the computer will lose performance over time. A computer with more than that amount of RAM will still work, but I might not be able to open a DOS box after a short while, which makes it pointless to have a Win98 system in the first place. No permanent downsides for 512 megs.

Indeed, I have two 256 MB PC133 sticks in my retro 440LX rig, and half of the memory is not used.

How much RAM you need kinda depends on the size of the games you have on the PC, and 512 MB will also allow you to open a relatively modern web browser, which generally likes to suck up all ther RAM it can get.

unless one is building a system thats RAM limited (usually for DOS) , I would go with the maximum the OS or the motherboard can handle. Win98SE can run perfectly fine with 512Mb , though you can run up to 1GB with some tweaks (or unofficial patches/service packs). This is especially true with RAM being quite cheap , I got 3 sticks of ECC 128MB SDRAM for a grand total of....1.50 for the whole lot.

Although it is true that in terms of performance, outside of maybe just having a very responsive system , you won't see a big difference from 256Mb. having 512Mb of RAM in 2000 was a bit like having 32GB today.

512mb is as far you go with Windows 98 without requiring a patch. Beyond that you have to decide whether you really need more, and most people probably don't.

"512 MB will also allow you to open a relatively modern web browser"

You would seriously put a Windows 98 machine on the internet? It wasn't that long ago that IE6 was finally rendered dead for all intents and purposes and you want to go back to something even less secure than that?

sliderider wrote:

512mb is as far you go with Windows 98 without requiring a patch. Beyond that you have to decide whether you really need more, and most people probably don't.

"512 MB will also allow you to open a relatively modern web browser"

You would seriously put a Windows 98 machine on the internet? It wasn't that long ago that IE6 was finally rendered dead for all intents and purposes and you want to go back to something even less secure than that?

Pretty much yeah. I reckon that it isn't the latest browser out there but opera 10.62 used to work great with a majority of websites

You would seriously put a Windows 98 machine on the internet?

And it's not like you put it directly on the Internet. Computers are usually behind NAT/Firewall so it's relatively safe anyways. As for browsers... Opera is fine.

I have 512MB (max on i815) on my Dual boot Win98/WinXP. I also limit Windows cache size in system.ini

1[vcache]
2MinFileCache=1024
3MaxFileCache=16384

MSIE6 is useless on the web because of low performance and no support for current standards. Opera 10 is still a capable instrument when we need to solve problems with games or technical issues, compared to getting up and walking to another computer.

With 16 MB of cache it might seem like the relatively large amount of memory goes unutilized. ~128 MB is probably a good starting point. Without a setting the system will create a bigger cache by default. I use TaskInfo2000 to monitor cache usage as well as other system resources.

Cache usage in Win9X is very poorly optimized. It caches everything... if you don't limit it and do some copying. It will use all the available ram for the copied files cache and the system will begun swapping real memory to a disk. This is not how a cache should work. 16MB is plenty for Win9X but you can increase to as much as you want... but make sure to set the MaxFileCache to some value to limit the cache nonsense.

I went from 256MB to 768MB on PII-450 Deschutes. Just because I can. No difference at all. No crashes either... Am I doing something wrong? Windows 98 SE + Unofficial service pack.

^ That's exactly why I always stick to 256MB on a single dimm. 😀

Upgrading memory won't do any difference by itself. But it will get noticed when using many programs at once. But now-a-days you won't be using this old machine do to some major work in Photoshop, CorelDraw... that would actually benefit from more memory.

Nowadays you wouldn't even run 2-3 "heavy" programs at once, I agree.

What do you use the PIII for?
Personally speaking, only for gaming and playing with the system, although I might use K-Melleon or an earlier Firefox to look at the world outside, but certainly not on a regular basis.
128 and 256mb serve me well on anything from a PII to PIII