Most of the late Pentiums I found had either 8MB (2x4MB) or 16MB (2x8MB, usually with those modules with 2 of those very large chips on each side).
Some of them had received an upgrade, but most turned out to have 4MB, 8MB and sometimes 16MB modules. 32MB modules were very few in Pentiums that were actually used that way by their first owners.

Going from 32MB to 40MB for virtually no effort at all? It'll probably matter not very much, but every bit may help. I'd say install the extra modules and see if it works alright. If you're unlucky, the modules may not like the board or perhaps the other modules.
And be sure to not mix EDO and FPM.

16-32
up to 64 should be without performance reduce. >32 is useful for multitasking, graphics/video editing, DB, ...

My Compaq P166MMX was delivered with 32MB of RAM. Back in the day I found that fine for gaming, but not for Windows usage. Upgraded to 64MB in 1998 and there was a noticable improvement, even in some games.

I used to run P-166 on NT4 with 32MB in 1997. I wanted 64MB of course. But for Win95 32MB should be fine. And 40MB is 25% more - it's should be better 😉

If you had 32MB you were doing well in that time frame, most boards can't cache more than 64 anyway.

My pentium that I bought in 1995 had 16Mb of ram.

I had 32 MB in my P166 MMX, and one person I know had 64.

32MB was nice for up to a P200 in 1997. The upgrade to 64MB got really necessary a couple years later with 98SE and the graphically lighter new games that still ran on the system. I wouldn't bother adding tiny modules, not worth the hit in stability.

firage wrote:

32MB was nice for up to a P200 in 1997. The upgrade to 64MB got really necessary a couple years later with 98SE and the graphically lighter new games that still ran on the system. I wouldn't bother adding tiny modules, not worth the hit in stability.

It has 2 sdram slots but they're called "dimms" - I'm guessing I can't put 2x128's in there and have them recognize as 64 total? It came with a single 128 plugged in which wasn't recognized.

bluejeans wrote:

firage wrote:

32MB was nice for up to a P200 in 1997. The upgrade to 64MB got really necessary a couple years later with 98SE and the graphically lighter new games that still ran on the system. I wouldn't bother adding tiny modules, not worth the hit in stability.

It has 2 sdram slots but they're called "dimms" - I'm guessing I can't put 2x128's in there and have them recognize as 64 total? It came with a single 128 plugged in which wasn't recognized.

I suppose it's a VX board?
If it is, it was meant to work with SDRAM modules 32MB 16 chips (8 each side) and putting a larger module will probably result in either not all RAM being recognized or the module not working at all.
TX is easier to work with as it is more recent and should recognize at least 128MB modules with 8 chips each side.
If you want 64MB total with SDRAM on VX, I'd recommend using 2 of those 32MB SDRAM modules. These were almost always PC-66 and had quite small SDRAM chips on the memory module PCBs compared to newer SDRAM modules.
And I don't know that if larger modules work at all (and if they will, only part of the memory will probably be recognized), it may be more taxing on the hardware in whatever way.

If it's a VX board, finding 4x16MB or 2x32MB EDO might be easier.

If it has HX chipset, it will not work with SDRAM.

16MB was pretty much the standard for Pentiums in 1994-1996. They were sometimes sold with 8MB, but it was considered lame. 32MB was the standard in the MMX era. I don't think SDRAM is worth it on a socket 7 system.

I remember using a P166 with about 48MB of RAM (it came that way - sticks mixed by the owner) but the usual standard was 16MB. MMX systems ran with 32 as standard but I've seen some upgraded ones with 64 and even 128MB. (usually VIA MVP3 based)

32MB was pretty good when they were new (16MB was the norm). Most chipsets don't cache more then 64MB, Intel HX can cache 256MB I think.

I think the HX can actually cache up to 512MB or whatever the max supported amount is provided you have the extra tag chip installed.

In 1996 I was a young dumb idiot, i was offered two computers to buy, one with 486 DX 66 and 8MB ram, and other with 486 SX 33 and 16MB ram, and i tought that fuck the speed, i need more memory to do more. Damn i was dumb back then. It was an IBM PC 330 workstation.

But usually all pre P6 is fine with 32, and usually you can max them out with 64, thats it!

Cyberdyne wrote:

In 1996 I was a young dumb idiot, i was offered two computers to buy, one with 486 DX 66 and 8MB ram, and other with 486 SX 33 and 16MB ram, and i tought that fuck the speed, i need more memory to do more. Damn i was dumb back then. It was an IBM PC 330 workstation.

But usually all pre P6 is fine with 32, and usually you can max them out with 64, thats it!

Around the same time I bought a 4mb video card to replace my 2mb, because I thought it would make doom95 run smoother at 640x480. That's pretty dumb too. Oh and getting a pentium 166 because my cyrix 200 was slow on halflife!