For 1993 you still could play a lot of games that did not use more than 512kB of ram, so 640kB should be enough including DOS.

For any 386SX I would not bother to go over 4MB and don't use Windows: will probably just crawl.

For a faster 386 like DX33/40 8MB would be a practical barrier: 1MB ram sticks are very common. Windows 3.1x will be usable and will run on 2-4MB so no worries. Try to allocate swap file to a cheap compactflash to save your hard disk. If you have the 4MB ram sticks go for 16MB to prevent swapping.

486 class with Windows 3.1x should be ok with 16MB. Swapping can be minimised and you're still good to go with almost everything you throw at it.

For Windows 95 on a 486 I suggest not to. Go to Pentium. Otherwise 32MB and a faster 486, like dx4, can be used for, also to prevent heavy swapping. Windows 98: 64MB.

AT and XT will fit everything with just 1MB/640kB.

My first dx2/66 came with 8mb, running wfw3.11. 8 mb was a lot IIRC compared to other 66 MHz 486's ..

Edit: That was without sound or CD-ROM, which I added later, even before upgrading to 16 megs ..

H3nrik V! wrote on 2020-08-09, 20:08:

My first dx2/66 came with 8mb, running wfw3.11. 8 mb was a lot IIRC compared to other 66 MHz 486's ..

Edit: That was without sound or CD-ROM, which I added later, even before upgrading to 16 megs ..

Yes, it appears MS-Windows is what eats up RAM. In DOS you can load everything with 4mb of ram.

For a DOS gaming machine 4MB was fine.

Back in the day when I built my new 386DX/40 I had 4MB of RAM but since I wanted to use Excel and some data bases I upgraded to 16MB of RAM and purchased a IIt FPU.

Never bothered to put more then 32MB into a 486 and that was over 15-20 ago when I used a web browser and windows 3.11 for fun.

From what I recall DOS 6.x and Windows 3.x wont use more then 64MB period and only up to 16MB per app.

Heh, I was elementary school aged and got frustrated because the copy of Math Blaster Episode 2 (The Lost City) I got was so slow as to be unplayable due to swapping with 4MB RAM on the family 486DX2/66. One of the neighbor kids had 8MB RAM and it ran fine...

Since you mention XTs, 640k ought to be enough for anyone. I feel like the things that would have both run on and XT and required > 640K memory (Lotus?) you're better off running on a higher machine, perhaps.
For literal ATs, perhaps 1MB, just so you can run DOS=HIGH.

As for Win95 and 486 machines, remember the 5x86 has the Designed for Windows 95 logo on it, being the "Celeron" of 1996.

You make me think of a good question for the computer engineers on here though. I know that 486 motherboards use a direct mapped cache. This means they figure out whether something is in cache by chopping out a certain portion of the address bits and using that to figure out the cache location, then look at the tag. The data can either be in that exact cache location, or not at all--even if much of the cache is "empty". So if you keep the same tag RAM size, decreasing the amount of RAM in your machine increases your theoretical cache hit rate, and increasing the RAM decreases the hit rate. The extra RAM would still be worth it if you swap less, or can keep useful things in the disk cache. The only place where I see the lower hit rate hurting things is if there are any programs that look at the amount of memory you have and somehow tune their behavior to it. Can anyone think of a real world application that works like this. I remember studying Belady's anomaly in CS.

Windows 3.0 on a 386sx-25 was fine with 4MB of RAM. The first home computer we had when I was growing up had that configuration.

So what would you say is a good amount of memory and cache for the following computers in order to play DOS games well and run Windows 3.0 programs ?
IBM AT - 8088 = ?
IBM XT - 286 = ?
286 and cache = ?
386 and cache = ?
486 and cache = ?

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-08-10, 08:40:

So what would you say is a good amount of memory and cache for the following computers in order to play DOS games well and run W […]
Show full quote

So what would you say is a good amount of memory and cache for the following computers in order to play DOS games well and run Windows 3.0 programs ?
IBM AT - 8088 = ?
IBM XT - 286 = ?
286 and cache = ?
386 and cache = ?
486 and cache = ?

depends what u consider a game, and what u consider is usable to run windows and do anything other than open the clock program.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-08-10, 08:40:

So what would you say is a good amount of memory and cache for the following computers in order to play DOS games well and run W […]
Show full quote

So what would you say is a good amount of memory and cache for the following computers in order to play DOS games well and run Windows 3.0 programs ?
IBM AT - 8088 = ?
IBM XT - 286 = ?
286 and cache = ?
386 and cache = ?
486 and cache = ?

Haven't you asked this question before? My 286/12 runs windows 3.1 in standard mode with 8megs of ram with tcpip(Trumpet Winsock) just fine.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-08-10, 08:40:

So what would you say is a good amount of memory and cache for the following computers in order to play DOS games well and run W […]
Show full quote

So what would you say is a good amount of memory and cache for the following computers in order to play DOS games well and run Windows 3.0 programs ?
IBM AT - 8088 = ?
IBM XT - 286 = ?
286 and cache = ?
386 and cache = ?
486 and cache = ?

Any XT I have will get a full 640K if the motherboard supports it, because why not, but I'd settle for 512K. Wasn't a whole lot that needed more that wasn't more at home on a 286 or better anyway.
286 machines -- 1 or 2MB. 4-8 if I'm running Windows 3.1.
386s get at least 4MB of RAM from me, Windows or not. Windows 3.x makes me want at least 8MB, and 95 (though usually a fruitless endeavor on anything 386-class) wants at minimum 16 as far as I'm concerned.
486s get at least 8MB from me. 16 minimum for 95, but the 32 I have in my own 486 definitely makes 95 a more tolerable experience.

Caluser2000 wrote:

Haven't you asked this question before?

There is a running joke on vogons about how he/she (it?) is just a bot/neural network, created by administrators to drop generic question like this one every now and then.

I think someone should tell him to google system requirements for whatever he wants to run on the system and there he can see how much ram he "needs"

I once upgraded a couple of my 486 machines to 64MB RAM, simply because back in the early 2000s the older RAM prices were extremely cheap and I thought why not. Helped with running Windows NT 4.0 (& Win 2000 on a 5x86), but not entirely practical. Generally 16MB should be more than enough for DOS and I do run Windows 95 on a 486DX2-66 with just 16MB, though Win95 only really gets used as a glorified GUI for launching DOS games.

My 386SX I maxed to the 10MB my board could support without soldering. Again only because I had spare chips, you can get by with much less on a 386SX for just DOS, but the extra RAM helps Win 3.1.

My 286 only has 1MB (could do with at least another 1MB or 2MB, but need an ISA RAM card). My 8088 currently has 640KB, which I could upgrade to 1MB but I'm not running anything that needs more than 640KB and it's a lot of effort for little reward.

Baoran wrote on 2020-08-10, 13:18:

I think someone should tell him to google system requirements for whatever he wants to run on the system and there he can see how much ram he "needs"

Listed System requirements is the minimum usually, I want to hear from real world experiences of gamers and application users.
I dont have much experience with the 8088 or 286 0r 386 computers.

I'd say 4 MB is the minimum and 8 MB is needed for smooth operation.

Baoran wrote on 2020-08-10, 13:18:

I think someone should tell him to google system requirements for whatever he wants to run on the system and there he can see how much ram he "needs"

That's exactly the kind of passive-aggressive thinking we don't need here. "Google it!" is not helping. Either tell him about your own experiences or keep quiet.

The highest memory requirement (or recommendation per README) of any DOS game that I remember was Carmageddon in "-hires" mode. The README claimed that you needed 24MB for that but I never it with less.

But since Carmageddon won't run on a 486 anyway (... right? I will have to try it), let alone "hires" mode, I would also say that 8MB is enough for a 486.

That's really a tough question. To give you some perspective: my 486DX33 was exceptionally well equipped with 32 MB RAM but to be honest: no game I had
could possibly utilize so much memory, nor could Windows 3.11. It would have probably been the same experience with "only" 16 MB RAM.
The Pentium 90 that was handed down to me later on had only 16 MB RAM with Windows 95 C and I was pretty happy with it, playing Diablo and Civ 2 mostly.
And that's exactly why I'm saying this is a hard question to answer: it's all about perception. Back then there was normally no mindset like "60, 120, 144 FPS or else"
because it was much harder to compare game experiences from different machines as there was no YouTube.
Even my Duron 75o later on only had 64 MB RAM running on Windows 98 SE (granted, only for a short while, then I got additional 64 MB RAM) and to me that seemed normal
and I played Counter Strike and the like with friends on lan partys. It didn't even occur to me that my gaming experience might be worse than that of my friends.

What I go by nowadays is in every way not realistic for what most of us had back then but my currently active retro machines have the following amounts of RAM, along with the Operating Sytems I'm using and some games I'm playing:
1) 486 DX2 66 with 24 MB RAM running DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11. Games: Warcraft 1 and 2, Realms of Arkania 1-3, Alone in the Dark 1-3, Descent I and Civilization 1.
2) AMD K6-2+ with 256 MB RAM running Windows 98 SE. Games: Command and Conquer Red Alert 1 and 2, Tiberian Dawn, Tiberian Sun, Half-Life, Descent II and some adventures.

So, a 386 would probably be more than fine with 16 MB RAM. Lower machines are having also lower compute capabilities and as such are most likely not as much limited by less RAM as they can't
properly handle more demanding applications anyways. In some cases you even explicitly need a 386 or later for running certain applications.
And all in all Baoran's answer might not be to your (or somebody else's liking) but it is mostly true: it comes down what you actually want to do with your machine. While more RAM doesn't hurt it might simply go unused.

For anything XT, max it out on ram, some systems are limited to 640k, 286+ can take more, and its useful.
I know our computer lab ran a token ring network of IBM 286s on win 3.11. it was laggy but that was expected and totally normal at the time.
386 is not a win95 machine. more than 16mb seems like too much in the sense that no program id run on it would ever use that much.
486 I would say 8mb is okay fir win 3.11 but win95 or win95 A would be okay to use with 16mb minimum, 24 is better, and 32mb would be much preferred. if i were a masochist and wanted to run win96C/win98se/winme on a 486, id try to get 64mb or more if it will take it.
Theres no reason to run win98se or winme on a system that doesn't have USB ports, IMO. Its too bloated with the IE stuff.

Many different opinions 😀
It may be worth to walk this thread two ways.

When the systems came to the mass market, memory was expensive and adding lots of ram would cost you an arm and a leg. Or more. The system would run fine for what you intended, and having to wait a bit was totally fine. Windows 3.1x and 9x ran quite well, despite the system swapping several megs of ram to the hard disk.

Today, a 486 with 64MB ram is within reach for far less money. Or a socket 7 system with 512MB. Adding maximum cachable ram will improve performance as there is less need to swap. On lots of ram, swapping can be disabled without gettin into trouble. This saves hard disk writing, and expends it's lifetime.

(Like getting 128GB ram today: unaffordable for most people)

So yes, maxing your machine out beyond time correct amounts of ram seems totally acceptable to me. I do it too. After all, back then it was possible but unaffordable for most.