Windows 98 won't really take advantage of more than 512MB of RAM anyway, not unless you install some special patches. I'd say it would be safe to stick with a single 512MB stick. What would be even better is two 256MB sticks with really tight timings, to allow for dual channels and overall better performance. 😀

Ask in Marvin. This forum is for Windows games.

Moved.

This page has detailed info on how to limit ram usage in 9x.
http://www.thpc.info/ram/vcache98.html

Limiting memory usage to 960mb or less is a good idea for 1gb systems.
You can also use msconfig if you don't want to root around the system.ini manually in 98\ME.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Windows 98 won't really take advantage of more than 512MB of RAM anyway, not unless you install some special patches. I'd say it would be safe to stick with a single 512MB stick. What would be even better is two 256MB sticks with really tight timings, to allow for dual channels and overall better performance. 😀

That board won't do dual-channel, so 2x256MB or 1x512MB makes no difference - not that AthlonXP really benefits from DC anyways (and there aren't many AthlonXP chipsets that support it either). Agreed on tight timings though - shouldn't be too hard to find decent DDR400 in a 512MB module these days. By itself that would be a good improvement over PC-100/PC-133, especially if you went with something very tight (e.g. 2-2-2-5, although the 3-3-3-8 in my 875p still puts up much better bandwidth #s than PC-133 in my 845p).

Paired up with a nice AthlonXP or Sempron, and a decent AGP card, and you'd have either a very stellar Win9x box, or a very respectable Win2k/XP box (and if you went 2k/XP, you could kick it up to 1-2GB of RAM without problems). I'd probably go the XP route myself if you already have a rockin' 98 box (in truth you could throw a GeForce 6/7 in there and have it run some fairly new games if you went with 1-2GB of RAM and had a large enough hard-drive). 😎

As far as Windows and memory type - it doesn't know or care. It only "sees" capacity (and Win9x will have problems over 512MB - Microsoft has acknowledged this as well; there are patches/workarounds/etc available, but in general it's easier to just go with 512MB or less (remember that by late 1990s standards 512MB of memory was outlandish) and if you have games/applications/etc that need GBs of RAM, they will probably work in a newer operating system (like XP or 8.1)). It is indirectly influenced by memory type in terms of memory performance though (e.g. dual DDR400 performs better than PC-133, so that translates into benefits for Windows). 😀

I didn't know the OP's board was for an Athlon XP, I just sort of assumed Pentium 4 as soon as DDR1 was mentioned. 🤣 In that case, a single decent 512MB module should do the job. I've played around with an AXP system before, but I don't know them as well as I know P4s.

Updated my retro rig yesterday.
With 1gb ram, when installed the vga drivers it would no longer boot!
With 512, everything's running super smooth!

Thank you all so much <3 A ton of great info you gave me :] I hooked up an Athon XP 2000+ which runs at 1.6 GHz and I have 2x512 MB Kingston DDRam, this is a Micro ATX board so not much room for stuff, also it goes up to 2GB anyway. Let me tell you that my initial motivation for this system was to play Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance PC on Windows XP SP1, yes thats right folks I said WinXP SP1. For some very strange reason that game only runs well on SP1 and once you upgrade to SP2 and SP3 some ingame videos will show glitches. Sorry that I posted in the wrong forum but basically this is what I mean.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVitilF2gZI

I initially thought the green screen glitch is direct X based but it is not ! It seems it only happens on WinXP SP2-3 maybe someone who knows the big difference between SP1 and SP2-3 can shed some light into why this screen glitch could only happen in SP2-3 because it does not happen with SP1 running DX9.0c I tested it and it works !

MGS2PC also works fine on Win7 64Bit with the 2.0 patch and 2 soundfiles added but that damn green screen still will show up during the tanker scene, I installed the game on my laptop which runs Win7 64bit home and the game runs at full perfect speed, maybe I will dual boot the laptop in WinXP SP1 to see how MGS2 runs but I dont like to mess around with the hard drive of the laptop so much 😒 So I thought well I will just build an WinXP SP1 PC 😁 A good one at that ! Since my last motivation to build a Vintage PC was to run Resident Evil PVR and hot damn it runs great on the M3D and Tualatin 3 <3 But for MGS2 dual booting from that Vintage PC into WinXP wont cut it...

I installed MGS2 PC on my Vintage PC which also dual boots WinXP SP3, so I booted into WinXP SP3 and installed the game and I got the green screen during the colonels speech like shown in the video, now comes the funny part :] I said to hell with it and I reinstalled the original WinXP SP1 (2002) which has DirectX 8.1 pre-installed and guess what xD Even thou it says MGS2 PC is meant to be played in DX8.1 YOU CANT PLAY it in DX8.1 at all ! You have to run DX9c in WinXP SP1 ! Once I re-installed Windows XP SP1 and upgraded the DirectX to 9.0c Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance PC did show me the cutscenes correct and the projector showed me the images. So in conclusion, if you want to play MGS2 PC, just install WinXP SP1 on a powerful WinXP PC and upgrade your DirectX to 9.0c and have a ball with the game 😁 Since this is an awesome game I would say go grab the 8800 GTX AGP that one will chew even on Crysis a good bit 😁

The only big downside is of course that my Vintage PC is kinda slow for MGS2 🙁 it has a Pentium 3S tualatin 1.4 GHz and 780MB SDram (well mainly because I dual boot Win98SE on it as well, right ? ) so the WindowsXP dualboot is kinda lacking because of the hardware and MGS2 needs a strong CPU and a good graphics card, my two graphic cards on my Vintage PC are MSI Nvidia FX 5900 Ultra and of course the sweet Matrox M3D <3

so I thought maybe I will just build a new machine just for Windows XP Sp1 to run Metal Gear Solid 2 PC at full speed without the hardware limitation and maybe I try to dual boot Win98SE on the XP machine as well for testing purposes :] and well if this motherboard can handle Win98 maybe I will slap my Matrox M3D on it to see how Resident Evil PVR runs on it 😁 I just need time and testing thats all, cheers

GeorgeMan wrote:

Updated my retro rig yesterday.
With 1gb ram, when installed the vga drivers it would no longer boot!
With 512, everything's running super smooth!

mhm avoid 1 GB memory on Win98SE like the plague ! I mean it, you wont be able to boot into your OS 🙁 You can try 780 MB max I can confirm that will work on the BX chipset fine but once you go 1GB and Win98SE get ready for trouble xD Thats the main reason my WinXp double boot is crippled because the max hardware limitations I tried to do on Win98SE it holds back WinXP in gaming 🙁 and if you want to play some better games on WinXP.

I have build my Vintage PC around Win98SE and its already overkill for Win98SE xD But hey it can play all the Win98 games at full speed and then some.
I initially started the project just to be able to play Resident Evil PowerVR and I succeeded and then I decided to build a very decent Win98 gaming vintage PC and I managed that as well by just upgrading it to the Win98 max limitaion, then I decided to dual boot WinXp from that vintage machine and let me tell you its weak for WinXP, maybe I will build a very strong WinXP PC just to play games like Metal Gear Solid 2 PC and Breath of Fire IV which only works in WinXp, on it.

I have used 1gb in 98 fine, on an NFORCE1\2\KT266\KT333\KT400 for the XP.
You may need to boot with less, but if you follow that guide above it should work.
If it, really is highly unstable, Limit it to 512mb, most boards don't have an issue... Nforce1\2 is the most finicky, I don't even like using them for 9x if I don't have to, and they do, better in single channel mode stability wise in 9x, (never used your sis chispet op so thats new to me).

MaxPhysPage=20000
under system.ini [386enh]
will limit you to 512mb.

Setting your Vcache properly is highly recommend in that guide I recommend it especially if your using Solid state drives.
Adding the line ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 to [386Enh] will also cut down on swap usage forcing 9x to use more system memory too.

I just reinstalled Win98SE on my 440BX system with 1GB RAM installed. I have dual boot on my system Win98SE and Windows XP SP3.

I'm using MaxPhysPage=30000 (768MB RAM) in my Win98SE settings. The only issue I've encountered using 1GB was that the VGA driver would stop working at some boots. With 768MB there are no problems.

The system arena in 98se can deal with 2gb of ram, unless you don't manually adjust vcache. That's probably why you have to limit ram to 768mb (which should still be giving you problems; even 512mb has problems). If you adjust vcache manually you can use up to 2gb ram in 98SE. Just edit system.INI under vcache setting with something like "MaxFileCache=65536" without quotes, and you should have the least amount of problems with 98se and lots of ram. Alphawing gives some great advice. Regardless of what people say, 512mb still gives problems and you still must manually adjust vcache.

Just wanted to point out - there are no AGP 8800s (and if I'm mistaken I'd love to be wrong - I'd gladly own one). There are some Radeons from around that time on AGP though, and GF7s as well. If the goal is just superduper XP though, no reason to stick to AGP - go PCIe and go nuts with it.

My recollection ... Vcache (maxfilecache) plus AGP aperture must not exceed 512MB - or else it WILL CRASH.

Since the highest AGP aperture normally found is 256MB then keeping Vcache below 256MB should resolve.

Theoretically, the problem could trigger at anything above 256MB RAM, if the aperture is also 256MB

My own eventual solution to wrestling with 98SE's memory limitations was to go to XP.

Is there anything that XP cannot do, that 98SE can, but only when it has buffed-out & tweaked memory?

--
For amusement, I have two 98SE projects congealing parts right now:
A78NX Deluxe, Athlon XP 3000+, 2x256 Corsair DDR400, ATI 9600XT
A7V133, Duron pencil-clocked to 1100, 2x256, probably the MX440SE