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First post, by computergeek92

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I know that in Windows 98 ram performance peaks at 256mb and adding any more will slow down the system. What about Windows 95? Does having high amounts of ram affect stability? (Besides the 480mb limit) I read online that once Windows 95 gets 256mb, the "law of diminishing returns" starts to take off. I don't understand what that means and how it will affect the OS. In that case, is 192mb the real max to have no bugs? I would really like to hear some stories about using 128-256mb ram in Windows 95. Up til now, i've only used 96mb with no trouble on the 430HX boards.

Dedicated Windows 95 Aficionado for good reasons:
http://toastytech.com/evil/setup.html

Reply 1 of 16, by Jo22

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I can't give you a precise answer to your question, but I highly recommend you reading this:

Windows 98 & WinME Memory Management
http://www.aumha.org/win4/a/memmgmt.php

Quite interesting are these two paragraphs:
"Memory management in Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition (WinME) is dramatically improved over what
existed in Windows 95. It is so much improved that, for nearly everyone, nearly all the time,
the best recommendations on how best to optimize memory usage in Win98 is: Let Windows handle it."

"The following sections discuss the main memory management considerations of VCache and swap file
management, and the value of more RAM. Along the way, efforts are made to debunk some prevalent fictions
that remain in circulation concerning Windows’ native handling of memory."

Note that this page is nolonger online and the last update was in 2003.
You can still read it on the web archive, though.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 2 of 16, by computergeek92

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Just read it, but i'm looking to know the max ram that works well without any tweaking. Meaning the best natural Windows 95 system. I'm guessing 128mb ram.

Dedicated Windows 95 Aficionado for good reasons:
http://toastytech.com/evil/setup.html

Reply 3 of 16, by Jo22

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Sorry, can't help you with this. I only know that back in the day (~94-95) 16MiB were a lot and some laptops still shipped with only 4-8MiB RAM.
Also, some magazine claimed that the official Win95 requirements were false and it needed about 32MiB to stop it from constantly using the swap file.

So even though Win95 runs on little memory and disk space, maybe it is more of a resource hog than Win98.
And there was also an interview with former Win95 developers, where they said that Win95 wasn't ready when they had to finish development.
But I don't know if this affects only the first release or later ones, aswell. Maybe that memory bug is gone in Win95c, don't know.
If you want, you can also use Win98SE with the Win95 explorer. This thing was called 98lite or something.

But if you really want a number, I would guess that 96MiB would be a sweet spot for Win95.
This amount of memory caused the fastest boot up in my VMs. But this doesn't have to say much..
Maybe it's just because of the design of the VM or 9x memory managment (up-down vs down-up, etc.).
But I could be wrong. I'm not that of a Win95 guru. 😉

Saying that, I wasn't even able to afford that much memory (126MiB-256MiB) for my first XP machine, which was running at 64MiB.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 4 of 16, by feipoa

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Isn't setting vcache recommended in Win95a/b/c, irregardless of how much or little RAM you have installed?

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 5 of 16, by ookamithewolf1

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computergeek92 wrote:

I read online that once Windows 95 gets 256mb, the "law of diminishing returns" starts to take off. I don't understand what that means and how it will affect the OS.

Up to a certain point, the more ram you put in gives you equal amounts of power, but past that point your pc can no longer compute such high amounts, and each bit of memory you put in will give less and less power. you will also be limited by your motherboard. Just because you can fit 256 megs in it doesn't mean it will be able to read it. Refer to your mother board's documentation to find its max ram limit. From what I've seen installing this amount of obscene power can be cool, but won't have any effect on your PC. Back then, having 32 Megs would have been the equivalent of having 16 GB today (think of it like currency inflation) and having 64 megs of ram would be like having 32 GB today. Both are obscene amounts, and all but the most hardcore of users won't touch half of it. Past 256 MB windows 95 will start to get errors, and it will actually slow your computer down. If you want stability and obscene amounts of power, try 128 MB. Unless your doing video editing, you won't use it, but it will still be cool knowing you have all that power.

Reply 6 of 16, by kixs

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feipoa wrote:

Isn't setting vcache recommended in Win95a/b/c, irregardless of how much or little RAM you have installed?

It certainly is.

Microsoft got smart with file caching only after Windows 8/8.1 was released.

Requests are also possible... /msg kixs

Reply 7 of 16, by computergeek92

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ookamithewolf1 wrote:
computergeek92 wrote:

I read online that once Windows 95 gets 256mb, the "law of diminishing returns" starts to take off. I don't understand what that means and how it will affect the OS.

Up to a certain point, the more ram you put in gives you equal amounts of power, but past that point your pc can no longer compute such high amounts, and each bit of memory you put in will give less and less power. you will also be limited by your motherboard. Just because you can fit 256 megs in it doesn't mean it will be able to read it. Refer to your mother board's documentation to find its max ram limit. From what I've seen installing this amount of obscene power can be cool, but won't have any effect on your PC. Back then, having 32 Megs would have been the equivalent of having 16 GB today (think of it like currency inflation) and having 64 megs of ram would be like having 32 GB today. Both are obscene amounts, and all but the most hardcore of users won't touch half of it. Past 256 MB windows 95 will start to get errors, and it will actually slow your computer down. If you want stability and obscene amounts of power, try 128 MB. Unless your doing video editing, you won't use it, but it will still be cool knowing you have all that power.

I'm aware of my mobo's capabilities. I often install 95 on systems that max at higher than 256MB. As for memory stability, I've had good luck with 192MB.

Dedicated Windows 95 Aficionado for good reasons:
http://toastytech.com/evil/setup.html

Reply 8 of 16, by feipoa

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If you inject some wait states via the BIOS (slow it down), you should be able to get the system stable with 256 MB. However, I don't really like this approach, so on one of my systems, I left it as 192 MB.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 9 of 16, by RJDog

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ookamithewolf1 wrote:

Past 256 MB windows 95 will start to get errors, and it will actually slow your computer down.

The slow-down could/would actually be a motherboard limitation. Motherboards of this era (particuarly thinking of Socket 5/7/super 7) have a "cacheable" RAM size which is usually half or lower of the maximum amount of RAM "supported" on the system. For example, my Socket 7 computer technically supports up to 256MB of RAM, but the chipset (SiS 5598) supports 128MB of cacheable RAM. Exceeding 128MB will cause noticeable and measurable performance degradation. I seem to recall that PhilsComputerLab actually has a video in which he looks at the (serious) performance degradation experienced in exceeding the cacheable RAM size. I would definitely recommend that the maximum amount of memory to install is the maximum cacheable RAM size by your motherboard's chipset, if you can find that information.

Reply 10 of 16, by computergeek92

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RJDog wrote:
ookamithewolf1 wrote:

Past 256 MB windows 95 will start to get errors, and it will actually slow your computer down.

The slow-down could/would actually be a motherboard limitation. Motherboards of this era (particuarly thinking of Socket 5/7/super 7) have a "cacheable" RAM size which is usually half or lower of the maximum amount of RAM "supported" on the system. For example, my Socket 7 computer technically supports up to 256MB of RAM, but the chipset (SiS 5598) supports 128MB of cacheable RAM. Exceeding 128MB will cause noticeable and measurable performance degradation. I seem to recall that PhilsComputerLab actually has a video in which he looks at the (serious) performance degradation experienced in exceeding the cacheable RAM size. I would definitely recommend that the maximum amount of memory to install is the maximum cacheable RAM size by your motherboard's chipset, if you can find that information.

What about PII slot 1 boards? The first chipset I used 256MB with Win95 was a 440BX. The system was a bit glitchy on 256MB, perhaps it was due to the drivers and not exactly caused by the ram size. This was on my famous Dell GX1. I was trying to get it working with Win95 despite it was designed for 98. It runs crappy on 98 but overall pretty good on 95. Scary isn’t it?

Dedicated Windows 95 Aficionado for good reasons:
http://toastytech.com/evil/setup.html

Reply 11 of 16, by RJDog

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computergeek92 wrote:

What about PII slot 1 boards? The first chipset I used 256MB with Win95 was a 440BX.

A Slot 1 motherboard chipset would definitely still have a cacheable RAM size limit, although good chance it's equal or higher than 256MB. My (very) quick googling on the 440BX didn't yield any definitive results, but I would guess it is 256MB or 384MB.

Reply 13 of 16, by F2bnp

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I use 256MB with Windows 95 on my K6-III+ and I have no issues regarding stability or otherwise. I recommend using a utility called "Cacheman", it has a lot of presets for different uses and really seems to do the trick on Win9x.

Reply 14 of 16, by yawetaG

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gdjacobs wrote:

Apparently, 512MB for early PII chips like Klamath.

Which means that you were very unlikely to run into problems with systems based around such processors, as most boards had a maximum RAM limit that was below that. The chipset itself could have a higher limit though...

Reply 15 of 16, by Tetrium

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Iirc I once read it was 512MB for early Pentium 2 (probably Klamath) and "Not a problem/don't worry about it" with later versions. Can't remember where I got that from though, so can't tell if this is the case or not.

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