VOGONS


First post, by Aglenoth

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Hello everyone, i would love to ask how much ram do i need to play games before 2000' ?
My cpu is Pentium 2 266Mhz

I have got 3 slots for sdram and those sticks:
3x 16Mb
2x 32Mb
6x 64Mb
2x 128Mb
1x 256Mb

So what is the best configuration from those tat i should use ? 😀
Thank you for information 😀

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Pentium II 266 MHz
Diamond Voodoo Monster II 12 Mb
S3 trio 64v+ 2Mb
ESS AudioDrive 1868f
10Gb fireball HDD
256 Mb Ram
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Reply 1 of 11, by alvaro84

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If it's strictly for DOS I wouldn't put more than 64MB in it, or maybe 32MB. I know no game that need more than 32M and only one demo that may need 48M (Event Horizon from Smash Designs).

Too much memory can cause incompatibilities (32768k may be just too much for some software, boards "thankfully" tend to "steal" 384k), in theory, because I'm yet to see a case. I hope someone can bring examples because I'm really curious.

I'd go with one single 64M stick, or a 32M, whichever fits the color of the board (yes, I do it whenever I can 🤣 ) - more smaller sticks fit the bill too and may look better but you're full of 64M ones so I'd start there.

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Reply 2 of 11, by firage

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If it was just for DOS, I'd go so far as to estimate that 16MB is slightly better than 32MB. Win95 titles could use 64 or even 128MB with that CPU.

My big-red-switch 486

Reply 3 of 11, by Aglenoth

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Thanks to both of you 😀 I guess i will stick with 32 Megs iam not much interested in windows games 😀

------------------------------------------------
Pentium II 266 MHz
Diamond Voodoo Monster II 12 Mb
S3 trio 64v+ 2Mb
ESS AudioDrive 1868f
10Gb fireball HDD
256 Mb Ram
------------------------------------------------

Reply 5 of 11, by Deksor

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Yeah but some other games (such as carmageddon) will have limitations with only 16MB

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Reply 6 of 11, by gdjacobs

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Does Dune 2 play nice if you eat up extra RAM with a RAMdrive, or by using HIMEMX?

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 7 of 11, by BitWrangler

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Deksor wrote:

Yeah but some other games (such as carmageddon) will have limitations with only 16MB

Yah I thought I remembered 64MB being a common requirement in the approx 98 to 2000 span.

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Reply 8 of 11, by j^aws

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If DOS games don't work due to 16MB limitation, then just enable 'Memory Hole at 16MB' in your BIOS options. Every game I've had trouble with was fine after this. You can do this even with a stick of 256MB. Although, that is overkill for games, use what you need to run your OS of choice smoothly.

Reply 9 of 11, by Aglenoth

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And what if i go with all 3 16 megs for total of 48 Megs ? That should be enough i guess ?

------------------------------------------------
Pentium II 266 MHz
Diamond Voodoo Monster II 12 Mb
S3 trio 64v+ 2Mb
ESS AudioDrive 1868f
10Gb fireball HDD
256 Mb Ram
------------------------------------------------

Reply 10 of 11, by Jo22

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Don't worry, anything up to 64MB is fine most of the time. It's also within the cacheable area of some motherboard caches.
That "Memory Hole at 16MB" option j^aws mentioned should solve most problems.
The 16MB limit was based on the 286's physical address space, which in turn the 16-Bit ISA bus was based on (ISA was the 286 front side bus).
Because of this, some ISA expansion cards (VGA cards, RAID controllers ?) put their buffers in the 15-16MB region, I believe.

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Reply 11 of 11, by firage

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Carmageddon, Fallout, Shadow Warrior, Jet Fighter III - there are some of those post-Win95 spots where 32MB is useful. The 16MB memory hole is a cool workaround as long as your board has the option - lets you switch between 15MB compatibility mode and 32MB+ from BIOS, otherwise you need a piece of software to fill out your excess memory.

Once past 16MB, the next compatibility issues I've seen aren't until around 256MB with games like Crusader, Longbow 2 and Myth.

My big-red-switch 486