Does more than 256MB RAM make a difference with Win 98?

[The Rusty Gamer]

I don't understand why you would get so many crashes with Win 98. It's not THAT bad. Do you mean crash as in non-recoverable and you have to reinstall everything? I can't say that's ever happened - in general I find Win 98 quite stable, no problems. But I had a PROFESSIONAL EXPERT install it. None of this do-it-yourself cobble bits and pieces together from everywhere stuff. You may save a few bucks in the shortterm but it's not worth it for the months and years of heartache!

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Asher
XP also has protected memory and pre-emptive multitasking...

So did every vesion of Windows since 95. In theory, that is.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Master Zen
Oh and don't buy all that crap that "local hackers" say about XP. Those guys just like to blast new products apparently (especially if they're from Microsoft). I'm no fan of Microsoft but XP is MUCH MORE stable than 98 or Me and I recommend it infinitely for everything other than pre-2001 games.

Windows Me is crap. It's worse than 98, and probably worse than 95. Saying XP is more stable than these OS'es doesn't amount to a whole lot.

[Master Zen]

Note that I said MUCH MORE


I had WinMe when I got Civ3 when it came out, the game used to crash every so often. With XP it has hardly ever crashed.

[The Rusty Gamer]

With Win 98, Civ III doesn't crash AT ALL!

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
So did every vesion of Windows since 95. In theory, that is.

No, only very technically.

Win9x had very limited protected memory, it was only protected in the sense that you couldn't access the lowest 256KB(?) of RAM and in the upper 2GB boundary where the OS resided.

Programs themselves did not have protected memory, whereas they do in WinNT/2K/XP.

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by The Rusty Gamer
With Win 98, Civ III doesn't crash AT ALL!

Proving once again that WinMe is a piece of crap

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Asher
Programs themselves did not have protected memory, whereas they do in WinNT/2K/XP.

I am pretty sure they do. After all, programs run in protected mode, and I kept getting the GPF errors.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by The Rusty Gamer
I don't understand why you would get so many crashes with Win 98. It's not THAT bad. Do you mean crash as in non-recoverable and you have to reinstall everything? I can't say that's ever happened - in general I find Win 98 quite stable, no problems. But I had a PROFESSIONAL EXPERT install it. None of this do-it-yourself cobble bits and pieces together from everywhere stuff. You may save a few bucks in the shortterm but it's not worth it for the months and years of heartache!

Ever leave your machine on for longer periods of time? Win98 is not that stable in that it has a tendency to crash if you do. And by crash we don't mean have to reinstall everything, but that everything locks up or the machine restarts.

I am surprised to see some knowledgeable people saying win98 was as stable as 2K (or XP)..........my impression from my own use and reading online is that it is pretty much accepted that the newer operating systems are more stable.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I am pretty sure they do. After all, programs run in protected mode, and I kept getting the GPF errors.

GPF errors occured when something tried to access 0x0->0x40000, usually stemming from null pointer errors where the address defaulted to 0, which was protected by Windows.

[Standup]

Having recently managed a corporate migration from 98 to W2K i'd say that Windows 2000 is much more stable. Apart from using memory much more efficently it crashes less often and needs less reboots. Yes the two are connected but they impact in different ways.
Apart from anedotal evidence calls to support helpdesks have fallen significantly.
And returning to the orginal point about 512MBof RAm - yes W98 will use this but above 256MB its been more cost efficent (based on corporate experience not gaming) to move people to a another OS - XP/W2K but definately not ME.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by DrSpike
I am surprised to see some knowledgeable people saying win98 was as stable as 2K (or XP)..........my impression from my own use and reading online is that it is pretty much accepted that the newer operating systems are more stable.

No, it's not as stable, but most gamers don't leave their computers on for days.

[The Rusty Gamer]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


No, it's not as stable, but most gamers don't leave their computers on for days.

...unless they're playing a Civ-type game!

[Panag]

Re: Does more than 256MB RAM make a difference with Win 98?

Originally posted by The Rusty Gamer
Does having more than 256MB RAM make a difference with Windows 98. The general opinion seems to be "No" but the reason I'm wondering is that I have just upgraded from a PIII450 to an Athlon 1.6. I thought I'd try this thing out with some big settings on games to see what would happen.

I tried Cossacks: Back to War with biggest map and 8 players. Fine at first but definitely slowed down after a while.

Also, Civ 3 - PTW. 256x256 map and 24 players. Didn't play it for too long, generally smooth but began to notice some delays at end-of turn. May become more problematic towards the end-game.

I ran Championship Manager 01/02 and maxed out on the leagues (all 16). Now, the manual says you can use all 16 with 256MB RAM but it never got to the starting point. It virtually ground to a halt while trying to inititalise the data and when I killed it with an alt-ctrl-del there was a "not responding" message on the task list.

Surely I wouldn't need even more speed to remove the remaining delays. But would more RAM make a difference to the above games? That is the question. Can anyone tell me?

BTW, my graphics card is a GeForce 2 Titanium.

hi ,

think ahead and get more ram , 768 would be the least to get

have a nice day