RAM question

po0k

Right. I have 128Mb of PC100. Works fine. Stabe. Don't know its CAS# or its latency in nanoseconds.
I'm getting 256 or maybe even 512Mb of PC133 off of itdirect.ie for £50 per 256 stick.
i have know idea what this ram is like.
Apparently they have 'Apacer' chips. i never heard of these manufacturers, but i don't want to miss out on this chance.
Also, about the RAM. Are there any issues regarding it in Win98SE?
I *might8 be "getting" Win2KPRO soon. Maybe.

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Beware the power of a well trained mob
Hobbes - Ooohh Shinji I would accuse you of Equestrian necrophilia but I would just be flogging a dead horse

_CreeD_

Usually (just a rule of thumb) is that if they dont mention CAS it will be 3 (CAS2 is a selling point, if it does it they'll advertise it). Still you should have no problems running CAS3-133 ram at CAS2-100 at least (If you're not doing away with your old stick).
As for Win98, if you do plan on going over 512mb, open your C:\Windows\SYSTEM.INI file and look for the VCACHE section. It will most likely be blank (If you're not used to modifying INI files, just run SYSEDIT and it will bring them all up and allow you to edit easily - or find it manually and use notepad, they're just structured text files). Anyway enter something like this:

[VCACHE]
MaxFileCache=xxxxxx

xxxxxx= the amount of ram you're allocating to the disk caches. There's a bug in 9x that means once you go over 512 this driver starts eating up all of your ram. The system would be flakey, and you might not even be able to run Sysedit to correct it (Though you could go to a command prompt from the win9x boot menu, then into C:\windows and edit the System.INI from DOS - its handier to do this before adding the ram, it'll do no harm).
FYI I set it to 98304 (96mb).

Xterminator

The Vcache is reccomended to be somewhere between 1.5x and 2x the amount of ram in your system.

If youre applications are memory hungry, eg games etc. then use the 2x ram figure.

Thus setting it at 96mb is not what i'd reccomend. (unless you've 48mb of ram?)

It is more efficient if you set the min and the max size to this value, as it then doesnt need to change the size on the fly, taking up system resources.

As for the ram in your computer, if it is a branded computer, go to a site like www.crucial.com, and seek out your computer. You can then see what kind of ram they recomend, and just buy cheap ram with the same specs.

llatsni

I have that exact ram also bought from ITDirect (except I payed £100 for the 256MB stick 3 months ago, BOO HOO).

I can run it perfectly happily at 133fsb cas2...

But if you intend to do some seriously mental fsb's go for the Crucial PC133 gauranteed to PC150 from OCuk for only a little more of your precious cash.

You prob. dont need more than 256MB at the moment if you dont use photoshop or 3dstudio or something, ESPECIALLY if you are going to use Win98.

po0k

lovely job so..I'll be ordering my 256MB ram tomorrow.
BTW, i knew about the VCACHE thing, just didn't mention it...how stupid of meh.

I thought there was alos something about the latency too, with the order or slots you put the DIMMS into... ??

_CreeD_

If you allocate 1.5x/2x your system ram you're fkd.
The whole idea is you tell Windows to NOT eat up your entire memory with it.

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q253/9/12.ASP

I had it set to 128mb before, but took Ramidle's recommendation for 96mb for a game system with 768mb total.