"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:3bbcbe68@news.povray.org...
> MR <a### [at] bnet> wrote:
> : but i'm thinking about upgrading the desktop and i would
> : like to know if there is a maximum amount of memory
> : that windows ME or 98SE can use.
>
>   In theory the memory limit in P-II and newer is (AFAIK) 64 GB (I don't
> remember if the 4 GB limit was increased in P-II or in some previous
processor,
> but that's not so important here).
>   In practice some OS's have a 4 GB or 2 GB limit (due to 32-bit
architecture).
> I don't remember what was the limit in Windows 9x, but it could be that 2
GB
> (this is caused by the OS using signed integers, which halves the maximum
> value).

    9x uses full 32-bit addressing so the limit is a full 4Gb.

> I don't think there's any worry about having 1 GB of memory (AFAIK).

    Not much - one should take a look at the webpage that someone (Ken?)
posted in off-topic recently though - There are various performance issues
associated with more than 512Mb RAM under 9x, though 98 is slightly better
than 95.

>   (Of course Windows may have some braindead limit on how much memory a
single
> process can allocate at a time which is much less than 2 GB; I faintly
> remember something like that...)
>

    Again you can allocate a full 4Gb, you'll get some hideous disk
thrashing from doing it, but it'll work (most of the time).

> : i've also heard that the bios on the motherboard can be
> : a limiting factor.
>

    Usually only in how many slots of what sort and what max SIMM/DIMM size
they support.

>   I think there was a limit in some motherboards on how much memory they
> will cache (memory above that limit can be read but it's not cached). I
don't
> know if it's any issue nowadays.
>

    I've not heard about anything along those lines before... I haven't
checked to see if he says anything on the subject, but Tom is usually my
first stop for hardware issues :

    www.tomshardware.com

    Of course, 2k has far superior memory handling - I'd look up the details
but I don't have the relevant documentation installed currently...

--
Scott Hill.
Software Engineer.
E-Mail        : sco### [at] innocentcom
Pandora's Box : http://www.pandora-software.com

*Everything in this message/post is purely IMHO and no-one-else's*

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