hello,

i've got an old 166MHz windows machine with 32MB of
memory.  don't use it much cuz i've got a laptop now that
i like a lot.

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.  i can't believe how
cheap everything is now!  i can get a FIC athlon 1.2GHz
motherboard for $189.  i can get 500MB of memory for
less that $80!!

i want to spend $350 and run the athlon with 1 GB of
memory (i'm wanting to get prepared for megapov or
3.5, and i understand they are memory pigs), but i'd
feel like an idiot if the op system won't run it.

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

thanks, miker

Post a reply to this message

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

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

  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.

-- 
#macro N(D,I)#if(I<6)cylinder{M()#local D[I]=div(D[I],104);M().5,2pigment{
rgb M()}}N(D,(D[I]>99?I:I+1))#end#end#macro M()<mod(D[I],13)-6,mod(div(D[I
],13),8)-3,10>#end blob{N(array[6]{11117333955,
7382340,3358,3900569407,970,4254934330},0)}//                     - Warp -

Post a reply to this message

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

As i heard Windows 9x has serious problems with anything more than 256 Mb
(!!!). Windows NT/2000 should be able to use up to 2 Gb for Applications
(the upper 2 Gb are reserved for the system) Of course this is no first
hand information, only what i have heard.

From my own experience i have the impression Linux handles larger amounts
of memory much better than Windows.

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
IsoWood include, radiosity tutorial, TransSkin and other 
things on: http://www.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/~chris/

Post a reply to this message

Win ME can handle up to 768 MB of RAM.  I have a system that is configured
like that.  In my case I was limited by the motherboard.  Some
configurations will limit max memory to 512MB of RAM.  Win ME and 98SE are
quite similar so I would think it would allow the same memory as ME.  Check
with the motherboard maker to determine the limits for their boards and
BIOS.

NT 4.0 (SP5)  will handle up to 2 GB of RAM.

I refuse to participate in Micro$oft's annual rite of operating system
upgrade/ extraction of money from the user so I am unfamiliar with Windows
2000 and XP.

Good luck.

Jim


"MR" <a### [at] bnet> wrote in message news:3bbcaa56$1@news.povray.org...
> hello,
>
> i've got an old 166MHz windows machine with 32MB of
> memory.  don't use it much cuz i've got a laptop now that
> i like a lot.
>
> 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.  i can't believe how
> cheap everything is now!  i can get a FIC athlon 1.2GHz
> motherboard for $189.  i can get 500MB of memory for
> less that $80!!
>
> i want to spend $350 and run the athlon with 1 GB of
> memory (i'm wanting to get prepared for megapov or
> 3.5, and i understand they are memory pigs), but i'd
> feel like an idiot if the op system won't run it.
>
> i've also heard that the bios on the motherboard can be
> a limiting factor.
>
> thanks, miker
>
>

Post a reply to this message

thanks guys,

i'm pretty sure that ME will handle 512MB cuz dell sells laptops
configured that way, but i wasn't sure about double or even
triple that.

oh, by the way.  i found the 512MB PC133 for $29 apiece.  i
should now be able to get a new 1.2GHz athlon motherboard
with processor and 1GB of memory for $250.  incredible.
bring on the 3.5.    ;-)

miker


"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). I don't think there's any worry about having 1 GB of memory
(AFAIK).
>   (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...)
>
> : i've also heard that the bios on the motherboard can be
> : a limiting factor.
>
>   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.
>
> --
> #macro N(D,I)#if(I<6)cylinder{M()#local D[I]=div(D[I],104);M().5,2pigment{
> rgb M()}}N(D,(D[I]>99?I:I+1))#end#end#macro M()<mod(D[I],13)-6,mod(div(D[I
> ],13),8)-3,10>#end blob{N(array[6]{11117333955,
> 7382340,3358,3900569407,970,4254934330},0)}//                     - Warp -

Post a reply to this message

"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*

Post a reply to this message

"MR" <a### [at] bnet> wrote in message news:3bbcdd4c$1@news.povray.org...
> i
> should now be able to get a new 1.2GHz athlon motherboard
> with processor and 1GB of memory for $250.  incredible.
> bring on the 3.5.    ;-)
>


    I was surprised at how little difference there was in rendering times
with 3.5 on my PIII933 and a friends Athalon1.4.
    Of course, compared to your 166 that baby's gonna fly...

--
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*

Post a reply to this message

MR wrote:

> hello,
> 
> i've got an old 166MHz windows machine with 32MB of
> memory.  don't use it much cuz i've got a laptop now that
> i like a lot.
> 
> 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.  i can't believe how
> cheap everything is now!  i can get a FIC athlon 1.2GHz
> motherboard for $189.  i can get 500MB of memory for
> less that $80!!
> 
> i want to spend $350 and run the athlon with 1 GB of
> memory (i'm wanting to get prepared for megapov or
> 3.5, and i understand they are memory pigs), but i'd
> feel like an idiot if the op system won't run it.
> 
> i've also heard that the bios on the motherboard can be
> a limiting factor.
> 
> thanks, miker


If you only want it to render your scenes try linux.

(However scene creating semmed to me a bit more comfortable with the 
windows gui. But there is an other group for discussing this ;-) )


-- 
Sebastian H.

Post a reply to this message

Scott Hill wrote:

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

Yes. And it also could theoretically keep running for months, but bad
implementations cripled Win95 & Win98 to die at 49.7 days. That one bug has
finally been fixed, but there are many such.

Earlier Win98 systems had problems with more than 96 MB RAM.

My PIII is listed as being able to take a max of 384 MB.

> > : 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.

Yup. That's a key factor.


> >   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.
> >

IIRC, that's where the Win9X problems with 96MB came in.



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

Of course, it really depends on what his needs are. For home use, Win2K is
usually not a good solution. Of course, it is a little more stable, and is good
for developers.

Especially if he just needs a good POV-Ray render box, then running Linux
instead is probably a good alternative. Probably since RedHat 5.2, and
definitely since 6.0 and 7.0, it's gotten easier to install than Win9x on a new
machine. And a custom compile on Linux of POV-Ray usually zipps along quite
nicely, and it has none of the major performance issues of the Win9X series of
OS's, and it's not nearly as much of a memory hog as 2K.

As long as the apps he needs for Linux, it'd be worth looking into.


--
Jon A. Cruz
http://www.geocities.com/joncruz/action.html

Post a reply to this message

Sebastian Holtermann wrote:

>
> If you only want it to render your scenes try linux.

I was just posting a little about that. Good stuff.


> (However scene creating semmed to me a bit more comfortable with the
> windows gui. But there is an other group for discussing this ;-) )

Ahh.

But I think that pointing out Emacs and the POV-mode could be
appropriate here. Especially since Emacs can easily be run on Windows
and on Mac OS X, in addition to the traditional Unix/Linux builds.

http://www.acc.umu.se/~woormie/povray/


--
Jon A. Cruz
http://www.geocities.com/joncruz/action.html

Post a reply to this message

"Jon A. Cruz" a écrit :


> But I think that pointing out Emacs and the POV-mode could be
> appropriate here. Especially since Emacs can easily be run on Windows
> and on Mac OS X, in addition to the traditional Unix/Linux builds.

[Troll mode ON]

hmmm... Vim also has a pov-mode, a GUI, and can be run on a variety
of platforms...

[Troll mode OFF]


-- 
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
 | http://pingou.linux-site.net/~zebu/      ( o<     =P.O.V=  |
 |                                          / /\     =Perl5=  |
 |    [ Spammers'll be eaten! ]             \V_/_    =Fsims=  |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+

Post a reply to this message

"Jon A. Cruz" <jon### [at] geocitiescom> wrote in message
news:3BBD04F9.FABBF4A5@geocities.com...
> For home use, Win2K is usually not a good solution.

    How so ?

--
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*

Post a reply to this message

Scott Hill wrote:

> "Jon A. Cruz" <jon### [at] geocitiescom> wrote in message
> news:3BBD04F9.FABBF4A5@geocities.com...
> > For home use, Win2K is usually not a good solution.
>
>     How so ?

Well, the big one, games, are finally starting to work OK under 2K. But
still, a few have issues. Used to be that nothing would work well. But
it's starting to come up.

One big issue is the resources required. Hard-drive space, CPU power,
memory... 2K is a huge hog of all of these. These hit the average home
user _exactly_ where it hurts most: in the wallet.

Then there are some of the admin features. Nice for a corporate
environment, but not so easy for average users.

And also there's a general trend in software. Generally, 'professional'
software works better on NT/2K, whereas consumer software is more tuned
for Win9x. Over time it is improving also, but still the 'os
friendliness' of consumer apps is different (how NT does things
differently... the file systems, the registry details...). Things like
software development houses having only limited testing/QA resources and
focusing mainly on consumer os versions, etc., come into play.

Since I've avoided NT at home all along (I even have a few unused
licenses for it laying around), I get a lot of the current information
from my co-workers. They are fairly compentent when it comes computers,
tech, admin, etc. And many of them multi-boot with 2K & Linux, 2K & 9x,
etc.

Of course, some of them have also suffered enough pain to have now
uninstalled 2K completely.

--
Jon A. Cruz
http://www.geocities.com/joncruz/action.html

Post a reply to this message

>     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).

Not correct; Win9x and 2000/ME/XP have a hard limit of 2gb per application
(due to the limit of virtual address space; the upper two gigs is reserved
for the system). Whether or not 9x can physically handle that much RAM I
can't say - the info above is purely related to the technical limit that
the OS designers placed upon application memory partitioning.

Win2k advanced server allows 3gb per application (it reserves "only" one
gigabyte for the system).

This 2gb limit is kinda scary when you consider that we have already seen
at least one POV image that uses more than half of that ... for users of
consumer Microsoft OS's, once scenes start hitting 2gb, no amount of RAM
will help the problem (POV will just fail with a memory allocation error).

  Bill Gates 1981: "No application will ever need more than 640k of RAM".
  Sidekick:        "And besides, home users could never afford that much!"

  Bill Gates 1991: "No application will ever need more than 2gb of RAM".
  Sidekick       : "And besides, home users could never afford that much!"

sigh.

-- Chris

Post a reply to this message

Chris Cason wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> This 2gb limit is kinda scary when you consider that we have already seen
> at least one POV image that uses more than half of that ... for users of
> consumer Microsoft OS's, once scenes start hitting 2gb, no amount of RAM
> will help the problem (POV will just fail with a memory allocation error).
> 

As long as Dell&Co continue selling Pentium 4 PC's with 128 Mb RAM there
is no danger. ;-)

I think you are quite right, even presuming that you can use full 4 Gb on
other OS's the limit will come at least within about the next two years.  

Let's hope that at that time there are cheap 64bit systems available.

And BTW:
No application will ever need more than 16 Million TeraByte of RAM

(Anyone who wants to know how much you would pay for that?)

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
IsoWood include, radiosity tutorial, TransSkin and other 
things on: http://www.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/~chris/

Post a reply to this message

>
> As long as Dell&Co continue selling Pentium 4 PC's with 128 Mb RAM there
> is no danger. ;-)
>

Compaq actually sells a 1.533 GHz Athlon with 512 MB RAM for 1249 $ IIRC.
My own 3 months old system can handle only 1.5 GB RAM at maximum and I
wanted to take advantage of the low RAM prices.
But even with some tricks, Win98SE works only with 1 GB RAM. :-(

I hope my next scenes memory usage grows slower than in the past.

Norbert

Post a reply to this message

Christoph Hormann wrote:
> And BTW:
> No application will ever need more than 16 Million TeraByte of RAM
> (Anyone who wants to know how much you would pay for that?)

Just for reference, a thousand Terabytes would be an Exabyte.  I have
no idea what comes after that, though.

-- 
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.scifi-fantasy.com

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GFA dpu- s: a?-- C++(++++) U P? L E--- W++(+++)>$
N++ o? K- w(+) O? M-(--) V? PS+(+++) PE(--) Y(--)
PGP-(--) t* 5++>+++++ X+ R* tv+ b++(+++) DI
D++(---) G(++) e*>++ h+ !r--- !y--
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Post a reply to this message

"Timothy R. Cook" wrote:
> 
> Just for reference, a thousand Terabytes would be an Exabyte.  I have
> no idea what comes after that, though.
> 

Are you sure about that?

According to my reference: 10^12=tera, 10^15=peta, 10^18=exa

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
IsoWood include, radiosity tutorial, TransSkin and other 
things on: http://www.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/~chris/

Post a reply to this message

Christoph Hormann wrote:
> > Just for reference, a thousand Terabytes would be an Exabyte.
> > I have no idea what comes after that, though.

> Are you sure about that?
> According to my reference: 10^12=tera, 10^15=peta, 10^18=exa

Hmm ok, missed one.  Still no idea what comes after exa ;)

-- 
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.scifi-fantasy.com

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GFA dpu- s: a?-- C++(++++) U P? L E--- W++(+++)>$
N++ o? K- w(+) O? M-(--) V? PS+(+++) PE(--) Y(--)
PGP-(--) t* 5++>+++++ X+ R* tv+ b++(+++) DI
D++(---) G(++) e*>++ h+ !r--- !y--
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Post a reply to this message

"Timothy R. Cook" wrote:
> 
> Christoph Hormann wrote:
> > > Just for reference, a thousand Terabytes would be an Exabyte.
> > > I have no idea what comes after that, though.
> 
> > Are you sure about that?
> > According to my reference: 10^12=tera, 10^15=peta, 10^18=exa
> 
> Hmm ok, missed one.  Still no idea what comes after exa ;)

zetta followed by yotta -
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci499008,00.html

-- 
Ken Tyler

Post a reply to this message

Norbert Kern wrote:
> 
> Compaq actually sells a 1.533 GHz Athlon with 512 MB RAM for 1249 $ IIRC.
> My own 3 months old system can handle only 1.5 GB RAM at maximum and I
> wanted to take advantage of the low RAM prices.

I guess that's the maximum of most current (Athlon) boards anyway, 3x512Mb
modules.

> But even with some tricks, Win98SE works only with 1 GB RAM. :-(
> 

I think for Povray renders requiring much memory Windows (98) is not the
best system anyway.

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
IsoWood include, radiosity tutorial, TransSkin and other 
things on: http://www.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/~chris/

Post a reply to this message

Chris Cason <newsadmin-despam-@povray-no-spam.org> wrote:
: This 2gb limit is kinda scary

  This is quite curious because, AFAIK, the hardware limit in intel processors
(and clones) is currently at 64 GB (of course you can only address 4 GB at
a time because pointers are 32 bits long, but the whole 64 GB memory can be
used with some hardware paging mechanism).

  On the other hand, we should not be so harsh about Windows in this specific
case. I have no idea what is the memory limit in Linux, but I wouldn't be
very surprise if it was 4 GB as well... If someone knows better, it would be
interesting to know.

-- 
#macro N(D,I)#if(I<6)cylinder{M()#local D[I]=div(D[I],104);M().5,2pigment{
rgb M()}}N(D,(D[I]>99?I:I+1))#end#end#macro M()<mod(D[I],13)-6,mod(div(D[I
],13),8)-3,10>#end blob{N(array[6]{11117333955,
7382340,3358,3900569407,970,4254934330},0)}//                     - Warp -

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote in message <3bc0d6a6@news.povray.org>...
>  On the other hand, we should not be so harsh about Windows in this
specific
>case. I have no idea what is the memory limit in Linux, but I wouldn't be
>very surprise if it was 4 GB as well

As of when I last compiled the kernel (version 2.2.x), I could choose a
limit of 2 GB or 4 GB.

--
Mark

Post a reply to this message