Windows 98 ram question

[Reedimus]

I went to a small computer parts store to get some more sdram. I was talking to the guy there and he said that it was pointless for me to get more ram because windows 98 won't use any more than the 128mb I have right now. That sounded pretty strange to me, but I don't know a whole lot about computers so I took his word for it and didn't buy the ram. I've been looking on the internet now trying to find out if this is true and nowhere can I find any reference to there being a 128 ram limit to windows 98. I might have misunderstood him, but I know he said that it would be pointless to get more ram in my current system for some reason, if not windows 98. my current computer is an aptiva 570 e, the motherboard allows 384mb ram, it uses sdram, pentium II 400mhz cpu. any help would be appreciated. thanks.

[Eric H.]

Windows 98 can use up to 512MBs of RAM. It can even take more, if you edit some system files. I don't know where he got the 128 limit from.

[RJ]

The only thing I'd think could be a possible limitation would be the mainboard. Actually I know no board with such a low ram limit, but you said you have an Aptiva, that's a propietary machine with a propietary design and mainboard, and propietary mainboard mostly have less capabilities than standard mainboards, so I'd take a look into the manual and check how much ram the board will support.

RJ

[old dog]

just my thoughts. If you already have 128mb of ram you will not see much or any performance increase with your system running win98. however if you like to multitask, have a lot of windows open at the same time, more ram will help.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Get as much RAM as you can afford or your MoBo can support. I've heard before that Windows limit was 96 MB, but after adding 32 to 128 for a total of 160 I've seen my system increase its performance, and my hard drive got a rest from being accessed too much for virtual memory.

[Reedimus]

thanks for the replies. I bought some more ram and it works just fine. no idea what that guy was talking about.

[Leef]

I dunno where this guy got his information, unless he thought the MB or BIOS couldn't handle that much. I'm running 256 now on a 98 SE machine. Although, like everbody says, it doesn't add much to the performance. All it really does is make sure you have more when the 128 happens to run low. It can save you from using the swap file.