Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2001 18:09:06 -0800 (PST)
From: David Chien <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: going back to win95?
> L.B. say something I'd never heard before. He said that Windows doesn't use
> any more RAM than 128MB. Then he correced himself, and siad that Windows
> doesn't use any RAM over 128MB EFFECTIVELY.
Well, if you're talking about how much Win98 oinks on bootup, it's over 12MB,
and less than 32MB total, depending on how much stuff you've got installed.
That's just space required for the OS itself and nothing else. naturally, any
program you load will require more RAM (if you don't want it to swap to HD as
virtual RAM) above and beyond that limit.
It's true that windows doesn't use more than 128MB RAM. Not even Windows
2000 has enough running applications to oink all 128MB's (close, but not quite)
of RAM (in reality, it's a little different, Windows just swaps stuff out
immediately to virtural RAM on HD no matter what on default settings, and thus,
on most installs it'll be using less RAM, and more HD. But turn off virutal
RAM and it still won't be able to fill up all 128MB).
However, if you run applications, then yes, it is likely you can use up more
RAM, all the way up to the maximum amount you can put into your PC (assuming
you've got big applications or files open). More RAM won't hurt a single bit
in terms of performance or speed.
eg. with video editing, you can easily gobble up 1GB RAM just making a few
real-time edits in Premier or Avid. eg. with sound editing, you can easily
oink up all 128MB of RAM w/o any problems whatsoever by editing a couple dozen
minutes of music. eg. with Photoshop, any scan that's made at 600dpi+ full
page will instantly gobble up anywhere between 100-500MB - just to scan it into
RAM!
As a general rule of thumb, if you're running just Win95 w/ only IE 3 and
Office 97, then 32MB will be just peachy and adaquate. If you're running
Windows 98, 64MB. 64MB is generally enough to minimize most disk swapping on
most systems you buy today, and a good starting point for any new system.
However, if you've got the extra $30, get an additional 64MB of ram for 128MB
total to begin a new system with. That will almost completely eliminate disk
swapping for most single application home internet/email/office desktop users,
and you'll be able to expand your system w/o having to worry much about RAM.
(It'll just 30-40%, leaving the rest free on boot up.)
But, if you're doing any serious graphic/sound/video editing work, get as
much as possible. They tend to oink up any avail. RAM as quickly as you can
say 'open file'.
128MB is adaquate for sound editing, and decent for basic graphics and video
work. 256-512MB is prefered when you get serious (eg. doing 1200dpi scans full
page; video editing for an hour; doing sound edits on hour long recordings),
and more the merrier.
Naturally, since all PCs today are significantly limited by the HD access
speed (in fact, it's the biggest bottleneck in most PCs today), any RAID system
will help tremendously.
eg. take a $20 FastTrak Ultra/66 IDE card and turn it into a $99 FastTrak
RAID/66 IDE card by solidering in one 100ohm resistor, hook up two HDs (or
four) and you'll suddenly be running 2x(4x) faster disk accesses - equivalent
to about a 50% speed bump in running any OS and apps.
I'd say that any system running over 700Mhz should be running either a RAID
HD subsystem, or at least a 75GB IBM 7200rpm IDE HD for the best performance
possible -- otherwise, you'll have wasted that extra money on a 1ghz+ system on
nothing as you're HD subsystem can't even keep up.
(and if you're rich, four IBM 75GB 7200rpm HDs raided for 4x the performace
of a single drive! ;)
d =)
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