can you have too much ram? i read an answer in a forum where a guy said any more than 1 gb would just slow you down. the general subject was gaming and using a top of the line video card. any basis to this. i always thought the more you had the better. also how does hdd size relate to gamin
too much ram won't slow you down. The latency timings and RAM speeds will slow you down if they are slow though.
There was a memory handling bug in the Windows 9x family -- that is, 95, 98, 98SE, and ME -- which caused the system to function improperly with anything above 512mb RAM. This could be circumvented by a registry hack and by adding a few lines to your system.ini file. If you're running a version of Windows in the NT family -- NT4.0, 2000, or XP -- you won't be affected by the same bug. Additionally non-Windows operating systems -- Linux, BSD, Solaris, MacOS, BeOS -- are unnafected by the bug. However, in order for Linux utilize between 1-4GB or 4-64GB of RAM, the kernel must be specificly compiled to take advantage of the full amount.
When I was running 2000, too much ram certainly slowed me down, when I took some out, it went back to normal. Not sure with XP though as I wont put in more than 512 as its all I need for what I run.
Windows 2000 should not experience a performance decrease due to having 1GB RAM. However, certain caching options in W2k can adversely affect performance. Also, some processors had a hard time working with lots of RAM. For instance, the AMD K6 would slow down with anything over 128MB RAM.
I was running a P4 1.8G in that system, I didnt even go to a gig, I went to 768 and for some reason is slowed me down, when I took it out, it was fine. Maybe some other issue than quantity, i really dont know the reason.
I use WinXP Pro and 1GB RAM, and I have trouble with what seems to be too much RAM. At first I got the error message described at http://vnisoft.com/?http://vnisoft.com/english/fixxp16bit.html I downloaded the fix, and it fixed some of problems, but I still get the error upon WinXP startup, as if one of the programs initiated upon startup is a 16-bit program. I'm also trying to get BarBack 5.0 to run, but when starting that I get a "Out of memory" message described at http://www.barback.com/support.htm as 'Runtime error 2004'. It refers to an article in the MS Knowledge Base, but according to that article, this problem doesn't apply to WinXP! The support page at BarBack, however, states that it applies to all versions of windows, including XP.
As I said earlier, the memory bug you are referencing has nothing to do with XP, as its vcache settings are completely unrelated to the Windows 9x vcache settings. Windows <=3.1, 95, 95SE, 98, 98SE, and ME are all based on MSDOS (yes, DOS) code, which has some serious and inherent memory & cache limitations. These limitations are not present in the NT family of Windows operating systems, which is not based upon DOS code (at least not as wholistically). In any case, NT's vcache is completely rewritten. The memory limitations you speak of are not present in Windows NT4, Windows 2000 (NT5.0), or Windows XP (NT5.1). Even if you were using a 9x family version of Windows, it is possible to work around the vcache issues with a few .ini hacks. It sounds to me like the BarBack software is badly written, and they're blaming the problems on MS. If BarBack still has 16-bit code, they need to emerge from the 1980's and do a complete rewrite. This is BarBack's official stance on this problem: Following the q253912 support article they mentioned, Microsoft confirms what I've just said: Do you see NT4, Windows 2000 or XP on that list? Me either. You might want to try running BarBack in XP's 'compatibility mode', making it think it's running on a more 16-bit friendly version of Windows and see if that helps at all.
