Hack #32. Install the RAM Your Operating System Needs
Understand how your operating system and applications use RAM to solve memory dilemmas.
With today's operating systems and applications, the more RAM you can feed them, the better. Yes, Windows 95 only required 4 MB of RAM while Microsoft recommended 8, but trying to run Windows 95 on a system with less than 32 MB of RAM is definitely frustrating. The memory requirements for all versions of Windows are listed in Table 4-1.
Table 4-1. Windows operating system memory requirements and recommendations
Operating system | Minimum amount of memory required | Amount of memory Microsoft recommends | Practical recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|
Windows 95 | 4 MB | 8 MB | 32 MB |
Windows NT | 64 MB | 128 MB | 128-256 MB |
Windows 98/98SE | 16 MB | 24 MB | 32-64 MB |
Windows Me | 32 MB | > 32 MB | 64-128 MB |
Windows XP | 64 MB | 128 MB | 256-512 MB |
Windows 2000 | 128 MB | 256 MB | 256-512 MB |
Windows 2003 | 128 MB | 256 MB | 512-1,024 MB |
Windows 98 was rumored to go into a memory-addressing performance frenzy with over 128 MB of installed RAM, but after much research this appears to be myth rather than truth. There is, however, a certain truth out there that may have implicated Windows by coincidence.
I've been exposed to several different system board chipsets as well as a variety of CPU choices from AMD, Cyrix, and Intel. It is evident from the sampling of chipset data in Table 4-2 that mass use of these chipsets in PC hardware was coincident with the era of Windows 9x (1995-2000). Keep in mind that these caching limitations in hardware ...