Time to go to 512 DDR RAM?

[Lyran]

With Christmas coming up, I've been offered my choice of gifts. I have been getting slowdowns, freezes, and general sluggishness out of my nice rig (on Win98) that seems strange. I am perplexed, and wonder if a RAM upgrade, to 512 from 256, would be in order. I want my system to be able to play Unreal II, Rainbow 6: 3, Doom 3, Splinter Cell, etc., at 1024 with good detail. Should I upgrade now?
CompUSA has a good deal on 256 PNY Optima DDR 2100, for $50. Should I stick with Corsair XMS, which is pricier, or go for the cheap? Is PNY a good maker, is mix-n'-matching bad, or is Corsair by far the better make? Is something else the problem? (btw, I don't overclock{yet, that is, albeit I'm not planning anything}).
Please chip in your two cents, folks. I've been a long time NVIDiot.

[The Baron]

If you've got Corsair XMS now, buy another stick of it because then you can run at CAS2 (I think XMS is all 2). That's ALWAYS good.

But with your rig, you should get XP anyway. Way better/faster than Win98, especially if you've got the machine to run it.

[StealthHawk]

games like WarCraft 3 and UT2003 already want more than 256, so 512 is probably a good idea.

[Gator]

get the corsair, and yes 512 is a minimum for gamers these days. But that Win98 is holding back a lot too, get a cheap oem copy of XPHome and your system should run a lot better. I am confident that JUST the memory alone will not be enough to solve your problem.

As for the memory, is PNY bad, no. But it makes life easier with less cause for concern when you have all the same ram, and with all corsair you should be able to run the optimal cas2 speed. And another thing to worry about is you have a K7S5A, and something I learned about our board is its VERY picky about memory that works for it. If corsair works, stick with it. Other known working brands include Crucial and Samsung.

[|JuiceZ|]

ditto to ^

[Lyran]

thanx, all
Gator, you couldn't be more right about the pickiness of my mobo on RAM. When I got my first stick last christmas from Frys, it was cheap OEM 256 2100 DDR. Big mistake. Fast forward... I wake up in July, turn on my pc, and guess what, IT DOSEN'T WANT TO RUN! After trying everything I could think of, I take it in, and guess what, all that time, 6 months, MY OEM RAM WASN'T COMPATIBLE! sheesh... At least fry's refunded. I went for a Corsair XMS stick then, cause I wasn't going to screw around. I HAVE had problems now and then, but they could be from something else. Sheesh. Thank you, ECS!

[styles-T]

you'd be surpirsed of the difference it makes...

I just went from 256 to 512 of DDR and my games dont studder at all..before with 256 and Norton in the backround I would get this weird studder durring games like q3 and UT...now its smooth as s*%$...

[zsynth]

A: Do a fresh reinstall of Win98. Registry gets cluttered if it's an older copy. Clears a lot of unexplainable glitches.

B: Definitly stick with same brand\type memory.

C: Tweak 98. Put ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 in SYSTEM.INI. Create a permenant swap file. Remove all unnecessary TSR's to keep SYSTEM RESOURCES as high as possible (even with 512megs of memory). This eliminates in-game stuttering.

AbitKR7A133-raid XP2100
Antec412 PSU Win98se
768megs PC2100(micron) (256meg ram drive)
LiteOn 48x24x48
AOpen DVD
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