Memory...What flippin' memory...?

Just have a peek at this... ...!

Total Memory: 510Mb. (DDR). (The Maximum on Win '98!)
Used Memory: 507 Mb.
Free memory: 3 Mb.

Programs running: (Sorry, stuttering!). FS 2002
Explorer.
Systray.
Grab-Clip-Save. (To get this screenshot!).
(Plus some very small system programs required by Windows).

All other back ground programs shut down. (As you do!).

What do you make of that then...?
It's worse than "Freddy" suddenly appearing at the bottom of your bed in the middle of the night.... ...!
....I reckon I've got some secret little gremlins using my memory to play "Space Invaders" in the background.... ...!
Mind you, at my age now, I do have some affinity with my computers memory. We both need each other desperately... ...!

System specs at the bottom of this post... 8)...!



Flying FS 2002 with 3 Mb of free memory is as mind altering as de-fragging my hard drive...>>>

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=hardw;action=display;num=1...

Cheers all... ...!

Paul.

Heya Paul!

I think FS2002 is memory adaptive - it loads as much of itself into free RAM as possible to give the best performance. I.e. FS2002 does not take up a specific amount of RAM, it just uses as much as is available. Try closing FS2002, leave the computer for a few minutes to get free RAM back again, and see how much is used/free then.

Cheers

Jonathan 8)

Hi Paul!

Yup, I think that should give you better fps . The eye can't detect anything above 30fps so don't bother trying to get it any higher 8)

Jonathan 8)

PS. I found a utility a while ago that would insert itself into FS2002 & FS2004 and would automatically free memory for itself when it knew the stuff it was getting rid of would not be used again (for a while at least). For the life of me I cannot remember where I found it, but I'll have a look for you. I tried it and went from 20fps near a busy airport to more than 30 8)

PPS. Jonathan not Johnathan (me being fussy ... no worries really )

This may not be connected but I find it useful. It sits in the control panel and allows you to take control of what programs run when you start up. May free your memory a bit and you wont have to use end-it-all so much!
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

Also his startup monitor program is useful too. It runs in the background and tells you when something registers a start-up program and allows you to stop that happening.
http://www.mlin.net/StartupMonitor.shtml

Birdman,

I just ran FS2002 with the fancy f16 and it showed usage by FS2002.exe as 154mb.........

I have a total of 1048mb with 664mb free as running above in winXP, with several other processes running.

The Gremlins gotcha!

Also Fozzer, if you got another 256mb stick lying around, drop it in and see what happens. I always ran 768mb in '98SE.

Quote:


Hi congo...!
..now you've got me really confused.... ...!
...just about everyone and his sister-in-law keeps telling me that Windows '98 SE cannot recognise anything more that 512 Mb of memory installed..... ...!
I have one more spare memory slot, (for another 256 Mb), but haven't used it because of the comments above... ...!
What do you reckon...?

Cheers congo... ...!

Paul.

P.S.   I was reluctant to purchase another stick of DDR memory, as it's a bit on the expensive side if it doesn't work.... ...!

I have had this discussion several times in this forum, ie., about more than 512mb ram in Win'98.

I have been fortunate in the past few years not to be completely alone in my quest for performance. A good friend and his son have been experimenting and gaining skills along with me, the biggest difference between us being that they could afford all the toys, while I continuously struggled to keep up.

One of the side effects was that they went out and bought a couple gig of PC2100 DDR RAM which failed to configure in Win'98se, only 768mb of ram would work. (either 3x256mb or 1x512mb + 1x256mb). A surplus 256mb stick was then passed on to me! WooHoo!  

Once, I added another 128mb stick to my 768mb configuration, for a total of 896mb in win'98se. This was just to see if it would work and it did.

There is a setting in Win'98 which allows the maximun RAM to be set up to 999mb, however the RAM seems to auto-configure to the installed amount. (up to 896mb anyway).

We used the 768mb ram in all our machines for over a year with Win'98se, and carried out benchmarking, gaming, and the usual PC tasks without incident over the period before we installed WinXP.

We then added RAM for a total of 1gb on our machines, running dual boot operating systems. The dual boot became a pain in the bottom, because we had to remove a ram stick for Win'98se to work properly. ('98 does not like 1024mb ram!).

This was not practical so we all dropped the '98 op sys from our rigs.

If MY memory serves me correctly, I didn't notice any great increase in performance between using either 512mb or 768mb ram in Win'98se. Nor, did it affect stability to my knowledge. At the time, I figured the applications we used didn't utilise the amount of ram we had installed, hence, we really didn't notice the difference.

So, Fozzer, I really can't say for sure, and like I said above, it's a pity you didn't have a spare stick to try it for yourself.

We were all blissfully ignorant that it couldn't be done.....

What I can tell you is this- It's taken me a while, but I've got WinXP pretty much under control now, it really annoyed me for a long time because the operating system was much smarter than I was!
I find I have to do  A LOT of tweaking to get it under control, and remain vigilant that it stays that way. XP as released was very prone to security breaches and so much stuff runs automatically in the background it's ridiculous.
On the positive side, once tweaked, XP is a very good gaming platform, faster and more reliable by far than Win'98 ever was.
WinXP has excellent internal memory management routines, and given adequate RAM, no third party ram managers or tweaks are required.
Microsoft seem to be trying hard to remedy a lot of the problems with it, and Service Pack 2 is now released in a "beta" version for public testing (a 256mb download mind you!).



I have basically turned off every auto-function I could find in XP. I turned off the built in firewall and run Zonealarm Pro instead. I have a good antivirus program, but I leave it disabled for speed and non-intrusiveness, running it periodically to check for bugs, and so far, I never had one since installing Zonealarm Pro, (after the Blaster Worm got me repeatedly).

I run 3 good spyware cleaners every few days, these pick up the baddies to keep my meager dialup connection clean. ( I think I have one of the best dialup connections possible - I tried a few, and went to an external modem.)

Fozzer, I know you have all your programs set up in '98, but if you have all the installers backed up, you shouldn't have much trouble changing over.

Also, The majority of program folders in C:/program files can be saved/zipped and placed straight into your new XP c:/program files folder and they will still work without even being installed in the registry, I always burn the ones I want to keep before a re-install.

The XP interface can be tweaked fairly simply to look and feel just like Win'98, so you can find your way around, just set up another account for the standard XP interface if you want to get used to that.

Sorry about the long babble, It's just I feel it's worth installing XP, even if it's only to gain those extra few FPS in FS9. You should see a 10% increase with XP alone.

There's a program out there called "TuneUp Utilities 2004" you can get it off www.download.com. ; It is payware ($40) but they give you 30 days free. Has a memory tune up utility that can automatically clear things up. I find it very useful. Comes with some other cool goodies as well.

Good one M8!   

I was using an ECS K7S5A, then a Asus A7S333. Both were SIS chipsets. (both were slow in comparison to comparable specs as well)

The graphics card, by far.  I was using a Radeon 7000 32MB before, this allowed low settings with a few at medium, i upgraded to a 9600xt and can run FS9 maxed out, 30FPS locked.

Hi Birdman...!
Thanks for this little beauty....

http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

It works a treat and allows me to select which programs I want to load at "Start up"...(the list always seems to get longer by the minute... ....)...LOL...!
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As a matter of interest, whenever I manually shut down programs running in the back-ground, (Ctrl+Alt+Delete), I always leave "Explorer" and "Systray" running.
What actually are these two programs, and can they also be shut down, or are they vital for Windows to work...?

Cheers all... ....!

Paul.

P.S. I've just been presented with a sooper-dooper Phillips 17 inch 170C4 LCD flat screen monitor... 8)...!
...arn't I a lucky bunny... ...!
(I can see the text on the screen clearly now...)... ...!
I could take a photo of it, and post it here, but I'm not the sort of person to inflict pain upon others... ...!
LOL...LOL...LOL...!

I was risking getting a hernia lumping my old 17 inch CRT monitor around... ...!
LOL...!

Fozzer,

Now, I'm started to get jealous!     Presented indeed! Was there a ceremony?  

I just noticed your spec Paul....... says FSB is 400mhz.

And You are running an XP2600+, Is the system bus and CPU really running at 400mhz or is it just your RAM at 400mhz? But you have PC2700 Ram @ 333mhz? Oh my, I hope it's not my medication again!  ???

You can download WCPUID to check. (oh, and I did get that 284mb of WinXP Service Pack2 on my dialup, LOL, only took two days!  )

Thanks for that Paul, and the fancy new WCPUID as well!  

Same as my CPU. We can go to XP3200+ m8, no worries, and they are getting cheaper all the time!

But...... We would need to upgrade our Ram to PC3200 400mhz to make it really crank. Someday........... 8)

They make that XXXX across the street from where I buy my PC gear! My favourite drop actually.