Can PII 233 fully used 224 meg of ram?

[Platypus]

Mmmmm..... TECHNICALLY, ( ) the answer to the question is Yes, as a Pentium can address 4Gb of memory, the limit of the 32 bit address bus. And as far as Win9x goes, the OS is already addressing virtual memory in the 3-4 Gb block, so it doesn't have a limit at 512M, but neither does it have NO limit. Theoretically, the 3Gb below virtual memory could be filled with physical memory. The problem is that Vcache runs out of available addresses when the memory size goes over 512M, so the cache size or the memory size have to be restricted. It is quite true to say Win9x/ME has memory handling limitations.

Sun Zi, you shouldn't have a problem unless the Support Chipset used on your motherboard has a limit to how much memory it can cache. If it does, you will find some slowing of performance at times as uncached memory is accessed.

[Budster64]

excellent explanation Playtpus.

Fubarian I must apologize to you for being confrontational. I was actually trying to make a point that the MS Knowledge base can sometimes be like the bible, you can sometimes find contradictory evidence if you look hard enough. But it came out as a flame and for that I apologize. Sorry dude.

[Fubarian]

....I'd like to see win9x have a page file 4gb in pio mode....that'd be fun to watch

Yes - win9x mem management SUCKS hard...but my only point was this -= I've heard probably ....20 people say 9x doesn't understand over this, or it can't use anything over that =- ...well, ok, I'd give ya that win9x doesn't NEED anything over...256? 128 it runs fine. You could put god knows how much on a 9x machine, now will it use it AS well?? no, but it can address over a gig. Now why in the #@$% would you use a gig on 9x is beyond me, but hey, whatever floats yer boat.

(i loaded up 640 megs of ram under 9x and it took over 20 seconds to clear it out )

Anyway, my only arguement is that 9x can "understand" over 512 or 768. Now is it as useful as it is on 2k? no. Not in the least bit...but again, if you want to....