This really has nothing to do with Poser, but I thought maybe some technical people might know the answer to this. I recently upgraded to 512 megs of RAM. I don't really notice any change in render speed, or over all computer speed. My friend tells me thats because windows98 is only programed to handle 300megs of RAM so it's not using the rest. Is this true, and if it is, is there a way to get it to use all my RAM?

I think it's a matter of how much of a jump you make that results in any noticeable difference. The only time I've seen noticeable change is when I upgrade a CPU. Ram only seems to help the HD seek faster by not accessing it as often. So upgrading from a 5200RPM HD to a 7200RPM HD can result in good speed gains also. If you are constantly pushing the ram to use the swap file. What did you have before upgrading to 512? ScottA

I have a 7200rpm 60gig hard drive. I had 256mg of ram in the computer. I just put in another 256 chip. Poser and Icq, still are slow and lag. I have a P2 350.

This has often been discussed in the Microsoft news group. Here is the general response: 98 can utilize up to 2G of real memory. There is a bug in vcache management that requires vcache to be limited to 512M when you install more than 512M or real memory however. The question isn't "Is Windows 98 recommended for up to 256M", the question is do you have a need for that much memory. That is something that only you can answer. If you have heavy paging activity then installing additional RAM will boost overall performance. If you're not paging heavily, the system will still make use of the memory, but you won't see much an improvement in system performance. Launch sysmon (start->programs->accessories->system tools) and monitor swapfile in use. If it gets over 15-20M and stays there (or higher) for extended periods of time, then you might benefit from more real memory. > Walter Clayton Microsoft MVP (MPS-D) & EZA End of message. soccer coach

I'm running windows 98. I don't have a Swapfile program in my system tools category

The program you are looking for is called sysmon.exe Click your start button, Click run and type in sysmon and click OK. This will bring up a monitor in which you can see your swapfile usage. What I have found out in my system is that Poser and Win98 get along pretty well. Poser will try and load as much as it can in ram. While rendering, it does page out your picture.

Do you have a video card?

yes I have a geforce 2

Get a MAC......hahahahahah. Take that all you pc'z. Just messing around, don't anybody get offended.

What 98 does is run up to it's internal limit.. reguardless of memory availiable. then goes to the swap file then back to physical memory.. it slows things a bit.. NT and win2000 have bettre memory handling subroutines in that they use up the physical memory then move onto the virtual memory. or something like that "it's not a flaw.. it's a feature" CHeers

Attached Link: http://www.fluffkitty.com

Regardless of whether or not it'll recognize over 256 megs (I've heard the magic number to be 192 megs...believe what you will), 9x still is terrible at handling the RAM. Very few of the programs give back RAM when they're done with it and the OS isn't designed to do that. NT/2K run stuff (or can) in a separate memory block, and when you close something, it returns the RAM. The proof in this is pretty simple: run a 9x machine for a day doing your normal stuff (including rendering or whatever) and see how it's running at the end of the day, and then do the same with an NT/2K machine. Unless something REALLY weird happens, you'll find the NT/2K machine to be running just as fast as it was at the beginning of the day and that all of the RAM isn't used up as well as the page file. The short version of my reply then: use 2K (or NT) and get a CPU upgrade. You'll notice a faster render more with a faster CPU than you will with RAM, unless you have a ton of stuff in your scenes and need the memory. (For instance, rendering Vickie 2 with the DAZ hi-res textures and the updo hair sucks down about 500 megs of RAM when I render, and some of that is lighting of course. However, a render of the P4 woman and other stuff, clothing, etc., doesn't even come close to that number, not by a long shot.)