Strange RAM Question -please respond!

Hi all, I spoke with a friend's son today (a supposed computer expert) regarding my computer performance and PTLE (trying to get it up to speed, as you know can be a time-consuming and often frustrating process). He told me , in effect, that when running Win 98SE, the max RAM it can use effectively is 256Megs, and that my having 512 Megs is actually SLOWING MY COMPUTER DOWN. Has anyone heard or know anything about this? I asked him to elaborate, and he mentioned something about CPU processes or computations and such, which wasn't very clear(he seemed more and more annoyed the more interest I showed). He's kind of like that when "people are bothering him". Just wondering if anyone else is knowledgable about this, if it's correct, and should I pull 256Megs of RAM? Any input would be appreciated!! Thanks!!

there's been lots of discussion about that on the DUC. do a search. personally, i believe that's a bunch of bunk. 256MB seems to be the optimum amount of ram for PTLE - less ram degrades performance, more ram has little effect. however, if you're running soft synths or other programs that use a lot of ram simultaneously with PT, you're gonna want more than 256MB ram. bottom line - if you need it, get it - if not, don't waste your money........

I believe the correct answer is ( and I think Im right) but it all depends on the level of cache size your processor will hold---if you have a l2 or l4 cache size thats 256 only than getting 512 ram will degrade speed of some sort, so the idea is you need to make sure your processor will accept the level cache size of 512 to run properly...If im wrong on this somebody please correct.

I've been running 512 megs of ram with 98se for 6 months, and it never slowed me down. Amounts larger than 512 can cause problems, and the cache relation is true, however, not guaranteed to negatively effect your performance. The on-chip cache is for special program instructions that need to be accessed quickly, if you are running soft-synths with PT, then it may cause a problem, otherwise, I wouldn't worry. [ July 11, 2001: Message edited by: ReniuR ]