[Doomgiver]

Hello,

I have a question regarding chosen Memory size and it’s impact on game performance/cycles.

I always set Memory size in MagicDOSbox to 64 MB in the past and on my installed games I’m currently experimenting with cycles=max x% to get best mix of performance and battery runtime and that is working really well so far.

But I’m wondering how chosen Memory size is affecting max possible cycles/game performance since it seems to have no effect if I set it to lower value than 64 MB. Can somebody explain that to me,please.

What’s the general recommendation on Memory Size setting of the MagicDOSbox community here? Just setting to the maximum of 64 MB and tweak performance over cycles=max x% or set memory size to the value of the game’s original recommended system requirements for running it under DOS?

Thank you very much in advance for your help 🙂

[Xulle]

None, DOS has a maximum 640K limit as its main memory, and any extra RAM beyond that possess very limited usage and the OS will not utilize it to increase performance.

The default 16MB is pretty overkill for most games, for reference a 80486-DX266 was considered a high-end gaming machine around the time of DOOM1 and is mostly equipped with 4MB RAM.

[admin]

Yes, exactly. If you set 64MB, then emulator must do more work, but it is usually useless for games.

[Doomgiver]

Thank you very much for the information.

So general recommendation is leaving Memory at default 16 MB for most games and use more only if recommended system requirements show more?

[admin]

Yes, f.e. diablo 2 has recommended memsize 16MB

[Doomgiver]

Thank you for the information 🙂

It would be good if there would be a thread about MagicDOSbox’s settings that contains that info about general to use memory size, as well about what cpu core to use when, sound cards, etc, especially for people who are new to DOSbox😀

[Author]

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