How Much Ram Do You Really Need?

FormalDaHyde · Joined: Jan 02, 2005 Posts: 1511

Quote:

Jon Kullberg, Patrick Schmid - 13 Dec 2005
.....
Conclusion
The bottom line is that there is not just one single answer to the question of how much system memory you need. However, to help you decide for yourself, we put together the following criteria:
512 MB
There are a few situations where having just 512 MB system memory in your computer can be enough.
* If you run your games at low quality settings (small texture size) because you have an outdated CPU and graphics card, or because you prefer FPS over visual quality.
* If you only use one application at a time.
* If it is your grandmother's computer.
If you are buying a new computer, even if it's a laptop, opt for more than 512 MB - you will never regret it.
1 GB
Indeed, 1 GB of system memory will most likely be enough for the average user and for people.
* It will allow you to play new games at their highest quality settings, given that you have an adequate processor and a powerful graphics solution.
* You won't have to shut down non-critical applications when you want to play a game.
* You can (accidentally) press the Windows button while in a game without dying from a stroke during the seconds it takes to read Windows back into system memory from the swap file.
* If you go from 512 MB to 1 GB, you will notice the difference all the time. Starting up Photoshop while working with Word, an Internet browser, e-mail client and Acrobat Reader will go so much faster, and switching between the applications is a breeze.
2 GB
Still there are situations where more than 1 GB is what you want.
* If you are a professional user, you might need more than 1 GB for really heavy applications.
* If you intend to do heavy multitasking, especially if you have more than one CPU or CPU core. Running RAM intensive games such as World of Warcraft, downloading files via high speed FTP or encrypted protocols, Bittorrent or any P2P program; decompressing large archives and playing large size video files in a window or on second monitor all at the same time can max out your system memory pretty fast - if your CPU can handle it.

If you wish to read the 14page article (which is very relevant), please Clicky

Morbius · Joined: Sep 05, 2005 Posts: 1712

Hmmmmmm, sounds like that guy is in the RAM selling business.
Or maybe he's a politition and believed in just Throwing Money at a problem to make it go away. :thumbdown:

256 is the level that can be iffy. (especially on a laptop) If it's a little ol' blue haired lady just emailing her kids and grandkids and some solitaire, it will run just fine. A Power Gamer may find it lacking. :hmm:

But, I tune up those PC's all the time and they run dang'd good when properly tuned. Disabling all unneeded Services and programs goes a long way in this effort. And for God's sake, keep the hard drive clean and Defragged. I give all my customers, even the little ol' ladies, a weekly Maintenance Routine, complete with instruction booklet.

At the 512 meg level, almost any computer in the world should be able to just hummmmm right along.
I'm not a gamer or graphics editor but I do consider myself a Power User and my system always ran just fine on 512 megs of DDR 400 ram. (for over a year)

I recently added another 512 megs of DDR 400 just for grins and giggles. And, so I'll have a stick of 512, well tested and certified if one of my customers needs it.

I see no speed or performance advantage in having the second 512 installed. I keep my whole system clean and defragmented (even the Registry) and could probably get by in a pinch on just 256 (or even less).

In fact, I put in a 256 meg stick of ram (by itself) one day to test it with Memtest. My system ran just fine in all my normal windows functions.

So my answer would have to be, that if you run your computer "Dirty" with all the default Services running and a few ram-hogs like Norton, by all means put in all the ram you can afford. But, add ram till you can't add any more and if you don't clean out the CRAP, your system will still run like CRAP, because you only have ONE cpu chip that has to run all those programs in "time slice" mode. Reducing the load on your CPU can do more for system performance than just adding ram.

And, XP will still use the pagefile on your hard drive (unless you've shut it off) no matter how much ram you install. So keeping your hard drive clean and defragged is a big factor in system performance.
Performing the registry tweak to get the Kernal up off the HD and loaded into RAM will give a huge performance boost! See Registry Tweaks On This Webpage

Many folks have the mistaken idea that just doing nothing to their PC but adding more ram, will result in a huge performance boost. NOT SO! They need to look at the whole package. That's what I do in my own Computer Tune-Up procedure. I usually don't have the pleasure of adding ram to a customer's PC, but I still get 100%+ improvement in performance by just cleaning it up and retuning it.

I regularly get comments from my customers like: "WOW, it never ran like that before....what did you do?"
Like Hannibal Hayse used to say, "God I love it when a plan comes together".

To RAM or RUN, that is the question!

Good Luck and Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night,
Morbius :thumbup:

mthompso · Joined: Dec 05, 2002 Posts: 557

FormalDaHyde · Joined: Jan 02, 2005 Posts: 1511

goretsky · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 4:21 am Post subject:

Hello,

I have to say I agree with the Tom's Hardware article. A computer with 2GB of RAM runs World of Warcraft much more smoothly than with just 1GB of RAM. I suspect video editing would benefit from a similar increase as well.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

FormalDaHyde · Joined: Jan 02, 2005 Posts: 1511

I have to agree with goretsky agreeing with Tom's Hardware!
But I think I also have to agree with myself, when it comes to this topic, as well! :hmm:
You see, me believes that not only will you need >1GB+ RAM on Mobo, for anything approaching 70fps (...and beyond to 100fps), but you will also need a boatload (>128MB+) of RAM on the Graphics card, as well!
But if you are about to carry this performance addiction to the Nth degree to around Mach1, then you would almost be excused for wanting some serious fat HDDs probably running at 10k3 rpm levels from either an AV-HDD or from a server HDD... which gots to be equipped with 16MB onboard RAM.
Yes, Toto! We are not in Kansas anymore!

This topic has not gone stratospheric; as we have not even discussed the requirements for 21" HD-CRT dual monitors nor some SLI video capability nor has it discussed anything with dual core... which would kinda make a great Christmas present for ME (<== that was a hint for uze guyz)!

Even an able-bodied motherboard (@ 3GHz P4 class & 1GB RAM and w/other quality hw) will grind to a halt if you are trying some transcoding of video files. I have watched my system just go molassasses when I have to convert (for example: from NTSC to PAL, or SVideo to DVD/MPEG2) video.
Just a few years ago, such conversions would cost you $workstation$ but now they are 'reasonably priced'.

The difference between 512MB RAM and 1GB RAM is only about $30-$35.
It is a win-win situation... unless, of course, you are building a system for that little old lady from Pasadena, who is only gonna send some emails and maybe play some MineSweep or Solitaire on a PC!

Morbius · Joined: Sep 05, 2005 Posts: 1712

Do all that ram stuffing and the other yada, yada, yada, and if you don't clean up your system, minimize the number of redundant Services running and optimize your hard drive....your system will still run like crap.

I'm saying this from years of experience working on hundreds of different computers used for many diverse tasks.

Since many of those high end software packages are very HD intensive, upgrading to a SATA hard drive is a MUST for top performance.

:cheers:

PS: Matt, I'd love to help you out with your system. Just drag it on over here and I'll tune it up for ya.
I get PC's coming in here from all over the state. I even had one sent to me via UPS from Illinois.

mthompso · Joined: Dec 05, 2002 Posts: 557

usasma · Joined: May 06, 2003 Posts: 5007

Some is good, but more is better! Smile

Me, I want more power! Smile

I'm going to 2 gB in the next couple of days (already ordered and paid for - just waiting on the shipper) - I'll let you know how it works out for me!

FormalDaHyde · Joined: Jan 02, 2005 Posts: 1511

I did not think you were a gamer and you just told me in another post that you don't need to do much video conversions... so inquiring minds are gonna wanna know what the heck you gonna do with 2GByte of RAM.
You best start rehearsing for a good answer? :tongue:

Morbius · Joined: Sep 05, 2005 Posts: 1712

DavisMcCarn · Joined: Jul 20, 2004 Posts: 486 Location: Charlotte, NC

This may be a little cynical; but, it sure is disheartening to see almost every aspect of computers turned into Swami like magic or guesswork and how few will actually try to learn how it really works.

Yes, 3D, high end, gamers need lots of ram because the software builds a virtual world in memory to overcome the relative slowness of storage and, the more ram you have, the more of that world is almost instantaneously available.

Other users need very little memory by comparison.

So, just to find out, I currently have Outlook Express, four copies of IE6, Excel XP, MS Word XP, CorelDraw 11, Photoshop, Winfax Pro, AVG Antivirus, MS AntiSpyware, Winpatrol, StartupMonitor, Calculator, the normal assortment of services, and a lot of drivers, running under XP Pro SP2. With all that, I have managed to use 401 out of the 768 Megabytes of ram in the system. It would still be just as happy with 512.

So, what is ram, really?

The CPU, be it an 8080 or the latest dual-core P4, is an idiot. It knows how to get things from one place to put in another, compare things, add or subtract two numbers; very basic, simple things, and it can only use memory to hold the millions of instructions needed to do the task you are asking it to do. The 8080 would only (!) do about 500,000 things per second, the dual-core P4 can do about a billion; but, it still gets each and evey one of them from the memory in the system.

Floppy drives, hard disks, CD or DVD Roms, are just filing cabinets. The CPU can get things from them or put things on them; but, it can't use anything until they are loaded into memory and only memory contents can be written to the device.

Windows 98 needed about 24 million bytes of memory to hold the instructions necessary to function, XP needs about 58 million. IE6 became the hog, needing close to 90 million bytes of ram! The last time I checked, Word or Excel needed just under 60 million.

Do you see where this is leading, yet?

Add up the memory usage for the apps that you want to run simultaneously and you can know how much ram will keep your system happy. It's as simple as that.

Yes, you need to factor in antivirus (both Norton and McAfee are hogs because they stick their fingers into everything), any other items in Startup, and the drivers for your hardware (All-in-one printers are also hogs); but, too much ram is just a waste of money and a potential source for more problems.

Too much ram is like buying 50 desks when you only have 20 employees.

Gaming, as I said at the beginning, is an exception because it will actually use the extra memory. Older versions of Autocad and some 3D renderring software will also use whatever they can lay their hands on.

For users that don't do gaming and don't load everything I listed earlier at the same time, 384 megabytes is more than they will ever use and 256 would keep most very happy.

Slappy Da Clown · Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2005 9:49 am Post subject:

I game with my computer. It runs blazing fast with 1GB memory. Its a Dell 8400 BTW. It will hold four 1GB sticks. As I can I plan to put in everyone. Why ? Cause I can. Thats the same reason men went to the moon BTW. When I get them all in there we will just see what happens in a new chapter of Slappys Computer Adventure. My 1st computer was a Timex 2k and I have had nothing but fun since. I plan to keep right on havin fun too ( im not gonna live past 110 Im certain of it ).

Anyway thats my story & Im stickin to it.

Happy Holidays ( whichever ones you celebrate ) to all.
From Slappy & Mrs Clown in da gr8 white nort

FormalDaHyde · Joined: Jan 02, 2005 Posts: 1511

mthompso · Joined: Dec 05, 2002 Posts: 557

usasma · Joined: May 06, 2003 Posts: 5007

FDH - to quote Slappy Da Clown: "Why ? Cause I can."

I fought the change from DOS to Windows. I don't need no sissy GUI!

I fought the change from 286 to 386 computers - a leaky CMOS battery brought me to my knees (and into working with computers).

I ran WFW 3.11 on a 386 with 1 mB of RAM. Microsoft said it couldn't be done - but I managed to do it with acceptable performance. Why? Because I couldn't afford another mB of RAM.

I fought the upgrade from 16 bit to 32 bit computing - and lost

I fought upgrading my hard drive, even started using the early MS compression utility - and waited several years until I found a damaged hard drive on sale that I could RMA. 200 mB's - w00t!

Heck! I didn't give up my 4x CD-ROM drive until a couple of years ago!

Now I can afford it. I may not need it today or tomorrow. But I'm pretty sure that someday (before I'm forced to upgrade to x64) it'll come in handy. If not, then I'll just have to admit that I was wrong! Smile

ZEUS_GB · Joined: Jan 14, 2003 Posts: 5058 Location: UK

Werebo · Posted: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:22 pm Post subject:

Adding more memory to my PC's has never mad them run any faster. It HAS stopped them slowing down all the time though....

And to think that, years ago, upgrading from 16Kb to 32Kb of ram was the 'Bee's Knees'..... :whistling:

Morbius · Joined: Sep 05, 2005 Posts: 1712

DavisMcCarn,
I won't waste space here, like so many do, by reprinting your whole entry,,,,but I just wanted to say,,,,
Thank You,,,that's the most comprehensive dissertation on the topic that I've yet seen. :thumbup:

This is becoming an entire society based on excess. Just look at your local expressway. How many 2.5 ton gas guzzling monstrosities do you see screeming along at 80mph with only one person on board.???

It's just a horrible waste of resources. Likewise the home computer with 4 gigs of ram, just because there's a slot there for it.

Somewhere, I said before, that I have run my PC with as little as 256 megs of ram and it ran just fine.
No stalls, no delays and no crashes. With lots of ram available, getting the Kernal up off of the HD and into ram can add a huge jump in system performance. XP has to access the kernal constantly as it runs things. Having to go and read from the HD every time can greatly slow down system performance.
Here's a registry tweak that will take care of that problem.
*********************************************
Memory Performance Tweak
These Settings will fine tune your systems memory management -at least 256MB of ram recommended, 512 preferred for first tweak.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \
Session Manager \ Memory Management
1.DisablePagingExecutive -double click it and in the decimal put a 1 - this allows XP to keep data in memory now instead of paging sections of ram to harddrive.

2.LargeSystemCache- double click it and change the decimal to 1 -this allows XP Kernal to Run in memory improves system performance a lot. This tweak can actually slow down a system with less than 256 megs of ram.
***************************************************************

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,
Morbius Cool

DavisMcCarn · Joined: Jul 20, 2004 Posts: 486 Location: Charlotte, NC

What the heck......

Computer memory, part 2, AKA Virtual Memory

From the dawn of computers until very recently, ram memory was the most expensive part of any computer; heck, clean into the 1970's core memory for mainframes was made by hand on an island in the Carribean.

Early on, the trick of virtual memory was invented which consists of unloading the software you don't need at the moment to magnetic storage, then reloading it when it is again needed. (As an aside and historical note, contemplate the time it took to dump very slow core memory to a 9 track tape drive and read it back).

On all modern machines, that virtual memory is kept on the hard drive and, in Windows, is known as the Swapfile.

Why this is important to our discussion of ram is that the first indcation of our exceding the available, physical ram is that the O/S begins swapping parts of our applications out to the drive and the system performance comes to it's knees with a noticeable increase in hard drive activity (watch the LED, you'll see it).

The most glaring example I can give was just following the release of Office 95 when Microsoft claimed it would run in 24 MB of ram. For those unfortunate enough to have less than 32 MB; though, Windows decided that the "swappable" part of Word was the dictionary which it then reloaded to check your spelling evry time you pressed a key (Yikes!) I am still a hunt-and-peck typist but could easilly get two lines ahead of what Word displayed and it would take 5+ seconds to catch up. The hard drive, BTW, was beating itself silly loading and unloading the entire dictionary.

The usage of a swap file as virtual memory when the system runs out of physical memory is why there have always been "sweet spots" where the ram will hold all of the desired O/S and application overhead. Windows 3.1 was happy with 4MB, Windows 98 runs nicely in 64 until you add IE5, after which you need 128, and Windows XP needs at least 192 if they just surf lightly but likes 256 much better.

When your physical ram excedes the needs of your usage, the system will hum. You will first notice the lag of virtual memory when it takes much longer to switch between apps unless you are way to low in which case it will most probably be IE that bogs down.

Gaming, CAD, and, as an earlier poster pointed out, very large databases doing transaction processing, will use every bit of ram they can get. Autocad used to have a drawing of the space shuttle where you could zoom in on every part and reveal the numbers on the guages, for example. Without 16MB of ram, it resorted to using virtual memory. That 3D battle game has every building, plant, roadway, and any other detail used in the game, needing several orders of magnitude more ram than the space shuttle's.

Merry Christmas to all.