How Much Ram Do You Really Need?

FormalDaHyde · Joined: Jan 02, 2005 Posts: 1511

I guess I am at fault for posting this critical topic without starting the whole thing with a 4-letter word:
YMMV

As we can all see, assigning a single numerical value to the needed RAM amount, can be a dangerous proposition.
The need amount of RAM in any system depends on many other relevant and very critical system parameters:

Of the top of my head, lemme provide some examples:
*Number of RAM sticks used,
*Placement of the RAM sticks in the slots,
*Optimizing BIOS settings to make FULL use of the ALL the installed RAM,
*Optimizing the OperatingSystem to make FULL use of the ALL the installed RAM,
*Tweaking other services/processes/applications/programs that are running,
*Optimizing the various software packages that user employs (games, graphics, video, data crunching, etc),
*Confirming the PowerSupply capabilities,
*Optimizing the OTHER hardware (HDDs, GraphicsCards, etc.) that will be working with RAM,
*Enhancing system ventilation/coolling requirements.

Even the 'brute force' method of stuffing the maximum amount of RAM {as if they grew on trees} may not necessarily mean that your system is optimized... Especially if the remainder of the system is ignored!
Like the man {should have} said: YMMV
Tom's Hardware attempts to take the mystery out of such complex topics, by providing a set of repeatable benchmarks.
At least my original post had stipulated that the article was 14pages ... attesting to the complexity of this topic... YMMV

Mr. Joe Handyman · Joined: Jan 09, 2006 Posts: 5

Well Put. And don't forget that the system bus plays a big factor too. That and various m-board chipsets act differently as well. Too many to say with definition that X system needs Z memory. I just recommend starting with a minimum of 512. You can't go wrong.

jimmcdonald · Joined: Nov 02, 2003 Posts: 4

tbernstein · Joined: May 16, 2003 Posts: 1508 Location: London

My 7 year old daughter has 256mb in her shiny new HP PC.
With that she can use Word, various games and the internet.
No problem.

0gravity · Joined: Nov 25, 2008 Posts: 2

Hey, I am just a computer tech not a gamer, but I do offer games support to my customers for free. My customer had an old Dell Optiplex 280 GS with one Gig of Ram (which can hold 4 gigs, but only recognizes 3.5 gigs) , and couldn't install Spore. The couputer froze right at the half way the installation. The back of the info box said RAM req 512. Well, that was bull S. I installed another gig and we sitll used the graphic card the motherboard came with it (128 mb) and the computer loaded up real well, and the game worked fine. I didn't defrag, nor the guy wanted to buy any antivirus software or add a really good video card. I don't push any upgrades, but recommeded degrag, and antivirus softwares with system optimizer, system cleaner, plus it comes with another dangerours antihyjack software that cleans the registry (be carefull using it, but again remember you can always go to F8 last configure and fix it, or use sytem restor). I love to add as much ram as I can, I clean cookies and all that neat stuff daily.I also recommend large hard drives and something I do to my on computer (not recommended) is to use the max of virtual memory. Good luck.

goretsky

Hello,

Did you figure out if it was the memory or the video card which was causing the game installation to fail?

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

0gravity · Joined: Nov 25, 2008 Posts: 2

I like your reply, first let me state I am not into games but since I am a computer tech, and charge 3 times less than the geek squad the guy called me, on a Sunday afternoon. Let me tell you, you are right, a bad ram can cause video failure I see that all the time. The computer was running perfect, the embbeded video card was in good condition and for an old corporate computer with 128 Mb video card can't complain . I advized my client to install a $200 video card before but he didn't want to spend any money and good enough it ran all prior games installed pretty well, however even so many people out there say you don't need much ram to run a game, the problem we had was during Spore installtion. I told my customer hey, if it freezing up it is ram related, so I drove to nearest Compusa I bought a 2 gigs ram, and the installation went smooth. Since I didn't have time to play with it, my other choice were going to be to remove the 2 gigs ram (regular Ram, not the one with special with cooling devices), and let the kid play with one gig of ram, but again I just make few dollars so I moved on. I also told him to get the max of gigs the computer can handle, add another fan to the board, defrag, and all the other things I would do to speed up any computer, more if it for gaming. I also would have removed the heat sink and add a little of heat transfering cream, but again I sold that computer for $150, and to build one takes $2500 easy. Thank you.

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1134 Location: Central FL, USA

I love going back over these three year old threads and seeing how thoughts and problem-solutions have aged.

It seems like 'puter manufacturers have finally got on the RAM bandwagon as likewise RAM costs have gone down dramatically.

A PC that would have come out with only 512 meg's of ram installed several years ago, now come out with at least 2 gig's, with Windows XP installed and anywhere from 2 to 4 gigs with Vista.
Two gig's being the bare minimum for Vista.

But like I said, RAM is dirt cheap today, compared to 2005 when this thread was started.

Being on a tight budget, I opted for just one gig of DDR2 ram when I built this new system a couple of years ago. With all my tweaking and tuning of the OS, this system ran really good. I could run five different malware scanners at the same time and still work the internet with no great notice of loss of efficiency.

But, due to the almost ridiculous drop in ram prices, I've increased my on-board ram to 3 gig's.

(My mobo is 64 bit compatible and will hold 8 Gig's of DDR2 ram)

The performance increase when I first went from one gig to two gigs was very noticeable. I must admit I was pleasingly surprised.
Then when I added the final gig of ram, making the total 3 gigs, I saw NO performance increase with XP.

I also run Vista Ultimate on this same system, but I've done no performance comparisons with Vista as I've added ram from the original one gig.
I've tweaked and tuned Vista so that it runs as fast as XP.
Vista, as it comes, right out of the box, is SO bloated with eye candy and totally un-needed services that it definitely requires some tweaking to get any real performance out of it.
Just out of the box, Vista is one very HUGE resource hog!

But thanks to Black Viper and a few others, getting better performance out of Vista is VERY do'able.

Happy Holidays Everyone!
The Doctor Cool