How much RAM do y'all have? (1 Viewer)

[Jon_Are]

I've recently upgraded from 512MG to 1GB, and I must say, I'm a bit disappointed that the difference is not as obvious as I had expected.

I would have thought 1GB would be more than adequate for my needs; I don't play any games, mostly just do desktop publishing stuff (with a handful of graphics/photos). The program I use most (MS Publisher) isn't exactly slow, but I wouldn't call it blazing fast, either.

Intel Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz. Capacity is 4GB RAM.

Just wondering if I should buy more.

Jon

 

[Kevin G.]

Hey Jon,
I just ordered my new machine for work, and was advised by one of my bosses to bump up to 1 gig, to futureproof the machine...I hope it wasn't for naught, I have been putting up with an 800 celeron, 256 machine for about 5 years now, so I'm sure I'll notice the improvement...
I did recently get a machine at home that I built with 512, so I will have something to compare.

 

[Chris]

If Publisher is your biggest app, then 1G is more then it's footprint.. if you were talking heavy use of Photoshop or Pagemaker or Quark, we might look at 2G+ (though more then 2G on a P4 system isn't as beneficial as it should be)

Your biggest hiccup is most likely disc speed.

 

[Scott L]

I once had 2gb of ram and those 3gig Huffyuv video files I threw into my editing programs were no problems at all. I'm back down to 1gb but unless I'm working with lossless video I have no troubles.

Do you know what kind of motherboard you have? An aging chipset may be the source of your problem.

 

[Pamela]

I use Quark, Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign (on a Mac). I have 3.5 GB and am quite happy. I'm not sure about the PC version, but the Mac version of Photoshop can only access up to 2 GBs of RAM. That will change when the new Photoshop is released at the end of the month. Actually, it's probably a little overkill, but I'd rather have too much than too little. Besides, the cost of RAM is so cheap right now . . .

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

RAM does not automatically equal speed, so more RAM does not automatically equal more speed.

Computers can use two things as "memory": RAM and hard drive space. When the work being done requires more memory than is available as RAM, it will use disk space at "temporary memory", swapping chunks of data and code back and forth between live RAM (which is the only place where actual work can take place) and the pseudo-memory of a disk swap file. And don't forget that it isn't just the game you're playing or the program you're running that is using memory: The operating system, other programs, your network or internet connection, all of these are using memory. When the memory load you put on the computer routinely exceeds that available RAM programs will run slowly because they will have to use disk space, which is inherently much slower than RAM.

This is why, up to a point, adding RAM will increase the speed of your programs. But only up to a point. If you run big graphics programs that use huge amounts of memory, or work in extremely large files, RAM will help. If you routinely work with many programs open at the same time, adding RAM will improve the speed and response of the computer until you reach the point where the amount of RAM on a system exceeds what is normally used. The standard PCs for users on my network, who typically use MS Office applications, mostly Word and Outlook, or 'net-based medical apps, or terminal-emulation packages for accessing older systems, have 256 MB of RAM, which is more than adequate. I run the Help Desk and usually have several network and user administration tools, Word, Outlook, the Help Desk app, a remote access window and two or three other programs running at once. I have 512 MB on my system. Going to 512 MB on our standard machines, or 1 GB on mine, would probably not improve the performance of either, at all.

If you're mostly using a single program that isn't all that memory-intensive, more RAM isn't going to make a difference.


Well, it may just be that the program isn't blazing fast. Microsoft does have a reputation for writing bloated code that runs slowly and for adding way too much crap to "automate" routine tasks.

Beyond a certain point, technology can't make things better that don't depend on the things that technology can't supply. This applies as much to processor speed as to memory. If all grandma does is write the odd letter to a grandchild, a 3 GHz processor and a 100 MHz processor would be pretty much the same to her. Odds are she doesn't type fast enough for the processor speed to make a difference in the way she uses a computer. OTOH if granny got into digital video after she retired and she's now editing the film and mixing the sound for the first music video her grandson is sendint to MTV, she'll need a lot more horsepower, and she'll see the difference.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Seth--L]

1GB running Avid Xpress Pro (in both my PC and Mac).

 

[Diallo B]

gaming rig has 1gb and i can watch t.v. using windvr3 and play games like world of warcraft and halflife 2 at the same time.

work rig has 1gb and i can burn at 8x, use office apps and encode video at the same time.

 

[Andrew Pratt]

2 gig's in my laptop and 768 meg in my wifes laptop (which used to be mine until recently). I'm normally multi tasking and do some large image editing in PSP so the extra memory is useful for me. One thing that you can do if you've got lots of ram is to manually take over the virtual memory management from Windows and force it to use your ram. Take a look at this thisTweak guide[/url]. I edited my vitual memory settings once I upgraded to 2 gigs and it made a significant difference vs letting windows manage it.