RAM amount

zandyne · 01-23-2006, 06:58 PM

What is a decent amount of RAM to have these days? My computer is a few years old now and came with 512MB of RAM. I hear that 1GB is the standard these days. Is it really worth it to upgrade or is the perfomance increase minimal?

Will.Spencer · 01-24-2006, 09:11 AM

It depends upon how many applications you run concurrently, and how much RAM each application uses.

I currently have 1GB of RAM on my laptop. Firefox, Outlook, and WinWord are all memory hogs.

My paging file is currently 1.18GB. I could really benefit from more than 1GB of RAM.

zandyne · 01-26-2006, 03:15 AM

Yeah, I see that browsers can be big memory hogs

Especially Firefox, which takes around 140 MB alone, according to the task manager (if that's accurate).

john23 · 01-30-2006, 06:56 PM

I have 1 GB of RAM and my computer is relatively new. I have both browsers open at the same time and they are memory hogs for sure.

zandyne · 01-31-2006, 02:33 AM

Apparently, Windows Vista will push the minimum required RAM to 1GB I think (it might be 512, not sure). So hopefully Vista will not be an absoulte must to have right away.

john23 · 01-31-2006, 05:17 PM

I don't think Vista will be mainstream right away when it comes out, so there's not much to worry about.

zandyne · 02-01-2006, 01:36 AM

That is right, Vista will not be ubiquitous when it first emerges. Just like Windows XP did not become mainstream until about 2 - 3 years after its release.

john23 · 02-01-2006, 05:50 PM

Hopefully MS will not "force" vista on us, and take their time with the release.

llkooldudell45 · 02-03-2006, 10:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

It depends upon how many applications you run concurrently, and how much RAM each application uses.

I currently have 1GB of RAM on my laptop. Firefox, Outlook, and WinWord are all memory hogs.

My paging file is currently 1.18GB. I could really benefit from more than 1GB of RAM.

I have the same probelm, I have plenty of RAM. Yet I still often get "Low memory" warnings. Now it is getting to a point where occasionally programs just quit on me.

zandyne · 02-03-2006, 06:07 PM

I think it is probably due to memory leaks in Firefox. I have heard a lot of people have similar problems with Firefox and sometimes PC games.

zeroth · 03-06-2006, 07:35 PM

You can probably get by with 512MB if you do not do any serious gaming, but at least 1GB if you do play games.

dave7 · 03-15-2006, 05:13 AM

I would go with 1GB of RAM, unless you do non-gaming stuff, then 256 or 512 MB would be sufficient.

zemus · 03-23-2006, 09:00 PM

1 GB is enough RAM for me, although I think 512 MB is decent.

Wayne · 11-16-2006, 01:41 PM

Hi
I recommend at least 1GB at least to anyone that asks me these days.The reason I say this is that things change so rapidly and the way people use their pc changes as well. The way you use you pc today may not be the way you use it in say even a years time and you will probably be left cursing if you try to keep to 512mb.
True it will depend upon what you use but pc applications can be very addictive once you find out how to use the pc to its potential.