PC hardware: Why all the hype for installing lots of RAM?
- 10/30/09 3:38 PM
The system/Programs and VM
by GBTrevor - 10/31/09 3:56 AM In reply to: RE: what if you have lots of RAM by scleungSetting the VM too low or trying to turn it off is not recommended as many system operations are designed with the use of VM in mind, turning it off can cause problems with these operations. VRAM is related to the ammount of RAM you have installed, it should the 1.5x the ammount of RAM you physically have, any less can cause the machine to slow down. Setting the VM to high can also cause speed issues.
Something forgotten over time is...having TOO MUCH RAM can slow a machine down (although not as likely as it used to be!)
A reason to turn off VM (temporarily)
by jomearajr - 10/31/09 3:44 PM In reply to: The system/Programs and VM by GBTrevorI have found that turning off VM in WinXP can be a big help in getting to a comprehensive defrag. I backed into this in trying to get a clean defrag on a system (my own) on which the pagefile had over 1000 fragments. The only way to clean it was to specify a fixed VM, of size zero (0), defrag the drive, then restore the VM. All this was done with the system in stand alone mode (no Ethernet, no wireless), freahly rebooted, with just the defrag software in use. I've since used the trick on a half dozen other CPU's and it really helps reduce disk accesses.
by the way
by wasyed - 10/24/09 8:31 PM In reply to: set the virtual memory size by growl99its similar for other windows OS as well
Re-Installing OS in no needed
by 3JGProductions - 10/27/09 5:32 AM In reply to: Reinstalling is not needed by scleungHello SCEUNG, Please explain, "let the OS set the virtual memory size instead of using the default setting", because, I upgraded a Dell Optiplex 270 Tower, of 2004 Technology, Intel motherboard from 512GB to 2048GB, and the machine specifies automatically that memory has and change and shows the 2G's. When do you specific non use of oS default system?
Re: Re-Installing OS is not needed
by scleung - 10/27/09 11:06 AM In reply to: Re-Installing OS in no needed by 3JGProductionsIt doesn't matter when you change the setting to let the OS manager the virtual memory size. You can do that before you add the RAM or do it after. As long as you do that, the OS will adjust the virtual memory size accordingly. After you change the setting, the OS will probably ask you to reboot. Just following the instruction.
RE:
by wasyed - 10/24/09 7:58 PM In reply to: An important factor when doing hardware upgrades + RAM by growl99I don't think reinstalling is the goal here. But since you mention reinstalling, why bother adding more RAM then? since reinstalling will show you improved performance even if you dont install more RAM.
Reinstalling doesn't actually improve performance, it just clear up the accumulation of things hogging up resources on a system.
Reinstalling is really not needed though unless you have too much installed and a lot of junk on the computer. (there's also tools available on the internet both free and pay software that'll clean up the system just as well)
RE: Always Max Your Allowable Ram
by scleung - 10/30/09 1:48 PM In reply to: Always Max Your Allowable Ram by High Desert Charlie"Always Max Your Allowable Ram" <-- This is the usual advice people give when they don't understand your problem or your requirement. Buying too much RAM won't hurt you but it doesn't mean it will help you either. I work at a school with more than 80 computers. Most of them have only 1GB RAM and none of them are slow. I put 2GB on some of them and saw no difference in speed. How much RAM you need really depends on what you're doing with the computers. Most of the sales people from places like Best Buy are not technical people, they are good in giving you "text book" solutions. They are sales people working at Best Buy, you can't expect too much from them.
There's an old saying "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link". RAM is only one of the links.
Look at the Question One More Time Please
by High Desert Charlie - 10/30/09 6:20 PM In reply to: RE: Always Max Your Allowable Ram by scleungIt's inappropriate to imply that I don't understand the problems presented in this thread. He asked "Why all the Hype for lots of RAM", and based his question on an unnamed RAM usage monitor that says he never exceeded 1GB of RAM usage. He then immediately followed that question with a statement that he periodically does film editing and still doesn't exceed 1GB of RAM usage.
As I said in my original post, I'm suspect of this unnamed RAM monitor, although I would generally agree that the 3GB of RAM he's using would be plenty in most situations. But we have to consider the fact that three years ago, 2GB of RAM was more than most of us needed. Today, with larger, more complex applications that number has essentially doubled. With Vista, I consider 2GB the bare minimum, although it will run on less it won't run well.
Jhampa S. may be looking for a computer that will meet his needs for the next 5 years or so. Are you willing to bet that 4GB will be more than adequate 4 years from now? I know I wouldn't.
And no Scleung, I'm not some Best Buy Geek spouting out the company mantra. I work in a small computer shop where customers come first, and get help when the big corporate stores get finished with them. The thousands of computers I've worked on over the past 28 years bears out one certain principal; Whenever someone tells you you'll never use all of that memory or all of that hard drive space, you can at least double it to find what will be coming out next year. This isn't a textbook solution, it's a principal that's borne out as true since 1980.
RE: Look at the Question One More Time Please
by scleung - 10/30/09 10:15 PM In reply to: Look at the Question One More Time Please by High Desert CharlieTo High Desert Charlie
I'm sorry about implying that you work at Best Buy. However, the statement you made sure sound like coming from one of those people. Also, I see that you're making the assumption that applications will also use whatever RAM is available to be efficient. I got news for you. It doesn't always work that way. How RAM is utilized depends on how the applications were written. My point is that your advice is a generic one which can be applied to everyone. Too much RAM would only help, it could never hurt so sales people always give that generic advice to their customers.
My work computer has only 1GB of RAM. It's been that way for the last 4 years. I'm confident that this is good enough for me for the next 5 years or more. For now, if someone would pay to upgrade my system, I would rather get a faster CPU, faster hard drive and a faster graphics card, then more RAM.
headroom
by wasyed - 10/23/09 5:29 PM In reply to: Why all the hype for installing lots of RAM? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I totally agree with the other post, headroom makes a huge difference in performance. I has made a difference in my pc usage because more ram gives me the ability to run more programs at once. As a programmer I do often keep several programs or multiple windows open at a time. Multitasking is where more ram shines! More so I also do photo editing and do a lot of photography and I can tell you first hand it makes a huge difference on performance.
Currently I'm using a little over 1.8 gigs of my 6 gigs I currently have installed (I'm on 64-bit Windows 7 RC), I have Firefox open with 2 tabs, Notepad++ open with 7 tabs, thunderbird open, IE8 open. So its interesting that you're not using even over 1GB most of the time.
The best part is everythings still running fast even if I open photoshop with a few large size pictures which I'll do right now....
opened up photoshop with 10 large sized pics(showing as 43M in photoshop each) with the other programs still open and I am hovering around 2.4 gigs being used.
I still have plenty of room left to run any plug ins in photoshop without the system slowing down.
I have noticed when I do video editing that I am able to convert video a lot faster on a system with more ram. (For comparison sakes, my brother has my exact same configuration PC, same brand parts, but less ram and different power supply which wont matter too much)
i also agree with the pagefile stuff
by wasyed - 10/23/09 5:35 PM In reply to: headroom by wasyedI forgot about the pagefile size part that the other posters mentioned, that could be very true that this is whats effecting how much ram is used. It's better to use more ram because ram is very fast compared to the hard disk. Thats another thing, when you run a program it tries to fit as much in the memory of the ram as possible, the advantage of having more ram is that its possible to fit more things in the ram, which is one of the fastest forms of memory in a pc.
Your PC is just lazy
by listenerjoe - 10/23/09 5:47 PM In reply to: Why all the hype for installing lots of RAM? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
You need to get your PC off the couch and into some abs classes!!
Why all the hype?
by graison454 - 10/23/09 5:50 PM In reply to: Why all the hype for installing lots of RAM? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Well for starters, when Windows XP loads, it occopies 277 megs of ram. So if you have say 512, you now have 235 and thats before you load your programs. As for video editing, 4 gigs is not enough, unless you are making very short movies and not doing any work with scans into photoshop at high resolutions. When your ram amount is small, windows utilizes the swap file as fake ram and when your installed ram which runs at nano second speed runs out, the computer uses the hard drive to simulate ram and thats when things really slow down. I use Windows 7 RC 64 bit to enable 12 gigs of ram on my core i7 920 system,(32 bit operating systems for the most part can only see 2.99 gigs of ram) so when doing work in Photoshop or Premier I no longer get out of memory messages and the speed makes it worthwhile.
I have built several systems in the past for clients running 4 rapter hard drives in a raid array utilizing a video toaster card for editing film of weddings etc. and transfer rates are everything, but coupled with that is the need for more ram and a faster processor.
Believe you me, when I can afford it, I am taking my Asus board all the way to 24 gigs.
why more ram is better
by Bude04 - 10/23/09 5:54 PM In reply to: Why all the hype for installing lots of RAM? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Windows allocates a portion of your ram for it's own use. The more ram you have, the larger the amount of ram it allocates, for example, if you have 8gb of ram like I do, windows uses around 2gb. This allows windows to run faster.
system Limits
by tinntinnabulation - 10/31/09 4:54 AM In reply to: why more ram is better by Bude04One thing that no-one seems to have mentioned is that a 32 bit machine can only address 3.5Gb of RAM anyway. Therefore anything over 3.5Gb is of no use whatsoever unless you have a 64 bit machine.
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