PC hardware: Why all the hype for installing lots of RAM?
- 10/30/09 3:38 PM
lol
by genej313 - 10/30/09 6:24 PM In reply to: Why the hype by scleungDell is still doing that, selling systems with virtually no ram, barely enough to boot up...
RE: LOL the joke is on you
by scleung - 10/31/09 7:57 AM In reply to: lol by genej313Hey, some mom and pop stores would also sell you a system with no RAM. You can't even boot up. How's that? I bet you're the type of person that people would avoid in a party. Instead of making contributions to the subject, you're busy finding exceptions to try to make someone else look dumb. LOL.
Perhaps I was not clear, when I say "new systems" I was referring to systems that being sold in retails stores like Best Buys or Staples. Dell also sell thru retail stores and so far, all the Dell systems that I came across have enough RAM for most people. If someone wants to buy a dell system from Dell's web site with only 256mb of RAM, who am I to say that's wrong? Maybe the buyer wants to add his/her own RAM later on. Dell is here to serve the buyers, it's not their job to tell the buyers they are wrong.
ram hype
by MANNUFORALL - 10/30/09 6:37 PM In reply to: Why the hype by scleungI 100% agree with you.
Enough Ram?
by lsrl902 - 10/30/09 6:39 PM In reply to: Why the hype by scleungThere is also the fact that 32 bit systems (from all I have read) cannot utilize any more than 4 gig of ram, however 64 bit systems can. This should be another factor in upgrading (adding) ram to your system.
hahahaha
by geefour - 10/31/09 3:56 AM In reply to: Why the hype by scleungYou obviously have no clue
One liner
by scleung - 10/31/09 8:13 AM In reply to: hahahaha by geefourI remember someone had a name for people like you that make this type of response. Oh yes, "The idiot with the one liners." A statement that make no sense and contributes to nothing. If I had no clue about RAM, then you have no clue about life. Feel sorry for you.
Hype sells products,
by steveschreiber - 10/31/09 7:10 AM In reply to: Why the hype by scleungFirst off, as a music and video producer, I'm a firm believer in having the maximum amount of RAM that a computer can handle, but installing more memory than your computer and OS can actually use is nothing more than a waste of time and money.
Windows PC's running a 32 bit version of XP and up, won't even recognize more than 3 to 4 gigs and may not even boot up depending on a host of different conditions. First and foremost the maximum amount of RAM your motherboard was designed to handle, so trying any more than that is useless, unless of course if you feel that "Bragging Rights" are useful and gives you more power, hee, hee. NOT! But seriously, anything more than that requires will require not only a 64 bit OS, but a new motherboard if your handy and brave enough to try, or just get a new computer if your not that can handle mass memory as well. I would highly recommend doing a bit of research yourself before attempting either, and just rely on the salesmen to fill your order, but in the mean time...
Just because you may have a computer that is rated "64 bit compatible", that isn't enough to warrant anymore RAM than the computer can handle, and running out and getting Windows 7 Pro or Ultimate which can handle up to 192 gigs won't make your computer any better either..
In fact, if history is any indicator, there is a better than average chance that it can open a whole new series of problems like patch updates, Service Pack builds and such, and lets not forget a new video card with more GPU processing power and RAM as well, or making it much a worse performer than it is right now just by upgrading an older system.
So to sum it up, you may want to sit down and consider how much RAM do you need to do what you need to do, and how much you are willing to pay for it.
why the hype?
by rob_kirkpatrick - 10/31/09 8:01 AM In reply to: Why the hype by scleungWell if you are reserved to only running a 32 bit OS with 32 bit apps then yes anything over 3.5 gig is useless. On the other hand if you are on a 64 bit os running TRUE 64 bit apps in a multi application environment then.. ding ding ding you will use more that 3.5 gig ram. Let us not forget those of us who also virtualize...
So it really has nothing to do with bragging rights as some have written its really about taking a close look at what you are doing and how your apps are written and planning your os and memory usage accordingly.
Bragging right's PLEASE! that was a real weak answer..
RAM is not the only thing
by scleung - 10/31/09 8:29 AM In reply to: why the hype? by rob_kirkpatrickLet's look at the definition of the word "hype" -> Excessive publicity and the ensuing commotion.
I'm not referring to any specific OS, or CPU or any hardware for that matter. The one point that I'm trying to make is how much RAM you need depends on what you're doing with your computer. Also, I am NOT saying don't buy more RAM. All I'm saying is having more RAM may not help to speed up your computer if you already have enough RAM. Bragging about the RAM is one of the marketing techniques to sell computers. I'm a consultant and my job is to solve problems for my clients. One of my clients is a school with more than 80 computers and they all have 1GB or less. They are running great and by adding more RAM to some of their computers didn't help in speed.
I'm not here to compare hardware knowledge. And certainly, I'm not going to tell my clients to "Max your RAM and your problem will go away'. Any idiot down at Best Buys could tell my client that. People pay me to set up systems to run their business. I don't just look at one computer. Only giving RAM the credit for speeding up your computer is what I call HYPE.
This is just my opinion abut RAM!
by platemoon - 10/31/09 7:25 PM In reply to: RAM is not the only thing by scleungI remember back in the days that computer use to have limited RAM, and I still find some of those PCs around. The true about RAM is that back in those days of the Pentium era (1 – 4) RAM was not cheap, and usually was the fastest way to speedup computers that were performing slowly. What I have experienced in my life is that when we used to have single cores CPUs people used to have less applications running because their CPUs couldn’t handle more applications running on the background, like today’s CPUs. So usually 1GB of RAM was enough for it, to do a decent job. In the daily basis I hardly find a PC with windows XP that is running slow because of its RAM.
Turning the page to Vista is another matter. For what I have experienced with a lot of computer test that I have done, I can say that even on Vista 64bits you could be sure you will have an enjoyable experience with 4GB and 3.5GB with 32bit version. Why? Well this OS is so memory hungry, and I have even made test with 8GB and for what I have seen, Vista tries to put everything it needs on memory so every time you just click on something it will have it in memory to run it as fast as it can. You may notice that Vista will tell at the task manager (if you have some applications open maybe one or two and 8GB of RAM) it will say memory available 0MB. So you may wonder where MY ENTIRE RAM went. The answer is easy, caching. Look at the page file usage, if you never see that graph going up, you may never need a RAM upgrade.
And well the hype of always saying more is better is the best bet that marketing uses get people to buy new products.
Bragging? Well there are people who like to do that, especially those that doesn’t know too much in deep how computers work on the core. So it may be the right reason for them, for me is the uses that you give to your computer the ones that should give you the hints of what you really need.
Video and Sound Editor - > Lots of RAM 4GB-8GB
Programmer -> moderate RAM 2GB-4GB maybe 8GB
Depends if the use of large databases and virtualization to check and debug programs in different platforms are required.
Home user -> maybe less, XP 1GB, Vista 2GB-4GB Windows 7 same as Vista but it will run more beautifully! Yes, I love Windows 7 since relies candidate 1 with is the one I am using right now. I am still undecided which way to go for the upgrade.
For games, I am a game too, the game that consumes more memory for what I have tested so far is Battlefield 2142. It starts with 890MB more or less in a system with limited resources. But as the game progress goes on it escalate up to 1.86GB and when that line is crossed after a long period of play the game will crash, just as Internet Explorer 7 will do with a lot of tabbing when it reaches 512MB of RAM. Not all applications can handle infinite amounts of RAM so be sure you spend your money wise. Get a better Video Card it will do the trick.
It's not hype, RAM is an important part of a balanced system
by gochichi - 10/31/09 10:52 AM In reply to: Why the hype by scleungI agree wholeheartedly that for us "old schoolers" the low price of RAM, it's absolutely trivial power consumption (it saves as much energy as it consumes easily) then we might go 8-12GB for no specific reason.
But not having enough RAM in a system is still a problem that is alive and well. I continue to advise people to get more RAM not as some sort of generic advise, it's perfectly clear that they need it. I would say that 2 out of 3 people I know who have a Mac, have too little RAM installed. This is because when you're running Abode stuff with 1GB of RAM, you're wasting that nice Core2Duo.
It's always been about balance, and this will always be the case. No hype in sight.
386 --> 4MB - 8MB (Total cost of appropriate amount of RAM: $500)
486 --> 16MB - 32MB
...
Early Dual Core --> 2GB - 3.25GB (4GB)
Q6600 (a long time king, 2.4Ghz Quad Intel)--> 4GB - 8GB (8GB = $90)
i5/i7 --> 4GB - 12GB (4GB is fine as it is $90 today)
Along with the concept of a balanced system, more RAM, if it is cheap, is a decent way to squeeze every ounce out of an under performing processor. Hence Netbooks with 2GBs for instance. So if have an older laptop and you see some memory on a clearance rack for $20, chances are it's a good benefit to get it.
If you want to talk hype, RAM prices suffered from the negative hype that "Vista" has had. The current price of RAM is higher than a year ago, about twice as high because of Windows 7. RAM prices fluctuate like the price of oil. They do not go down all the time, they go down overall with considerable peaks and valleys (8GB was $90 last year, the cheapest I can see is $175 right now). I suspected that $40 for 4GB was about as good as it could get this decade, and so I went upgraded from 4GB to 8GB while 4GB was already quite nice. Even then, it's been a worthwhile upgrade because Vista is so RAM happy (something that I have no particular problem with since I have an educated awareness of how inexpensive it was).
I would go easy right now on going for 8GB because RAM prices are the highest they've been in years, and so I would suggest that anyone that can get by on 4GB on a desktop do so. It's always been a cost/benefit thing and it's anything but hype. Calling it hype is like saying that a power outlet is hype. Yes computers use RAM, they really do. And getting by on as little RAM as possible is nothing to brag about.
I'll add that as RAM technology changes, from DDR to DDR2 to DDR3 for example, the price issue for a particular system changes with it. In my lifetime I've seen it happen that after a price dip, older RAM technology can rise in price to the point where a whole system upgrade makes much better sense. Right now we are in the particularly unusual situation where DDR2 and DDR3 cost about the same with DDR not costing too much more.
DDR 1GB stick --> $25
DDR2 1GB stick --> $20
DDR3 1GB stick --> $23
And yeah I could go on. So just thank your computer expert for just keeping it simple: More RAM. Unfortunately, right this moment is an unusually pricey time to upgrade. So I can't conclude with ABSOLUTELY GET MORE RAM the way I could have a while ago. 4GB is perfect for laptops that support it, but at $90+ it may or may not be worth it. 4GB for a desktop is great, and at today's prices it's probably best to not go beyond that point for most people. But keep an eye out for a better time to go for 8GB in the next year or two.
How much extra RAM can I add?
by Pennyspen - 11/7/09 6:42 AM In reply to: It's not hype, RAM is an important part of a balanced system by gochichiI love the techies responding to this article, most of you seem like you been through a lot with computers, so I feel confident I'd get a good answer or two.
I have an older Dell DIMENSION DIM3000 Celeron CPU 2.40 GHz 2.39 GHz, 504 MB of RAM. I actually added more sticks a couple years ago. I think it had two 128's (I think ?)and I took them out and added two 252's. Although I am planning on a laptop anyway, I am wondering if I can add more RAM to this desktop. Is there anything else I should consider to make it run a bit quicker? Can I add to the harddrive? Or would I have to add a new harddrive altogether?
Thank you!
Penny
computers and memory
by donaldjj - 11/7/09 10:47 AM In reply to: How much extra RAM can I add? by PennyspenThe older computers will always show an improvment in operating speed when you do 2 things.
1) add memory
2) add hard drive space
3) reinstall the operating system.
Why the operating system has always been something i wonder about but it always works. Almost like there is a wait loop that increases the wait everytime you reboot.
With XP and 2000 which most older machines use once you get above the magic 256k number the systems fly (when compared to the previous operation) though you really need to get above 512 megs to really show it.
The causes of the speed increase are due to disk cashing of the operating system and files below the 256mb number. the greatest improvement is from 256 to 512 megs and by going to the full 3 gb memory there is about double what 512 gives you depending on what you are doing. graphics will show the greatest improvement and surfing the web the least unless you really have a lot of windows open.
As the modern hard drives are much faster than the older drives they show improvement due simply to faster access.
Don
Good job
by Sattamander - 10/31/09 1:44 PM In reply to: Why the hype by scleungI remember years ago when a friend kept getting the buy more RAM answer from sales people when the real problem was he had pretty much maxed out his hard drive. Most problems that I have run into over the last 10 years have more to do with lack of hard drive space than lack of RAM. All the RAM in the world won't help a bit if there is no room on your hard drive
| Forum legend: | |
 |
Locked thread |
 |
Moderator |
 |
CNET staff |
 |
Samsung staff |
 |
Norton Authorized Support team |
 |
AVG staff |
 |
Windows Outreach team |
 |
Dell staff |
 |
Intel staff |
