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How much ram do you really need?

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mouser:
New article says 2gb helps:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/13/how_much_ram_do_you_really_need/

f0dder:
Seems like mainly the ID software engine games have very poor caching - no news to people who have played them. Even after spending "years" on loading a level, there tends to be loading glitches while you run through a level - even with a fairly beefy machine with 1gig of ram.

The "return to desktop" lag and harddisk access can be reduced a *lot* if you set the registry entry DisablePagingExecutive=1 - I do this on all boxes with 512meg or more of memory. It basically tells windows to never discard/swap out the kernel and device drivers. Means a little less memory is available for applications, but it's well worth the reduced loadtime.

Carol Haynes:
For normal desktop uses I think 512Mb is more than enough for most applications. It has been said that larger amounts of memory are not really used by many applictaions unless you have loads of apps loaded simulataneously. Disc speed, user interface and other system restrictions (like network access speeds) are usually the biggest impact on speed in most systems and large amounts of RAM or fast disks won't make much difference.

For things like gaming, video and photo editing (with premium programs like PhotoShop) 1Gb or more is useful as they will cache as much as possible in memory and so make processing faster.

AbteriX:
For Win 2000 and XP the absolutly minimum is 256megs.
With 512 its comfortable if you use to have a lot of Applications open.
I work with PIII/700MHz but 768MB RAM (100MHz FSB , do you remember ;D ) 'cus of some graphic works.
More RAM i think is only needed if your PC act as an Sever.

Don't forget to adjuste your "virtual memory" to corresponce with the physical RAM.

Carol Haynes:
Yes you should adjust the pagefile, but there are no hard and fast recommendations for more than about 256Mb of RAM. Certainly you don't need the suggested 1.5Mb of page file for 1Mb of RAM, I find 768Mb is sufficient.

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