How much RAM do you have on your PC?

[masu]

How much RAM do you have on your PC?

Personally I have 1GB and I am not sure it is enough and if I should upgrade to 2GB?

[Grorgy]

i got 760 mb on my celeron 1.5 laptop, would gave got more but its too expensive, or was when i got it, but going from 512 to 760 made a big difference.  On my desk i just went from 1 to 2gb of ram.  Its a dual core amd and the extra RAM has made a noticeable difference in performance once up and running, booting is still a bit slow but ya cant have everything and we are only talking a minute or 2 at most for the whole process anyway

[icekin]

I have 512 MB on my main Windows XP machine and my other one has only 256 MB and runs Debian. But I guess it depends on your needs and what type of user you are. I run very low resource programs (e.g. K-Meleon, uTorrent, xplorer2 etc.) But if I used Firefox, Azureus and Directory Opus to do the same things, I would definitely need 1 GB to work comfortably.

If you use CAD or multimedia programs like those by Adobe, 2 GB is nice to have especially if you run many applications at once. I would advise running SystrayMeter (http://88.191.26.34/computers_are_fun/index.php/systraymeter/) for a few days and observing your RAM usage. If you find the RAM meter in the red too often, consider upgrading. Otherwise, don't bother.

[Carol Haynes]

Win XP Pro SP2 - 2Gb, mainly because I run PhotoShop and Video apps.

[mouser]

i have 4gb.  from what i understand, upgrading your memory (to at least 2gb) is probably one of the most cost-effective ways to improve your pc.  going from 1gb to 2gb is probably better bang for the buck than buying a new cpu or anything else.

after 2gb or so then you are going to start entering the area of quickly diminishing returns, but going from 1gb to 2gb is a no brainer -- do it.  you'll notice the difference when working with or switching between big programs.  browsers eat a ton of memory.

[cranioscopical]

4Gb here.  I strongly urge going from 1 to 2.  You'll be pleased when you do that.

[scancode]

128/256 mb [one stick is kinda broken, and works when it wants to]
WinXP SP2.
Photoshop. Audio mixing software. Coding. Web browsers. Everything at the same time. Running kinda smoothly

[yksyks]

Recently upgraded from 1 GB to 2 GB and put the other module into the dual-channel mode. Wow! It feels like a new machine! Recommended.

(WinXP SP2)

[Lashiec]

2 GB seems to be the trend, as that's what I have here. It's advisable to buy that extra stick, now that RAM price is pretty low.

[masu]

thanks for your advice, I bought a second ram module on ebay today.
Hope I will measure a significant improvement over 1GB  

[f0dder]

You should have set up a poll - perhaps mouser can edit one in

2048 megs here (sounds better than 2 gigs ), it's very nice - on my XP pro, it means I can disable the pagefile, have plenty of memory for caching, etc. Considering going 4gig in my next box, although I probably can't afford buying it all at once.

Do keep in mind that if you're mainly using 32bit apps (even if you're on 64bit windows), there's limits to how useful >3gig memory will be.

[Carol Haynes]

I have added a poll ...

[Laughing Man]

On my desktop: 1 GB, on my laptop: 2 GB

[cranioscopical]

I have added a poll ...

• 512Mb or less
• up to 512Mb

Explain the difference between the first two choices?

[Carol Haynes]

Oops ... I'll change it ...

[katykaty]

4 GB - though I'm on XP so only get 3.25. But at the prices these days why have less?

[cranioscopical]

4 GB - though I'm on XP so only get 3.25. But at the prices these days why have less?

My thought exactly, though it was a little frustrating at the time of purchase

[Armando]

But at the prices these days why have less?

Depends where you live and how much you earn...

[Carol Haynes]

4 GB - though I'm on XP so only get 3.25. But at the prices these days why have less?

There is no reason why you should settle for 3.25 Gb of your 4Gb on Windows XP. I posted a number of articles in another thread about WinXP memory management which says you should be able to use the full 4Gb. You may need to set a boot time switch though (although I think it is default).

Some motherboards restrict memory access so it may not be a Windows fault - but losing 0.75 Gb seems a bit excessive which makes me suspect this in't the problem here.

[katykaty]

4 GB - though I'm on XP so only get 3.25. But at the prices these days why have less?

There is no reason why you should settle for 3.25 Gb of your 4Gb on Windows XP. I posted a number of articles in another thread about WinXP memory management which says you should be able to use the full 4Gb. You may need to set a boot time switch though (although I think it is default).

Some motherboards restrict memory access so it may not be a Windows fault - but losing 0.75 Gb seems a bit excessive which makes me suspect this in't the problem here.

It's because the 4GB limit is the maximum of all memory. That includes a bit for system stuff and the graphics card memory. And my graphics card has 512MB.

[Darwin]

A meagre 1 GB and my blasted three year old notebook is maxed out. I've had a number of conflicting reports about this - even the manufacturer's support personnel, one of their FAQ's, and both SIW and an old free version of Everest say that I can go to 2 GB, but other sources, including a different page on the manufacturer's site and Kingston RAM upgrade checker all say I'm already maxed out. If 1 GB sticks of PC2100 notebook RAM were cheaper, I'd go for it and accept the loss if it turns out that the BIOS won't recognize more than one gig but alas PC2100 RAM is still pretty pricey.

I keep being tempted by a new notebook but Vista isn't a route I'm ready to take - I played with a freshly booted notebook with 2GB of RAM and Vista Ultimate installed and after boot only 800 MB of RAM were free. I actually bought almost the identical machine (identically spec'd RAM, harddrive and CPU) at Christmas with XP Media Centre preinstalled and returned it (buyer's remorse - kicking myself now) and right after boot it reporting well over 1.5GB free RAM. Discouraging...

[ljbirns]

I have 1.2 GB on my XP laptop.  I just bought my wife a new laptop ( old one died )
2 GB running Vista Premium Home..

[f0dder]

It's because the 4GB limit is the maximum of all memory. That includes a bit for system stuff and the graphics card memory. And my graphics card has 512MB.

Wrooooong - you just need to make sure the system is running in PAE mode, which should be the default for systems supporting x86-64/NX bit (Data Execution Prevention). But as usual, Microsoft is of course imposing artificial limitations on how much physical memory is supported (see the table at the end of the above link) just to do market segmenting, those bastards.

[Carol Haynes]

Quite PAE allows NT to address up to 32Gb of memory - they have just imposed the arbitrary limit in XP at 4Gb!

[katykaty]

It's because the 4GB limit is the maximum of all memory. That includes a bit for system stuff and the graphics card memory. And my graphics card has 512MB.

Wrooooong - you just need to make sure the system is running in PAE mode, which should be the default for systems supporting x86-64/NX bit (Data Execution Prevention). But as usual, Microsoft is of course imposing artificial limitations on how much physical memory is supported (see the table at the end of the above link) just to do market segmenting, those bastards.

Ah, I see.

I've done a bit of Googling and decided that the caveats that come with turning on PAE don't justify the benefits, so I'm going to stick with what I've got just for the sake of £15 worth of memory.

Thanks for the pointers though - I hope someone else reading can make use of that.

I remember scrimping and saving the pennies for my first PC, and having that gnawing feeling that I was wasting my money getting a 40MB (yes, MB) hard disk. And now I'm losing 20 times that amount of memory and I'm just 'yeah, whatever'