How much memory is too much?

Its ALWAYS nice to have a bit more than a bit less when it comes to most computer parts.

good question, any answers?

basically, for regular office use, 512 MB is MORE THAN ENOUGH.

for some games such as ONLINE MMORPG , DOOM 3, Far CRY, ram will be IMPORTANT.

For example in World of warcraft, you will experience EXTREME LAG if you only have 256 mb ram, quite lag if you have 512 mb ram, little be lag if you have 1 gb when you enter an area that has lots of players.

same for doom3, far cry, more ram helps to reduce lag. Therefore, if you have a ok but not very good video card, ram can help u make it up but not 100% cover.

those ppl use that much ram for office use is stupid, its like driving a ferrai to drive u to school. Of cux u won't gain much faster cux there is speed limit on your way to school.

even if im at the office 512 is actually barely enough for what i am running, if i have 1GB i can turn off my swap

Speed limits are for sissies!

As far as the ram, no amount of benchmarks would get me to switch back to 512mb from 1gb. Even games like Anarchy Online back in the day ran much better after adding a second 512mb stick. I wonder how long they actually ran the benchmarks for, as I would assume a small demo or playtime might not require paging and may give the performance boost.

512 MB - 1 GB // Great for standard usage, surfing net, mild gaming

1 GB // Recommended for gaming

1.5 GB // Extreme Gaming or High End professional work

2 GB or above // Serious Professional Work

4 GB or Above // Are you outta your mind?

What aboutt the Arithmetic logic unit (math processor) the more memeory you have the more spaces it has to keep track of thus using some of your processing power to keep track of ram that isn't even being used?

disclaimer this is what i am currently being taught at college. I still dont think that you cna have "too much" RAM

You could never have enough memory, but to a certain degree that holds true.

You will see a significant increase between 256MB -> 512MB. You will see a good jump in speed between 512MB -> 1.0GB. You will see very little differences above that.

These days, memory is cheap. I highly recommend 1.0GB if you can. All of my systems have more than 1.0GB. I have 1.5GB on all my systems

ppl repeat those recommandation cux they know ppl that has those experience, gain info from lots of comp related website searching and from their personal experience.

for professional work, i think 1.5 gb is very enough but for extreme gaming, i will say 1.5-2.0 gb.

n I said 512 mb for REGULAR OFFICE USE such as microsoft word, excel, internet, listen to music etc, REGULAR. don't misinterpret my pt.

and for 4 gb, i can't think of anything that you need 4gb FOR NOW.

so believe it or not, those recommandation are sort of true. you believe stupid benchmark more than actual experience from real life? I have nothing to say then

I had an old desktop that I was running with 256 and everything ran just okay. I bumped it up to 512 after a month of having it and it was a big improvement. I ran everything really well. Then I started playing DAOC (Dark Age of Camelot MMORPG) and I noticed a lot of lag in big battles and in castles/towns with a lot of people around. A guy suggested I upgrade to 1GB RAM. So I did and I saw an improvement. I still got lag in huge battles, but just good size ones were fine and towns/castles also saw an improvement.

So I guess what that says is 256 can run most stuff, but only if you don't to wait sometimes and you keep your system uber clean. 512 really should be the ISO for comps as it is 2005. Anything more than 512 is for people who need to extra for specific applications.

Here is my computer after the last major upgrade:


Asus P4R800-v Deluxe Motherboard
Onboard ATI RADEON 9100 IGP 3D Graphics shared 128 MB Memory
40 and 80 gb ide drives
New SATA 100 GB drive
512 MB Memory pc 2700 in an non Dual DDR configuration
Pentium 4 2.8 G hyperthreading proccessor - Front Side Bus 800 Mhz

I upgraded from an Athlon 1700+ Proccessor. With a 266 Mhz front side bus asus mobo with an nvidia onboard card with 64 MB shared memory and the same pc 2700 512 memory.

Upgraded from Windows 2000 Pro to XP Pro.

I was so disipointed in the lack of performance. I was like why did I upgrade. Then I got a pair of corsair 512 mb memory sticks for a total of 1 GB Dual DDR.

Wow, now I am cooking. The difference was amazing.

I often run Tweek XP Pro to free up my memory and it is not uncomon for it to be 60% to 70% not free before running the program.

I also read an article, I think it was in Doctor Dobbs Journal but I could be wrong, that though Windows XP requires a minumum of 256 MB to run, the true minimum should be 512.

When I run something like Photoshop CS the memory gets sucked up.

I personaly would not go under 1 GB of memory. Though my wife's laptop, a Viao with a Pentium 4 2.6 433 Mhz fsb with 512 Mb memory running XP runs pretty fast, though I have not run anything to intense on it.

Have a Dell 700M on order with a Pentium M 2.0 Proccesor and 1 G of memory I'll post the performance once I get it.

Too much RAM? I'm sorry, I don't comprehend

I say too much RAM is anything other the limit of what the OS can handle!

the article makes sense though if you think about it. Once u go over a certain point, adding memory actually slows down the system a tiny bit. The reason is because it takes more time for the memory controller to access 1 GB than 512 MB of memory. Of course, the performance difference will rarely be noticeable, even in benchmarks. However, if u have too little memory, then you can experience system slowdowns. IMO, 512 mb is good enough for web surfing, word, excel and other basic apps when runnin winxp. 1-1.5 GB is good enough for most games. 2 GB is probably getting to overkill even for the most hardcore games. 3+ GB will probably cause slower performance unless using really really intensive software (like cad, or simulation).

You have to test it yourself if you see any point in the upgrade.

In benchmarks (that mostly stress cpu/gpu) there will be little benefit, sometimes even a hit.

However, in actual use in _certain_ kind of _limited_ situations, bigger memory can be so much beneficial to the actual multitasking _feel_ of the computer. Even if number crunching speed itself isn't affected at all.

To me at least, this is an important deciding factor.

I hate using computers that feel sluggish and unresponsive. I tweak my computers to the max to get all that snappy feel out of using them. Good amount of ram is one strategy I use (in addition to all the right component choices, settings, software selection, etc.)

For me 2GB is now the ideal in a heavy desktop use environment.

On a laptop, it's 1GB.

But that's just me.

And I only do heavy: network related work, big games, some statistical crunching, image editing, basic e-mail/browsing/word processing. No heavy modelling applications and I'm still often starved for memory, when running several apps at the same time (not all of them using the cpu, mind you).

The biggest problem I have with the very first article listed at the top of the thread is that it's trying to link useful RAM capacity to bus speed. Speaking from personal experience, I have consistetly noticed a performance boost when upgrading to 512MB RAM, whether on a system with a 133 MHz FSB or a 533 MHz FSB.

If the true culprit is running out of addressing space, then any slowdown would not be attributable to anything relating to FSB speed. Rather, the culprit would be the width of the data pathways. A 64-bit machine & OS could handle more memory without slowdowns, because a 64-bit addressing scheme can handle a considerably larger amount of memory before running into problems.

first of all, I NEVER say you misinterpret my point. I am not even talking to you. You said it urself, you never refer to it, why would U think I was talking
to you?

Benchmark can be unreliable as well. Different video card have different benchmark as some card is better than the other when come to performance even they are the same card. Website A will say X800 is slightly better than 6800 while website B say 6800 is slightly better than X800 and all based on benchmark results. Also, some program that gives benchmark RUNS BETTER at some specific brand of processor than the others as it is programmed to run better. You can check out the benchmark results for the INTEL 6xx chip , the site stated that point. The benchmark program FAVOR intel chip more than amd chip. Different video card can be OC to different level. some are better than the other. you can't absolutely sure that AtI must be better than 6800 based on ONE benchmark. There are alot of factors that affect the performace of the hardware as well. maybe the tester is testing the chip at different day under different room temperature. YES. cooler room temperature, more air circulation can help to increase the perforrmance of the chip cux it helps to lower the temperature of the CPU. If the tester benchmark the chips at DIFFERENT ROOM WITH DIFFERENT ROOM TEMPERATURE, you won't know if the benchmark is still 100% reliable.

You said it yourself, you believe red car faster than blue car but doesn't seem they do. but you never test them.
But those ppl who upgraded the ram is using THE SAME COMPUTER, SAME WINDOW XP OR XP PRO and they can tell the difference in performance as they are using their computer everyday. It may load program in 5s instead of 30s, start window in 3 min instead of the usual 10 min, running 7 different programs at the same time and results NO LAG after upgrade but it was lag like hell before upgrade. Thats INCREASE IN PERFORMANCE.

obviously these improve in performance doesn't need benchmark to prove it and even a 10 years old can tell its faster based on the above results.

a guy can show you now i am using 256 ram to play MMORPG and lag like hell and now he use 1 gb ram to play n its much smoother. but you would say "you believe its faster but it doesn't seem like faster, I won't believe it is really faster until someone benchmark the results while u a playing the game after upgrade".

So everyone's judgement is basically crap to you as they can't judge or know that their system is faster or slower when they use it. so basically not just me, so many people who reply here doesn't need to say anymore cux their judgement is useless.

oh dear I should not say anything anymore, its bad

1gb when you play big war with many other players online like Lineage 2 or world of warcraft won't be enough. (it still lags, mmorpg is super ram eater i swear lol) 1.5 GB will help alot but 2 gb probably is the best (cux there are just too many players in the same area casting magic or skills which these special effects make the game lag the most). But anything more than that I dunno if it is better based on gamers experience. I never know anyone use 3gb even he make games . I do like to know which software will need 3gb to run in order to give the smooth performance