Do I Have Enough RAM?
April 12, 2008 Posted by James Oliver
If you have Windows XP and don’t have AT LEAST 512MB, No.
If you have Windows Vista and don’t have AT LEAST 2 GB, No.
More than likely, if you do much more than check your e-mail and open Internet Exploder (not a typo), you probably need 1GB of memory.
I say you need 2GB for Windows Vista because I’ve seen systems almost every day out of the box that have 1GB and most of that is being used up.
Random Access Memory (RAM) is used by your computer as temporary storage space for data. It has no moving parts like a phyiscal hard drive. It has higher bus speed.
When you fill your memory with programs your computer is actively using, it has no choice but to start writing things off to the hard drive and this slows down your system.
If you right click on your task bar (the bar that runs across the screen from the Start button to the clock), choose “Task Manager”. Next, choose the “Performance” tab. A decent measure for you to know if you should get more memory to speed up your system is to look at the “PF Usage” (on windows) and . If this number is very close to or higher than your physical memory amount, you need more memory!
Hope this gives you a good scale for choosing. Memory is cheap and easy to install these days. You CAN have too much memory, but it’s rare!
April 25, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Hi James,
Not sure if you’re familiar with he reason Vista uses ram so quickly — SuperFetch; it actively stores programs you use often in the ram so that when you launch programs, they launch faster. They don’t need to be moved to the ram from the hard drive.
If you have 4gb of ram, and Windows XP is reporting that you’re using 512mb, the other 3.5 is really just a waste, sitting there. Why NOT use it to store programs?
That being said, I wouldn’t use Vista with less than 2gb either, so it’s a moot point anyway.
Cheers,
Brett
April 25, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Brett, that’s actually something I was not familiar with. I’ll have to look into that. I’ll probably be seeing if I can turn it off! lol
My laptop has 3 GB of memory, and I’m always hovering around 2GB with the usual applications open.
I agree, seems like a waste to not be using it. I just like to see myself having plenty free
Thanks for the insight.
-James Oliver