How Much Memory is Enough

[ssmithBH]

I am putting together a new P4 system using a Gigabyte GA-8IHXP mobo, Gigabyte's Radeon 9700 Pro, 2xWD1200JB HD. I have ordered 2x256 MB PC1066 RDRAM from Kingston's reseller. I will be using Windows XP Pro. For now, use will be mostly office, web, gaming. Within 6-9 months I will add home theater and video capture. Is 512MB enough?

[By the way, I only learned today that Microsoft OSs other than Windows XP Pro and Windows 2000 cannot recognize any more than 512MB of the total of system memory and video card memory. In other words, if you are using 98se and have 1028MB system RAM, half of it is a paperweight.]

Scott

 

[KingTrav1]

512 should be plenty. But it is always nice to have more for some bragging rights =]

 

[bluemax]

640k ought to be enough for anybody!

 

[Stark]

[dr evil voice] at least 1,024,000 bytes [/dr evil voice]

 

[Adul]

then move to win2k or XP

512 should be enugh, more can't hurt un;ess you use a old version of windows :Q

 

[rbV5]

if you are using 98se and have 1028MB system RAM, half of it is a paperweight.]

Not true, Win9x variants are poor at memory handling ..yes, but can address up to 4 GB of memory, Win9x/ME can go up to 512MB of RAM before it requires an adjustment to the vcache to use more RAM. Read about it all in the FAQ

 

[glugglug]

Actually WinNT would crash unless you had a special HAL with more than 2GB until about SP4.

I doubt Win98/ME would work right over 2GB even now but you can definately go past 512MB, even with the old Win95, and have it take advantage of it all.

Right now for non-server applications, 512MB is plenty. But I strongly suspect the switch to .NET will make you want at least 1GB.

 

[jrichrds]

I found 512MB to be pretty useless with Win98se. I would run out of system resources well before I used up even half of the RAM. Maybe I didn't tweak it enough, but I did get CacheMan and follow their recommendations for a high memory system.
Win2k has been much better with 512MB RAM, no additional tweaking needed.

 

[Bovinicus]

512MB is probably enough. That is what I use, and I never have any problems with excessive paging.

 

[LongCoolMother]

256 should be enough...

if not...then 384......512..? not necessary, but always good

 

[littlegohan]

You NEED 512 for winxp

 

[LongCoolMother]

wow, ive always used 256 on my winxp. it seemed to work well...not slow. maybe ill be in for a surprise when i move to 384!

 

[Texun]

Not exactly scientific, but I can feel a comfortable bump in smoothness from 256 to 512 in XP. Then I went to 768 and got nothing significant. You can check out Crucial's page. They have a basic tool for estimating the benefits of adding more memory. In my opinion it is a waste to go beyond 512 unless you are have some VERY heavy need for it. Just my opinion.

 

[VezZiE]

For Win2k: 256Mb is enough

For WinXP:
I'll vote for 512!
Trust me... peace of mind...

If you think you're gonna install multiple OS (Virtual PCs), crank it up to 1,024Mb.

 

[Valinos]

I'm on a dual processor system and am almost always at a full load, and still don't use my entire 512MB even under WinXP and divx/mp3 encoding. I've been using at least 512 since Jan 2001 and I've always felt ahead of the game..still do.

Although, I've been on machiens where 256 is enough for WinXP, but you will encounter siuations that you wish you had that extra 128 or 256. I saw a little memory comparison in MaximumPC about 6 months ago. They were using Windows 2000 and doing some kind of benchmark...There was a huge boost going from 128 to 256, then a smaller but still siginificant boost when going from 256 to 512...then literally no gain from 512 to 768 and 1024

 

[Sid59]

512 is another vote.

 

[przero]

512 unless you do serious image editing, then maybe 768.

 

[Trader05]

I add another vote to 512, i have xp pro and do major internet, music recording, and gaming. After 512 is probably useless until the next windows can eat it.

 

[GT1999]

Get a 512MB stick and keep more slots open for upgrading later.

 

[Pink0]

I'm going to have to chip in here. I find that for average windows use 256Megs is absolutely enough. In fact, I find that for surfing, word processing, etc, memory usage never goes above 196. However, if you're gaming or running a great deal of programs in the background you will notice faster load times and less paging in some games with 512Megs of ram. That's only with modern games. With Tactical Ops, Assault on Terror, I find that it uses less than 256megs of ram along with many games.
Here's the important part: I'm going to recommend that you get a gig of ram if you're doing any video or photo editing. I have a nice scanner and when I scan in at the best quality setting (family pictures to be kept) I have a 300+ meg bitmap sitting on my desktop. Now, when I open this 300+ meg bitmap in photoshop, I have over 900 megs of ram used and the system slows to a snail's pace since I only have 512. Obviously, one gig would help here.
When using Ulead to convert video which I've captured from an analogue source to DVD I find that it frequently uses more than 512 also.
There are situations where even 1 gig isn't enough. What if you had two or three of those pictures open so you could combine parts of them? What if you had bits in the clipboard?

 

[ViRGE]

With UT2K3 out, I would reccomend 768. On the highest graphical settings, UT will eat upwards of 320MB of memory on its biggest maps(BR-Slaughterhouse being the prime example). Unless you can keep everything else under 200, you'll start swapping, which more or less kills your framerates.

 

[JEFF68005]

Win9X gets a performance boost due to less HD access for Virtual Memory up to 256. Over that can be helpful, but the return after that is modest to minimal.
I have run Win98 at 378 with minimal problems.

WIN XP is a different story. I started at 512 and went to 768. All PC2100. After reading some postings and finding SisSoft Sandra, I tested the memory finding some of it was in a very techinal manner of speaking slowing down performance compared to the other memory. (SPD report CL2 at 100 instead of 133) When I dropped to 256, performance scored dropped significantly. I finally found a 128 memory stick that matched the quality of the 256 that I kept. Improvement was slight. Therefore, I will add another 256 when I find more matching memory.

My network performance scores increased dramaticly switching from Win98 to XP. They dropped when I removed the slower 512 Meg. Adding the additional 128 Meg increased responsiveness enough that I could see it visually but network scores are down from 768.