Would 512mb of ram be overkill?

[MichaelD]

I'm on a posting rampage. How many do you need to become a Senior Member? Anyway, I have 256mb/133 Ram. I game a lot, surf a lot, and do Powerpoint slides, mostly. Would an additional 256mb be a waste of money? I know, you can never have too much ram, but really, would it be a waste? BTW I have a 1Gig CPU at 1GIg and a 7,200RPM HD, if it matters.

 

[cmaMath13]

You need 200+ posts.

I am curious, too. Is 512 overkill?

 

[bcterps]

It matters more on the OS you are running. If you're running WinME or 98SE, dont bother. However if you're running Win2k, I'd pick up an extra 256 since its pretty darn cheap right now.

--Ben

 

[minus1972]

<< I am curious, too. Is 512 overkill? >>



good god no!

 

[MajesticMoose]

Ram is like sex, you can never have too much Plus with prices as they are now, why not, you're gonna need it eventually.

Moose

 

[Sephy]

It's overkill with 9x/ME, 2000 will love you

 

[sharkeeper]

You can never have too much. I wish mainboards supported more main memory. I'd love to have 100+ GB of RAM.

Cheers!

 

[nortexoid]

if i had 100GB+ RAM i wouldn't own an HDD...maybe a small one...but would rarely use it.

i'd also never shut my computer off...

RAM DRIVE.

 

[ToBeMe]

No more than my 768! 2K LOVES it!

 

[Vegito]

no, i max all my cusl2 with 512mb.. too bad that's the limit. my bx6r2 has 1gb in it.. sweet..

 

[err]

like most people said, it is too much for win9x, me ... but win2k pro will definetely loves it. For Win2K server, 512 is adequate.

eRr

 

[Guilty]

I dont see how you can say 512MB is &quot;too much for 9X&quot;. Any information you've heard about 9X being unable to use 512MB is false. That said, with 512MB you could create a large static vcache, huge file cache, and never run into swap. It's worth the money if you adjust windows to use it properly instead of pissing it away on a 511MB vcache. ConservativeSwapFileUsage, 64 or 128MB static vcache, a large file/dir cache, and let windows manage swap since you shouldnt run into it anyway.

 

[Taz4158]

Half a gig is certainly not too much for 98. I have VM disabled and it flies.

 

[mylam]

it will be sweet for win2k but not win98

 

[hans007]

you really only need around 160 megs for me/98, i have 256 in win2k, have had 512 and 768 and well you dont need more than 256 in win2k unless you are doing something besides normal apps, like massive photoshop or 3ds max i suppose

 

[JackBurton]

I know most of the people in here are ram crazed maniacs, but you'd have to do ALOT to get past even 200MB of ram. I have my Pro machine and wanted to take a look at how much ram it was using and I had to open like 6 IE windows, had UT running, had MusicMatch Jukebox running, had Power DVD running, NAV 2001, AIM, PowerPoint, Excel and Word running and I barely made it to 212MB!! Now I just did this as test, but as you can see, you really don't need more than 256MB unless you're doing something crazy. I REALLY doubt you'd see any difference between 256Mb and 512MB the way you're going to use 2000. I have 384MB of ram in my Pro machine and I couldn't tell the difference between 256 and 384.

 

[MadRat]

Those buggers that say &quot;not in windows 98&quot; are really being dorks. With the Virtual Memory turned off and RAMPage active I monitor my usage. Rarely does it get below 100mb free! When I run Napster in the background while gameplaying it does get way down there. Have to say the momentary stoppages in programs (file swaps to the hard drive) is virtually non-existent.

 

[Viperoni]

In memory usage in Win2k you mean the &quot;MEM usage&quot; display in Windows Task Manager for Win2k, right?
I have 256mb and with Seti, RC5, 3 IE windows I'm only using 96mb.
I have a lot of process running though...

 

[MadRat]

Two clicks of RAMPage and my free memory is over 400mb so no big loss there.

 

[sharkeeper]

I can use all the physical memory (768 MB) in this machine without breaking a sweat.

Cheers!

 

[JackBurton]

<< In memory usage in Win2k you mean the &quot;MEM usage&quot; display in Windows Task Manager for Win2k, right? >>


Correct!

And sharkeeper, I going to assume you're doing something crazy in Photoshop or doing some wacky video editing to get that memory usage up so high.

 

[ahfung]

I'm thinking of the same thing.

I'm on Win2000 with 256MB and so far I have no complaint. The only occasion I saw my system chokes is during CPU/memory burning-in by looping UT flyby, Prime95 and opening a lot of IE and Outlook. Other than that for every games and applications (mostly internet and office stuff) it is smooth as silk.

Now you guys all brag about how great the extra 256MB memory is, make me itchy to try out as well . Not to mention adding one more stick will improve the memory bandwidth. (something about interleave)

But for the same $100, I'd buy a big ass IDE HDD as backup for my RAID0 setup. Which one will you suggest?

 

[Sir Fredrick]

sharkeeper, interesting...but why does it say you have 613776 free? Also, your mem usage doesn't have a K after it...mine currently says MEM Usage (and then the bar showing my mem usage) 194728K

This was in Win2k right? Weird.

 

[AncientPC]

Also, I thought the spike was suspicious. Did you try opening up additional programs to hog up all that memory?

 

[Vinny N]

If you don't have a use for it, the OS guidelines mentioned in all the above posts apply.

I'm running 98SE...but I do a lot video capture and editing in animated gifs...

Someone would have to be insane to tell me that because I'm running 9X I shouldn't have 512mb...
It lets me open ~2000 frames at once instead of ~800-1200.