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How many MBs of ram do you think is enough?

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!!tio!!

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Aug 13, 2001
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As the title..... My friend say Windows eat up rams very fast.... u need 300MB of ram at least when opeing photoshop.... so do I have enough ram (384MB)
 
Well, I'd say 384 MB is enough ram for now. If you're using Windows 98 or ME, it'll want you to mess around with your Virtual Memory settings if you go to or past 512 MB. Of course, it depends on the user. If the programs you use can run with 384 MB of ram, then you have enough. If they are slower than they're supposed to be, then you need more. I'm running 320 MB in my PIII 1 Ghz, and 256 MB in my PII 450 @ 539. I do use Photoshop occasionally, but these computers are basically for internet and some gaming, and they both have plenty of ram for what they need to do.
 
I want 512MB of ram. Had built a system for a friend with 512MB & the performance difference is noticable from mine. My RAM is taking too looooooooooooooooooooooooong to arrive:(
 
The dream of the unlimited PC budget. I have a question, please. Assuming that you'll run Linux, NT or Win2K, would the 3 Gb of Ram that you can out on some Server mainboards do you any good for "normal" PC applications?

Or is a Server mobo set up that the Ram only goes to work while "serving?"
 
*Tio Etomac* said:
Do you recommend this?

Micron 512MB x 3?

not unless your as crazy as me. ok i have only one reason for wanting a gig of ram. i have 4 ram slots and my motherboard has a texas instaments chipset that maximizes ram performance when all four slots are filled.

tio you would probably do fine with 768 megs if your looking to load up. unless your running cad, there's probably no way to utilize it all for a home pc.

if your running windows98/me then dont buy more than 512megs total.
 
cad is computer aided drafting. engineering and arcitecture businesses use it. the people who do serious work on cad work on projects that have 3d files that are hundreds of megabytes big.

for a gamer you wont ever need more than 512megs of ram total. games just don't use the memory and if they ever doo you'll need a new computer by then because your system will be too slow.

if your a gamer stay with windows me or go to xp because games usually run slower on windows 2k.


I do a limited amont of 3d stuff and alot with adobe photoshop so i utilize more ram than the average user.
 
i think the way the ram is set up is more important then how much, i used to run photoshop 4 on a 33MHz mac and 16MB ram, that was with minum extensions and no 'virtual memory' or using the hard disk
 
*Tio Etomac* said:
What if I change mine to Win2000 and what is CAD?

Win2000 should be able to handle 512 MB of memory without having to mess with Virtual Memory settings. However, Ebola is right, if you game with this computer, stick with 98, ME, or wait for XP Home, games will run faster on these platforms.
 
Gamers - 512 (256 if on a budget)
CAD/Heavy 3d work - 1024
Typical Windows use/web browsing - 128
 
I have Windows 2000 Professional, whats this about games running slower on this platform vs. ME or XP??? How so???

Also Im gonna probably get XP professional when it comes out in a few weeks, what will I gain over 2000 prof?????I do alot of gaming, but stability is important to me. Windows 98 didnt have ANY stability.
 
Ritteri&Bubbles said:
I have Windows 2000 Professional, whats this about games running slower on this platform vs. ME or XP??? How so???

Also Im gonna probably get XP professional when it comes out in a few weeks, what will I gain over 2000 prof?????I do alot of gaming, but stability is important to me. Windows 98 didnt have ANY stability.

windows 2000 runs on the nt core. its more stable but its slower. i havent tried xp so i couldnt tell you anything about that.
 
well, i had a chance to play around with XP and it certainly boots faster than win2k :D

XP is also based on the NT kernel so the core difference between it and win2k should be minimal. however, on the surface as far as benchmarks and stuff i haven't messed around with it enough to notice any other variance except for boot time.

i think basically XP is supposed to be NT stable but have the performance of the 95/98/ME platforms.
 
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