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To much RAM

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No. More is always better, unless you can't afford to eat because you bought 4GB of RAM for you new system to surf the web :).
 
I'd say you can never have 'too much ram,' but you can have more ram than you can use. Imagine installing 4gb of ram for someone that checks e-mail and plays solitaire. Anything over 256-512mb would be wasted. Is it hurting anything to have extra ram? No, but it will probably never be utilized.

Another problem is the ram and OS itself on the system. A lot of AMD systems don't like 4x512 sticks, and prefer 2x1gb's. Also, some operating systems can't handle large amounts of ram. ie- Someone running windows 98 and 4gb of ram has 'too much ram' I would say. Simply because no matter what they do, 98 is simply not designed to handle that much ram.

Overall I'd say there is more of a problem with systems not having enough ram, than a system having too much ram. For most systems, ram is the easiest way to see a big improvement in speed. (ie- going from 128mb to 256mb running windows XP) (Or 512mb to 1gb for a gaming system)
 
Bios24 said:
Overall I'd say there is more of a problem with systems not having enough ram, than a system having too much ram. For most systems, ram is the easiest way to see a big improvement in speed. (ie- going from 128mb to 256mb running windows XP) (Or 512mb to 1gb for a gaming system)

Quoted for truth.
 
SO your saying 4-8GB isnt to much for the standard user??
What kind of benifit would we see from using 4-8Gb in say vista be?
Would anything good come from using this much ram?
 
Captain Newbie said:
If your machine can't address it (*cough* Windows XP *cough*) then it's too much.

QFT. Most people won't even touch 1gb.

I believe the most I've used is about 889Mb due to BF2.

Too bad they don't make 768Mb chips.
 
There is also the fact that each aditional stick adds more wattage to the system draw. Some boards have issues with 4 sticks. I've never had more than 1 gig, and never even touched all of that. The only time that more is better is with certain games. The only actual improvement then is load times. 2 gigs is overkill for most peoples usage.

Now with what I've been reading about Vista this may no longer be the case. It sounds to be a near requirement to have 2 gigs or more with it. I haven't had a chance to play with it so please don't quote me. It also sounds like Vista is mostly an eye candy upgrade and DX10. There will likely be a very few games and apps that require DX10 off the bat so I'd just stay with XP for now until the dust settles a bit. Who knows, maybe the genius IQ's(HAHAHA!!!!!) at M$ will have gotten the bloat under control by then.
 
I use solidworks cosmos finite analysis package, and when I mesh the models 8gigs of ram is feeling skimpy. I mean the more ram I have the finer mesh I can do and faster, so for me I am waiting untill maybe 20k gig, then I would be happy :)
 
Hmmm, I say 32Gb might be a tad overkill, but hey, someone's gonna buy them if they're for sale on the dell website :p
 
I'd say you dont now what you are talking about. This really depends on what one does. I wouldnt use 32gb to play games and surf the web but in more proffesional tasks the sky is the limit to how much is to much as there is never enough. For me the more the tighter is the model mesh, the more accurate is the analysis. Also that and on smaller detailed models (tight chamfers etc) it has to be very tight and boy thats where the problems start.
 
Yes, you can easily have "too much" ram. If you're private byte commit never exceeds 900 MiB then 2 GiB is too much. There are plenty of tasks for which 2 GiB is not enough, but if this happens to be the case you'll know it. In a home user system the difference between 1 GiB and 2 GiB is for the most part non existant but increasingly games are spilling over the 1 GiB mark forcing those who want to play these games at those detail levels to buy 2 GiB of memory Battlefield 2, FEAR, and Company of Heroes (and others I am sure) will all gladly make use of slightly over 1 GiB of memory. Having too much system memory or mismatched modules willdegrade the performance of the machine as you'll be forced to run at a lower memory bus speed and/or looser timings.
 
Captain Newbie said:
If your machine can't address it (*cough* Windows XP *cough*) then it's too much.
A 64-bit processor running Windows XP x64 supports 128 GB of physical memory, and 16 terabytes (TB) of virtual memory. PAE is simply a hack and anyone who needs to address that much memory has moved to 64 bit computing so I would say addressing more than 3 GiB per application is simply a non requirement for the 32 bit edition of windows which is now just shy of half a decade old. Nice jab though.
 
I was told that 2 GB's is the best. people say that 4 GB is too much. im, not such if its true though
 
Like every one else said 1gig is fine most of the time only with higherend games 2gig is nice , i wouldnt bother getting any more than 2 gig
 
Ill have 4gigs in mine but then again my machine will be used for lots of virtual PC work (or VMWare) for testing out different OS's and school projects and stuff so having that much ram will be a benefit when trying to run 3 or 4 different OS's at once. If not for that I would only get 2 gig.

~jtjuska
 
A-Rapture said:
SO your saying 4-8GB isnt to much for the standard user??
What kind of benifit would we see from using 4-8Gb in say vista be?
Would anything good come from using this much ram?
1. 4-8 for a standard user is way a waste of cash for a standard user

2. I have yet to even give a $%#! about Vista. So I don't know

3. Maybe really fast boot time. But no more than you would probably get from using 1.
 
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