What RAM capacity do I need?

Can you give the capacities and what each is used for?

I'm afraid your question is a bit vague for me. Are you asking how much(in GB) you need to run different applications?

yes

2GB for XP and 4GB for Vista is a good safe bet. Other than that there's not much to say unless you plan on doing some heavy CAD work or advanced 3D modeling.

I prefer the 2x1GB or 2x2GB configurations for DDR. You can easily do 4x1GB, but it will put a little extra stress on your NB if you plan on Overclocking them.

4g is definitively a right choice

Get at least 2 GB, but that's not really that much anymore. 4 GB is better.

Hopefully your MB supports 8 GB total, as I would expect that to be more standard within a year or two. I'm looking in that direction when I upgrade next (soon hopefully), as my rig has 2 GB, which was a pretty good amount 2 yrs ago.

It would basically come back to what you use it for.
Vista? XP? Massive gaming?
Just web browsing and a few slightly older games?

There are too many variables without knowing how you'll be using it.

depends what you do, we cant tell you what you need without you telling us what you do, you need to be more specific in the questions you ask, lately they are all so vague.


Vista runs fine on 2G, but it depends what you do, heck i have vista buisness running on some old 512mb systems.... buit they dont do much.

Mr.Guvernment said:

depends what you do, we cant tell you what you need without you telling us what you do, you need to be more specific in the questions you ask, lately they are all so vague.


Vista runs fine on 2G, but it depends what you do, heck i have vista buisness running on some old 512mb systems.... buit they dont do much.

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Does Vista Run fine on 2GB? I've never tried it. I monitor the usage all the time and it looks like ~30% when I'm able to see it. I just went with 4GB right off the bat because I was worried. I wonder about gaming. Honest question Guv.

baditude_df said:

Does Vista Run fine on 2GB? I've never tried it. I monitor the usage all the time and it looks like ~30% when I'm able to see it. I just went with 4GB right off the bat because I was worried. I wonder about gaming. Honest question Guv.

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i ran Vista with 2GB just fine
but i did notice an improvement in gaming (specifically Crysis) with 4GB

just make sure you have a 64bit OS if you decide go with 4GB

I'd agree with the 2GB for XP and 4GB+ for Vista comments. I have had no problems doing anything on XP from photoshop, to video compilations, to gaming (Crysis, CoD4, WC3, TF2, Bioshock, etc) on 2GB. You'd have to be doing something pretty serious to need more than 2GB on XP.

Vista (when I used it) worked just fine on 2GB but when I started gaming or doing RAM intensive tasks it wasn't enough. That's why I'd say 4GB or more on Vista.

ObiWong said:

i ran Vista with 2GB just fine
but i did notice an improvement in gaming (specifically Crysis) with 4GB

just make sure you have a 64bit OS if you decide go with 4GB

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Check my sig. Thx though.

Vista is fine on 2GB's. I you are re-using an OS just stick with 2GB's. If you are doing a new build with vista get the 64bit edition and go with 4GB's. Memory is so cheap the OS cost is more of an obstacle than anything else.

baditude_df said:

Check my sig. Thx though.

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errr
i meant OP
...or generally speaking lol
not *YOU* =P

baditude_df said:

Does Vista Run fine on 2GB? I've never tried it. I monitor the usage all the time and it looks like ~30% when I'm able to see it. I just went with 4GB right off the bat because I was worried. I wonder about gaming. Honest question Guv.

Click to expand...

remember vista cache's alot of items into ram why it "appears" vista is using all your ram, when it fact is isnt, if you dont want it to do that turn off superfecth and readyboost and you will see hjow much ram vista truely uses.

i have been running

e4400 @ 3ghz / Vista business / 2G of ram / 7600GT for about 5 months now and i game fine on it (1280 x 1024), while other apps were running, never once did i go over 2G of usage.

i mainly played steam games cs:s / tf2 / UT / track mania / CoD4 / Gothic 3

as the others have said, it really all comes down to what a system is being used for. As far as Vista is concerned if office and web browsing are all you're going to do then you could sneak by with 1GB and save a little cash if you really wanted to. It'd run fine. Although I'd say with any Vista system, 2GB is a worthy investment even if you only do basic tasks. For one, that will future proof you to some extent and another is that DRAM prices are so low these days that it's not a a huge extra cost when looking at the total bill of components.

Another point to consider is the rest of the components in your system. Take a look at the laptop in my sig. I could've easily have gotten 3GB or 4GB in my lappy but consider my processor and graphics card. With such a weak graphics card and CPU combo there's no way I'd be able to crank the quality settings up in any game to even begin warranting the use of more than 2GB. That and all the other tasks I do on this system use far less than the memory I available. So for me, 2GB is fine. If I had a lappy with an 8800M GTX on the other hand, 3 and 4GB than starts to make sense.