How much RAM do you do you actually need?

[Moontrash]

This question is for all purposes. I see user reviews and such online from various review and retail sites and I see people who use 16gb to 32gb of RAM and I wonder does anyone...outside of audio or video production...use that much RAM? Has anyone ever looked at task manager and seen your RAM fill up with that amount of RAM? If so, what software out there would use that much?

[Trippedout]

yes your right its overkill kids are runing 64 bit 16 gig and so on top of the range video cards they will need to update a year or two down the line cause there new game wont run right with there video card i run xp pro 4 gig it only sees 3 gig mind but i can convert watch a movie play music surf and open all the pics wich is alot at the same time tryed it just to see few months back and doing all this with very little lag

[fritzi93]

Well, I'm no expert on it but I'd guess 8 GB would be plenty for most members here. The general run of users probably can't get anywhere near to needing even that.

I have 16 GB because RAM was cheap when I built this rig, so what the hell. I do some editing and run a couple VMs, so it's not like it's wasted. I've never come close to using it all though.

[usually_quiet]

Graphics editors like Adobe Photoshop and CAD programs are often said to be capable of using all the RAM you can give them. If someone uses either of those kinds of programs, they benefit from using all the RAM their motherboard (or OS) allows.

[DB83]

Well I am still on XP and I get by quite nicely on 2 gig - video capture,editing,encoding - the lot

[jagabo]

32 bit Win7 with full Aero effects is a little uncomfortable with only 4 GB (and only 2.5 to 3.5 GB useable).

[Cornucopia]

People here and pros elsewhere who do 3d animation & compositing, or super high rez photoshop work will take all the ram they can get. 16GB, 32, 64 it all helps. Heck, you can always use ram for temp disks and make things (which save to temp disks) speed up as well. Last I checked, ram was still less expensive than an ssd.

Scott

[jman98]

I have 64 bit Win 7 on a PC with 16 GB of RAM. 8 GM of RAM is used up by Qsoft's RAMDisk program to give me a B:\ drive that I use for various DVD related tasks that only require temporary storage. The other 8 GB are used by Win 7. I've never had a memory issue. When I used to run XP I did some tests and I was not ever able to make my PC use up more than about 750 MB of memory.

[deadrats]

Has anyone ever looked at task manager and seen your RAM fill up with that amount of RAM? If so, what software out there would use that much?

yeah, they're called memory leaks; i've seen firefox builds that had nasty memory leaks that would eat up all the ram you had. other than that, if you're running a 64bit OS and you do any heavy video or 3d rendering work, if you regularly build/compile large projects, for servers where they are serving up lots of web pages, if you're running distributed computing apps (like multiple instances of SETI@home), basically if you're a power user you can make use of that much ram. alternatively a small cheap ssd set up as a swap/page page will also give you a nice boost.

but if all you're doing is surfing the net and playing video games then no, that much ram is overkill.

of course the same holds true for cpu's, you don't need a 6 core/12 thread beast for web surfing. me, i wish i could afford an 8 core 16 thread xeon...

[D_Knife]

I'm running 16GB ram and using 8GB ramdisk. Useful for caching especially firefox. I also use it for temp store for downloads and anything else short term. Very useful for extracting audio streams via eac3to. I'm running superspeed ramdisk plus and while it works well I would probably purchase something else and cheaper next time.

[jagabo]

On one of my computers I have 16 GB of memory (I got it about a year ago for ~US$50 when there was a glut of memory on the market). Like others here I use part of it for a ramdisk.

[Moontrash]

I've just stuck with 8gb's recently. My "dead" 3 1/2 year old power pc had 4gb's in it and i watched the task manager all the time and it never got past 2.3 gb's even while gaming. The 8gb's I have now was cause it was on sale for $25 not long ago.

quite a ways back when i built an HTPC and got an SSD in it...i read around online about the benefits of RAM disks. I got "DATARAM's" free version to try it out...i directed the paths of windows temp and firefox cache and whatever else was recommended and the speeds were good but i had one major issue...when i started burning BR data backups from my eSata drive....the BR drive would just speed up and down and by the end..at 4x...it would take over 45 mins to burn a BR...it startled me and i knew from that it was something odd. I decided to plug the ext drive directly into the sata port of the MB...no issues...back to the eSata...same problem. For the life of me i couldn't understand what was happening. I just had a hunch it was the RAMDISK...i was using all the normal settings in the BIOS and all the software i normally used and the RAMDISK was the only thing that was different. I uninstalled it and voila!!! problem went away. Haven't had a burn issue via eSata since.

I really do like the benefits of RAMDISK but that issue alone drove me off of it. I wanna try this option once again and was wondering...is there one brand of RAMDISK better than another? A site or a link on how to set one up and what options work best/fastest with it?

[Cornucopia]

Sounds like a bad driver.

re: your earlier pc vs. now,
A LOT depends on the OS. Is it 32bit or 64bit? 32bit really can only use 4GB, usually even less (~3.3GB) max. 64bit can use Terabytes(?) of RAM. If your previous pc was 32bit, that 2.3gb wouldn't surprise me.

Scott

[jagabo]

RAM above 4GB is available to ramdisks using PAE when running 32 bit Windows.

[hello_hello]

32 bit Windows can use 4GB of RAM, but it also includes video RAM. For example if you have a video card with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of system RAM, Windows will only report 3.5GB of RAM as being available.

If 3.5GB is available though, Windows should use it all if need be. And it probably does. Just because Task Manager reports "x" amount of available RAM doesn't mean it's RAM which has never been used. It just means it's available for use. However if you re-open a program and/or re-open a file which still resides in "available" RAM, it'll be reused. The program will load faster and the file will open quicker than they did the first time etc.

[Budman1]

I Noticed no one mentioned another important point to selecting memory, especially on a new computer. I've worked on computers for over 40 years and one mistake many make, especially today, is the hardward capability of the computer you buy. Most higher end computers having, let's say, 6 cores/12 cpus come with 4 sockets for memory. Some smaller and earlier computers had only 3 or even 2. If you decide to go with 8 GB on a 4 slot machine, many times the manufacturer gives you 4X2GB dimms because they are cheaper than 1 X 8GB. Now if you decide to go to 12GB for example, no matter how you order the new memory, 4,4,4 or 8,4 or whatever, you now throw away the original memory you purchased (or sell on Ebay) and you are paying for 4GB but you only get 2GB additional for every 2GB you replace with the 4GB.

Moral of the story is make a good decision about what you save ordering or getting 4 X 2 GB's vs 1 X 8 GB and figure what your next upgrade might be and what you will have to pull out. A good choice might be like a 3 slot machine with (4,4, empty) in which case you could buy an 8 GB when your funds replenish and double you memory without losing any you already bought and paid for.

Just thought I'd mention it if you are thinking of purchasing a new computer. I know I added a lot of memory to a lot of peoples computers who were a little miffed when they found out the had to buy 24 GB in order to get 12 GB additional (4,4,4 --> 8,8,8)

Thanks
Budman1

[lordsmurf]

4 X 2 GB's vs 1 X 8 GB

Dual channel DDR has prevented this for years, sadly.
Think of it more as a "RAM replacement" upgrade, as opposed to "adding RAM".