What exactly is 4gb+ of ram needed for? There is no game in the world that has a requirement of more than 1gb of ram. Most application only need 512mb? So why does everyone up their computer to 8gb when nothing needs it? HP has already started to put 6gb of ram into their computers...Is it just there to raise the price? Or to make you feel good that you almost maxed your memory?
Adding more RAM is an inexpensive way to increase performance. Few people would argue that less RAM is better. This is even more true if you run a lot of applications/background processes at the same time (as is the case with most servers).
Only a few people can take advantage of more than 4GB RAM, especially working with movies, pictures, compresion, aplications like Adobe. I have 8GB RAM, but I have never used more than 4GB yet. I have disabled pagefile to get better aplication response time, but that is it. Shops add RAM, because it is so dirty cheap and in selling stats it looks great, though sometimes funny, like onboard VGA + 8 GB RAM.
Take into account the OS as vista may run ok on 1gb of ram XP will run excellent.On my vista HP I have 3 gigs of ram the way I look at 1 gb of ram is for the OS the other two are for my programs.If I could have 8gb I would just to know I have if ever needed.
I remember Bill Gates said something like that about 640kb RAM not that long time ago I have the latest year used a Ramdisk where I install software that I use daily. Since RAM prices are ridiculously low right now I plan to buy 8GB. Then I can have a 4GB ramdisk where I install all new software. Software runs faster and I dont have to listen to my hard drive, coz there are some software that has constant R/W to the drive even though you´re not using the computer (I have a open box 24/7 in my living room so I dont want any noice other that the low buzzing sound from the CPU fan) Or maybe I buy 16GB and use it for Vmware... All this is of course not vital, but it is really nice with a quiet and fast system. That is one way of utilize more than 1GB of ram Imagine what you can do if you have a server.
Coolio10, you might find your answer here: The 8GB/64-bit advantage - More RAM doesn’t always mean better performance
the sooner companies like dell and HP etc put more than 4gb of ram the more 64bit os's are used. atm i have 2gb of ram. i plan to buy 4gb of ram soon. for the time being i will have to take out the currrent 2gb anf stick in the new 4gb. unless i can get the companie brought the compute from to ship me 64bit vista home premium media. only real reason is due to ram being so cheap.
32-bit editions of Windows can only address up to 4GB of RAM. Any more can not be accessed. However, 64-bit editions of Window can support up to 128GB of RAM. The amount of RAM that's 'ideal' mostly depends on the applications you run. As The Tom points out, certain apps (especially those from Adobe!) will thank you for all the RAM you feed them! Another consideration is that Vista consumes more resources than XP, so if all other hardware resources are comparable, a Vista machine will require more memory to retain the same performance as when they are run on an XP machine.
If you're into virtualisation like i am then 4gb+ of ram comes in very handy. Vista itself needs a gig of ram to run nicely, run a few virtual machine on top of that and you can quickly eat up 4gb or more depending on what OS's you have virtualised. The only thing i don't like about a lot the recent computers is when they're sold with 4gb of ram yet only come with a 32bit OS. The most you can address with a 32bit system is roughly 3gb so you end up paying for an extra gig which you can't even use.
I have 8GB on my dual quad cores and for now, I have been able to load up to 60% running various apps at once, its when you do multi tasking, the bigger RAM count comes in handy.
the problem is that not all programs will work on 64bit OS so big companies like hp ship the 32bit versions for now so customers dont complain one of their programs doesnt work. im hoping soon enough pretty much all new computers with come with 64bit vista which will force companies to make there programs fully work on 64bit. vista 32bit can feel slow with 2gb with only one virtual machine with only 256mb alocated..... if i was using xp on this machine it would fly. but vista it doesnt... for awhile i had a dualboot of windows 2003 server coverted to workstation and that did fly.
