I have 2048MB in 4 512MB sticks of matched pairs of DDR 533MHz RAM for a hyperthreading Pentium 4 at 3.8GHz. I have 63 processes running and only have 491MB RAM free. I need at least 1GB more RAM. But Dell sent this machine with 512 sticks instead of 1GB sticks which means I have to sell two of the sticks so I can put in two matching 1GB sticks. That is a hassle. I don't plan on ever getting Vista but if I wanted to upgrade this 8 month old Dell XPS 600 to Vista I would have to get more memory before I did that. A Vista machine running even just one VMWare virtual machine (and I have two running at the moment (one being Ubuntu) would need a bare minimum of 3GB RAM and really should have 4GB. XP Pro runs fine on 2GB RAM with one virtual machine running...with two running...well, you see I don't have much RAM now if I want to open any other RAM intensive application. I say one cannot have enough RAM. I had 1GB on my earlier XP Pro machine and that was not nearly enough even without VMWare. I can't imagine how anyone can run XP Pro and only have 20-30 processes running. I have never had less than 55.
Total agreement. WOW...... Everyone has different ways of how\what is acceptable in running their PCs. I am on a 6 PC network. Basically 4 wired, 1 wireless and one that switches from wired to wirless regularly. File and printer sharing is enabled on several. Of the 3 PCs under my control, 28 is the most running on start-up (WinXP Pro on 2 Gigs of ram). That includes all security apps. On my old wired\wireless laptop (WinXP Pro maxed at 512) only 17. That includes Microsofts Private Folder......kind of like that little program.
Just trying to do the math and stick configuration in my head. 2.25 would be 1024+1024+128=2176 Just curious is all.
I have 512 mb on my laptop which is my main machine, but i'd need atleast a gig, if I could off load a lot of the work to my server (which has 512mb ram).
2GB on desktop, no idea on work laptop, 512MB on W2k3 Server. My server runs Slimserver and some other light processes and that's it. 512MB is fine.
I totally agree. My Laptop has 1Gb, my newest running Desktop has 2Gb, and the new machine that just arrived and still in the box has 4Gb. VM here I come.
I now have 1024. I removed 1024 when we built my sons PC. I do fine with one gig on XP Pro,P4, with 256 MB on the video card
Hello, I noticed people mention processes and usage. On my 2GB machine, I'm running 45-50 processes on average, and rarely even use more than 400MB, and that's days after reboot. Just after restart, the memory usage is about 250MB. I really don't understand how people with 1GB or even more manage to clog themselves up. With Firefox and 40-50 tabs, I hardly ever exceed 500MB. Mrk
(MS Windows XP Pro X64) This my resources utilization after a small game (BF2) using Mercenaries Mod. I average always over 60 Processes with somewhere between 1.2 - 1.4 Gig of RAM used out of 4. The most I have ever utilized out of the 4 Gig RAM was 2.4 Gig and it usually is when I play BF2 and I have one or two VMware virtual machines running in the background... I max out around 27 % Peak Physical memory use... Which means I am wasting roughly over 2 Gig of physical RAM on a typical day. If my use which is rather heavy compared to the average users is any indications, probably no one would benefit much above 2 gig ram... The sweet spot seems to over @ about 2 Gig max. which allows the system to use a nice chunk before it actually turns to Swap for Mem tasks thus greatly improving performance in all areas. i.e: disk, Io and so on. (Remember Swap is disk use to compensate for low RAM availability.) Reduce swap use and you will proportionately gain in performance... Not to mention increase the life span of your Hard disk. Conversely if you really want to improve system performance move the remainder swap file to another disk (not another partition since it only minimally will increase performance).
I've just built a new machine and dedicated just over 1Gig to Windows out of 4Gig. I have 58 processes.
Depends what software you're using. I wouldn't necessarily saying that using a gig or more of RAM is "clogging it up!" Some people use software that requires lots of RAM. Games. Or some design software like various versions of CAD. Myself...I've seen some versions of the popular online FPS game Battlefield nudge to the gig of RAM mark when loading large maps with lots of online players. I don't consider using RAM a bad thing..I like to play some games that require a good amount of horsepower to run well, that's why I bought the RAM. RAM is so dirt cheap these days anyways...why not spend a few extra bucks to stuff the box full of it.
Do you mean you allocated physical simm banks from a Hardware perspective when you load the Memory banks and not a software based allocation?
I´ve managed to run XP on 128 MB of RAM. IMHO: -512 MB is the minimun for light multitasking, most of the games -1024 MB is the sweet spot -2048 MB only for heavy multitasking, the lastest games and the heavy "Pro" apps -4096 MB for 64-bit OS and heavy workstations
I am running XP Pro X64 with 4 gigs and pushing it hard and never used above 2.3 Gigs Ram. I tried trust me...
Good to know. Just for curiosity, have you tried HD video editing? What about Vista? Seems to be a memory hog
No, not really. I am more of a systems geek. However I did do some setups/Admin for clients who do. They all swear on Opteron and XP Pro X64 now. I only tried Vista inside a virtual machine where I had only allocated 1Gig of RAM so I cant really offer good insight from that perspective. However I probably wont bother with Vista for a while... There is not enough there for me to really get excited about yet. I have used the "Kool" interface via WindowBlinds for some time and I am already running things in 64 bit. I just like the performance of X64. It's stable, secured and fast...
