Would I benefit from increasing my RAM from 2GB to 4GB?

Forums › Desktop computing › Would I benefit from increasing my RAM from 2GB to 4GB?

Satch

1985 posts

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#33814 12-May-2009 12:29

Hi,

I'm currently running Vista Home Premium 32bit on my desktop PC, and have 2GB of RAM installed. Would I see any performance increases if I were to add an additional 2GB of RAM?

Not sure what other information to give. Please let me know if I need to provide more details.

Thanks.

heavenlywild

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#214337 12-May-2009 12:44

A 32-bit system won't utilise more than 3GBs of RAM. Add an extra gig and you will find multi-tasking a lot smoother.

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Satch

1985 posts

Uber Geek

#214340 12-May-2009 12:46

heavenly_wild: A 32-bit system won't utilise more than 3GBs of RAM. Add an extra gig and you will find multi-tasking a lot smoother.

Oh, for some reason I thought 32-bit maxed out at 4GB. Thanks for the help!

NokiaRocks

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#214342 12-May-2009 12:57

2 ^ 32 = 4 294 967 296 ~4GB, but after swap/page file and shared graphics memory you usually end up around 3-3.5GB

mjb

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#214356 12-May-2009 13:59

Not true, if PAE is enabled you can get up to 64GB, depending on the OS release.

See: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778.aspx

Vista is limited to 4GB.

edit: actually, up to 128GB.

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Batman

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#214404 12-May-2009 16:16

4 gig is possible as far as i understand, but that's not your question.

in absolute terms, yes. there are programs that use ridiculous amount of ram - internet explorer being the main culprit for most (after a few hours though - the ram usage just climbs for no reason), and some that use lots eg some games, photo and esp video editing. or if you leave 25 applications open at all times.

in relative terms, you wont really notice much speed improvement. unless you're using over 1.4 gig all the time (thats when i find the system starts to cache in a 2gig ram system - hdd goes wild), instead of sometimes. people say you will have more ram to be used for caching/'prefetch' but really, in my books it hardly changes much. unless you're a poweruser like some of the other geeks, but i doubt that otherwise you wouldn't be asking this on the forum! (sorry)

Satch

1985 posts

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#214442 12-May-2009 18:21

No, definitely not a "power user". Don't even play games. So I guess I'm sweet with my 2GBs then. Thanks all for your comments.

mjb

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#214454 12-May-2009 19:26

joker97: internet explorer being the main culprit for most (after a few hours though - the ram usage just climbs for no reason)

Just adding an FYI here - it's not limited to IE. More often than not it'll be related to memory leaks in poorly coded javascript. This is especially true when it comes to sites using AJAX.

Of course, this doesn't let IE off the hook, it still has a bad track record for memory issues.

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Pskonejott

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#215242 16-May-2009 14:10

FYI the way memory works with something like Vista Home Premium 32 or your XP home 32 bit OS's, you are limited to 4GB of address space. You need address space for your buses (PCI etc.) which is often a 512MB block. If you have a dedicated graphics chipset the graphics RAM belonging to that chipset will also need address space, so if you have 512MB you typically drop to 3GB of address space available for RAM. If you have onboard graphics often you will be able to address 3.5GB of RAM.

Satch, personally I got a Vista Home Premium laptop with 2GB of RAM and immediately put another 2GB in because the OS overheads and video encoding software were nearly reaching the 1.7GB mark.