How much RAM is too much RAM??

[junkie47]

have purchased two 256MB DDR2100 RAM modules from Crucial in anticipation of the upcoming AMD Palimino chip for a total price of $141. Considering the very low price for RAM, what is a realistic limit (if any)for system RAM when playing games and doing graphical programs. Any input appreciated as I might just buy more at today's prices. Regards, Donn Ganley

[Bsdboy]

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/013815.html

Bsdboy

[DemonKnight]

Get a decent OS like win2k and max the board out. if the OS supports it why not take advantage of it? some board are able to take 1.5Gb of ram. Photoshop and other image type program will love you and your system will be faster since it doesnt have to use the swap file as much (some times never)

[NDC]

I see many people say that more RAM is always better... That's very untrue. (That's unless you like to waste money)

This also applies to people who are doing graphics. How much memory is required depends on what kind of graphic work you're doing. Let's say for example that you're doing a lot of graphics where the image will be output to a printer. In this case, much RAM would be needed since you'll be working with actual size images... A 32bit color photo at the size of 29.7cm X 21.0cm (A4 size) (8653 X 6118 pixels) is at least 140+ Mb in size in PSD format. And of course you're most likely going to be multi-tasking and may have several images opened at one time. Therefore, having much RAM can be advantageous. Vector based programs such as Illustrator can hold much information on the same size mentioned above at much smaller data size, so the story would change there also...

On the other hand, if you're going to be working with web images, you won't need much RAM since web images need to be small in size for the pages to load quickly. Even when you're making a RAW layout of the page you're making, it won't exceed over 3MB per file in layered PSD format...

As for gaming, I don't see a point in adding more than 384MB memory at this time...

The best thing I could suggest is to run System Monitor. Run it for the period you're using the system and see how much the system is accessing the Page File (Virtual Memory). This will help you determine how much RAM is right for you...

I'm currently running 1GB PC-133 memory and I use every bit of it under the conditions I work in. In some cases, even 1GB cuts short where my Win2k will access the page file...

[This message has been edited by NDC (edited 06-07-2001).]