1 GB ram for Vista Basic

tigersty1e

Golden Member
Dec 13, 2004
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Is 1 GB of RAM okay with Vista Basic?

I plan on gaming, but I've been out of the loop for a while, so I still haven't played games from '05-'07.

I figure once I start playing games from '07, I'll get 2 gigs.
 

bucwylde23

Diamond Member
Apr 21, 2005
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That should probably be 'OK' for some older games. but you'd definitely benefit by upgrading.

I originally had 1 GB in Vista while waiting for my extra 2 GB to arrive. It was fine for basic stuff and very light gaming. but with 3 GB it soooo smooth.
 

Schadenfroh

Elite Member
Mar 8, 2003
38,416
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Vista does not have the fancy new 3D desktop or anything like that, put that sucker into classic mode if you are having problems with performance at desktop by going into the control panel > classic view > system > advanced > performance (settings) > adjust for best performance > apply > ok.

Ram intensive games (sim city 4, Battlefield 2) would run much better with 2gb. But, you would probably still be able to play several games with just 1gb of ram.
 

hans007

Lifer
Feb 1, 2000
20,212
18
81
its probably ok though ram is pretty cheap now. i have run vista on 512mb and its ok for normal work.

just turn off the spyware scanner and firewall, whichshould free up some ram.
 

soonerproud

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2007
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Originally posted by: postmortemIA
you'll probably have to turn off superfetch if you plan to play games.

No he won't. Superfetch is set up to clear the memory if a running application needs the memory resources. Do not turn off Superfetch unless you want to get rid of one of the major advantages Vista has over XP.
 

postmortemIA

Diamond Member
Jul 11, 2006
7,721
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Originally posted by: soonerproud
Originally posted by: postmortemIA
you'll probably have to turn off superfetch if you plan to play games.

No he won't. Superfetch is set up to clear the memory if a running application needs the memory resources. Do not turn off Superfetch unless you want to get rid of one of the major advantages Vista has over XP.

o it is gonna be so fast when superfetch allocates up to last MB and then all of that needs to be freed for game...

truth is, with 1GB he won't get much benefit of superfetch.
 

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
60,962
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Originally posted by: postmortemIA
Originally posted by: soonerproud
Originally posted by: postmortemIA
you'll probably have to turn off superfetch if you plan to play games.

No he won't. Superfetch is set up to clear the memory if a running application needs the memory resources. Do not turn off Superfetch unless you want to get rid of one of the major advantages Vista has over XP.

o it is gonna be so fast when superfetch allocates up to last MB and then all of that needs to be freed for game...

truth is, with 1GB he won't get much benefit of superfetch.

It's not like squirrels are hand carrying the bits from memory to hd or anything. It's pretty much instantaneous. He won't have as much a benefit from Superfetch, but anything beats a blank.
 

soonerproud

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2007
1,874
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Originally posted by: postmortemIA
Originally posted by: soonerproud
Originally posted by: postmortemIA
you'll probably have to turn off superfetch if you plan to play games.

No he won't. Superfetch is set up to clear the memory if a running application needs the memory resources. Do not turn off Superfetch unless you want to get rid of one of the major advantages Vista has over XP.

o it is gonna be so fast when superfetch allocates up to last MB and then all of that needs to be freed for game...

truth is, with 1GB he won't get much benefit of superfetch.

And if that game is the most used application it will be what superfetch resides in memory. Turning it off will do nothing to improve performance.
 

spyordie007

Diamond Member
May 28, 2001
6,229
0
0
My wife has 768MB in her laptop and it works fine for basic office use. As others have pointed out you're going to have to be careful that your game doesn't have too big of a footprint; some of the newer games can eat up a lot of RAM.
 

Skeeedunt

Platinum Member
Oct 7, 2005
2,777
3
76
I was stuck with 1gb for a while and could run WoW on Vista just fine (alt-tab'ing out to Firefox took a few minutes though, so it was probably right on the edge). More recent games could be pushing it.