How much RAM is too much RAM?

[KuSang]

Building a high-end performance gaming system. More that likely:
1 Gig Athlon
Abit KT7 RAID
GeForce DDR (will upgrade when next gen comes)

How much RAM should I have? Right now I'm thinking 1 256M stick of PC133. Will there be any difference if I go another 128? Or all the way up to 512? Saw another post where a guy is doing 3 x 256!!!

KuSang

 

[Spook]

Anything over 256 is pretty much a waste, if you are running a Win9x kernal. If you are running Win2000 then the more the better, but I would say over 384 is going to do much...

 

[Cknyc]

anything over 512 is a waste. Actually for me anything over 256 is a waste (I never used up more than 200 megs). But i would still like 512.

 

[KuSang]

Yeah, Win98 kernal (ME to be specific). Thanks for the input everyone.

KuSang

 

[Ulysses]

See http://www.kingston.com/tools/assess/default.asp

 

[Rand]

How much RAM is "too" much will vary from person to person depending on their OS of choice and what their doing with the computer.

With the Win9X kernel anything over 256MB is usually a waste and even that amount is very rarely going to be touched at best. What do you intend to do with the computer?

 

[xtreme2k]

go with 256 for now since u got 1G Athlon

128 is the standard now

so u wana be 1 step ahead

i got 256 running win2000
does feel running smoother than 128

 

[KuSang]

Rand: Gaming, high-end gaming. Mostly your FPS's...Q3, UT, HL, all which take a lot of system resources. 256 seems to be the general consensus. So another 128 stick would be overkill?

KuSang

 

[Goi]

Too much RAM is when you have more memory than your motherboard supports

 

[Howard]

Too much memory is when you get a Supermicro Memory Expansion Card, which supports up to 16GB SDRAM total.

 

[TGCid]

Really depending if you gonna do a lot of multitasking with memory intensive stuff. If you do, there can never be enough so buy how much your budget allows you to. Remember when Bill said, "640k ought to be enough for everybody?" Heh.

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

some proffesional programs like CAD could use a lot more than 256mb, or possibly 512mb of ram.

 

[Hardware]

Sweet spot is 512 for photoshop use max (for me 768)!

 

[XMan]

I work with a guy who's running a dual P3-450 with a gig of RAM.

It's a CAD-CAM machine though - it's interfaced with a laser model maker that's used to make three-dimensional models of prototypes. Pretty cool - they just stick a block of plastic in this machine, load the design, and it "builds" it.

 

[SCUBA]

gaming = 128 ram no more
dont lissen to these guys they are crazy about HD like my self
more than 128 wont help alot u wont get that much pref for the 300$ that ur ganna spend on an other 128 dimms

 

[Mutilator]

You could always get as much ram as you could afford and then run your games off of RAMdrives... I'd like to try that sometime... but I'd need about 512mb more RAM lol

 

[Warrenton]

Scuba, I get swapping in UT with 128MB. I run 512 myself, and am considering for my next machine 1-2GB.

If a person knows where to set things, you can use all the ram in your system

 

[ltk007]

In win2k its good to have 256, but 128 in win98 is enough.

 

[Spawn]

well a 256 mb ram will be more than enough fore swapping and paging in win98
But the win2k beast eats ram on the concept of the more you give the more i eat
by the way 512 will be enough to run my enterprise network easily..

 

[SCUBA]

128 is very good for games its a lot of moany u r talking about
and if u get swapping in UT with 128MB get a better video card man
and for a high end gaming sys 256 is very very good as anandtech says in its latest high end gaming sys article
i mean more than 256 is only for [rich guys] who wont to get the very very best gaming in the world and it wont be a more than 5 % better than a normal 128 ram

 

[Spawn]

1 Gig Athlon
Abit KT7 RAID
GeForce DDR (will upgrade when next gen comes)

Sorry Scuba these specifications say's this guy is rich
Let him do till 256 mb ram.

 

[Spawn]

I think you do understand that the question talks about an average desktop pc.
Please don't try to go of track cause that ain't good for health

 

[SCUBA]

ok stop guys iv got it you nkow what go get ur self a 516 DDRSDRAM
and play ur games

 

[Niege]

Does anyone use a ramdisk for their swapfile? I think I heard strange things about that, but would that be a reason for obscene amounts of RAM?

 

[Quickfingerz]

hey! realize this, if you have 512 mb of ram, you can turn virtual memory off and have a very big disk cache size. Using your hard drive as ram significantly hinders a win98 system. with 512 mb of ram, you won't need to do it.