Is it necessary to have more than 512MB of RAM with Vista?

[Navid]

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2079121&enterthread=y

I am considering buying this laptop for someone who will only be reading and sending emails.
May be viewing pictures sent through email.
Clicking on links in emails that take you to utube etc.

No gaming.
No photoshop.

Do you think the laptop will be noticeably slow because Vista needs more RAM?

 

[bsobel]

My personal opinion is 1gig is the minimum, 2 gig the current sweet spot. If I was forced to stay at 512meg I'd probably opt for XP for now unless I could upgrade to 1gig within a month or two.

 

[Lord Banshee]

1GB is so cheap i would not play in vista unless you had more than 512MB.

I had to upgrade my laptop memory from 512MB->1GB using WinXP because i thought it was too slow, i would hate to have seen it with vista installed.

Also will use the extra ram it has to store most used files and so the overall feel of the os and program will be faster. I have a couple of EE CAD programs are boot really quick in vista compared to WinXP, but they also have problems in vista so i use them in XP... i can wait one extra sec lol.

 

[dphantom]

Get at least 1GB. You'll wish you had as soon as you first boot up the laptop.

 

[Noema]

Less than 1GB would be pretty painful (similar to XP with 256MB perhaps). I don't know why OEMs like Dell are still selling lappys with 512MB and Vista :Q (Well, at least they do here in Mexico). And I agree with bsobel: If you can't get more RAM, stay away from Vista and use XP or a lean Linux distro like Xubuntu.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Noema
Less than 1GB would be pretty painful (similar to XP with 256MB perhaps). I don't know why OEMs like Dell are still selling lappys with 512MB and Vista :Q (Well, at least they do here in Mexico). And I agree with bsobel: If you can't get more RAM, stay away from Vista and use XP or a lean Linux distro like Xubuntu.

Yea, the low memory machines with Vista just make Vista look really bad. I wish Dell and others would just admit whats needed and stop trying to sell overloaded machines underloaded with memory.

 

[BD2003]

Necessary? Nah. It'll work with 512mb. But I wouldnt even consider it - it will run much, much faster with 1gb, and an extra 512mb of memory is dirt cheap. I have a 512mb laptop myself (max 768mb), so I just run XP on it...Vista really doesnt belong with only 512mb. By minimum, they mean *bare minimum*, as in you HAVE to run vista for some reason and you can't possibly upgrade.

 

[AllGamer]

512 in vista will feel like a turtle on land

give it 1024 to vista and it will be like a hungry turtle on land

give it 1536 and vista will be like a happy turtle in water (FYI turtle in water are extremely fast)

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: AllGamer
512 in vista will feel like a turtle on land

give it 1024 to vista and it will be like a hungry turtle on land

give it 1536 and vista will be like a happy turtle in water (FYI turtle in water are extremely fast)

LoL :laugh: Perfect analogy, I'd say that's spot on. Vista will work good enough with 1gb, but I found it to be a little laggy. I didn't try it with 1.5gb, but I imagine that's significantly better. I personally like nice round numbers, so I'd suggest 2gb, or 4gb. The very nice thing about Vista, is that it'll use all the ram you give it. I noticed a improvement going from 2gb to 4gb(3.07 as seen by Vista32). It wasn't a mind blowing speedup, but it made everything feel a little snappier. As cheap as ram is now, I would always fill my box to capacity.

 

[Chadder007]

If you don't want to be pulling your hair out.....yes.

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: AllGamer
512 in vista will feel like a turtle on land

give it 1024 to vista and it will be like a hungry turtle on land

give it 1536 and vista will be like a happy turtle in water (FYI turtle in water are extremely fast)

Great analogy, I love it!

And from personal experience I have found this to be the case. Even with a meager 1GB ReadyBoost stick my laptop was horribly slow with 512MB of memory. The upgrade to 1GB helped but WoW still crashes after playing a while because of memory conflicts with the GMA950.

If you can afford it go with 2GB. All of my new Vista machines have 2GB and you can really tell the difference. It's awesome.

 

[shortylickens]

Absolutely necessary?
No.

But like others have stated: The purpose of an OS is to run your computer. If it runs like crap the OS isnt doing you much good.
Get the extra RAM, you'll be happier.

You can get 2GB of cheap stuff for a reasonable price nowadays.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...77&bop=And&Order=PRICE

Corsair is a good name and its only 76 bucks.

I got some super fast OCZ and spent a bit more, but I dont mind.


EDIT: XP was the same way. In theory it could run with 128 megs.
But anyone who upgraded from 128 to 512 can tell you it makes a world of difference, even with just web browsing and running one MS Office program at a time.