Much difference between 512MB and 1GB RAM?

[HotDealFinder.com]

Hello world!

I've got a P4PE and a 512MB stick of Crucial PC2700 333Mhz on the way. I'm not a gamer -- I think I may be a memory-hungry business user, though. In XP I normally have 15+ instances of Explorer open, Outlook (which I believe opens Word for composing email), Adobe ImageReady, Excel, CuteFTP Pro, StyleXP, and Winamp running. I was hoping to drop two additional 256MB Crucial PC2100 ECC sticks in the machine bumping it up to 1GB, but apparently the board accepts non-ECC only. I remember learning in a freshmen 'Intro to Computers' college course that more RAM = more applications you can have running at the same time. Is that history or is it still pretty accurate? Would I feel much of a difference between 512MB & 1GB? Should I consider two additional 512MB sticks?

Thanks,
Michael

 

[Sunner]

Probably not, I'd say it's rather hard to max out 512 MB without running some heavy apps like Photoshop, Lightwave, some CAD program, etc, regular iexplore, word, etc is unlikely to max 512.

Anyways, just pull up the taskmanager when you have a bunch of apps open and look at the memory usage, if you're not up to 512 there's really no point.

 

[vegetation]

I have to agree, 512 megs is an extremely healthy amount of memory. I would save the money for now.

 

[arcenite]

Originally posted by: vegetation
I have to agree, 512 megs is an extremely healthy amount of memory. I would save the money for now.

Bill

 

[JKing76]

Unless you're accessing and processing multi-million cell Excel files, 512 should be plenty.

 

[arswihart]

I'll have to ask the same question.

Do you think 512 mb is enough for doing serious audio sequencer work? Keep in mind you work with some relatively large files (ex. 50 mb .wav files)

I am wondering if someday, if RAM prices drop, should I go ahead and get an additional 512 mb to make my total 1 gig.Text

 

[Oreo]

Basically, if you're doing heavy media editing, you can't ever have too much RAM. So you'll probably benefit from 1GB RAM.

 

[HotDealFinder.com]

Thank you, all, for the advice. I'll keep an eye on my memory usage and make sure I'm not getting too close to maxing things out. Anyway, with memory prices constantly dropping, I'll probably be able to get another 512MB in the near future for a coupl'a bucks.

Thanks again,
Michael

 

[Lonyo]

useful proggie that monitors RAM useage.
I have 1 gig of RAM, and if I'm useing something such as UnrealEd, then it can go above 512MB used, this is UnrealEd and Winamp only, and some games, such as Discworld Noir also use a lot of RAM. I rarely manage to hit even 256MB though, under normal use (surfing the net etc).
Managed to get it up to 280-300MB, with 13IExplorer windows, Windows Media Player, Outlook Express, MSN Messenger, Winamp, Statbar, Word, Excel.
You should be fine unless you want to audio/video edit, make computer game maps or play something with lots of rendered backgrounds.
The program should help you check as you go along how much RAM you're using, so you can double check if it nears danger level.

 

[DimZiE]

since i am doing a lot of rendering w/ 3dsmax 5 and photoshop for texture creation i found that being able to have 1 GB of memory in my system is a blessing.. ( i still can play mp3's with winamp while rendering )

 

[corkyg]

I have two P4PE systems, and each has 1024 MB of Corsair PC3200 DDR. They would work fine with 512, but I do a lot of imagery processing, still and video, and the extra memory gets used. When doing normal work, the pagefile just doesn't get used much at all.

 

[arswihart]

Hey corky-g, how's your vx900 for imaging work? How about games, movies?

 

[magomago]

then would one consider it wise to disable virtual memory? On my comp I just built (grrrr....my Asus mobo was jacked...last time I buy asus...I know they are a great company, but one experience does ruin it 4 me...next time i'll try soltek) I have 512 megs of ram.... I occaisonally encode a divx anime to svcd...I play mainly counterstrike and listen to winamp while typing up some report

would it benefit me if I disabled VM altogether so then windows would actually use all 512 megs of ram instead of using a 1/5 and then start to fill up the VM

Bts, I'm win2k pro

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: vegetation
I have to agree, 512 megs is an extremely healthy amount of memory. I would save the money for now.

Or put it into something else.. 512 is perfect.. more = not necessary in 99% of home users' cases.