Was it worth me getting 1GB of DDR RAM?

[Britboy]

I built a new PC a few months ago and as RAM prices were so low, I bought 2 sticks of 512MB Mushkin PC2100 DDR. My question is - was it worth buying that extra stick? I've seen a lot of high spec'd PC's that only had 256MB.

I'm running Win2K Pro, and know that it can make use of the full gig, but will it really need to? Apart from Windows apps, I play UT, Quake III, Max Payne, and soon RTCW. Without running games, I've never seen more than 300MB of RAM in use, don't even know how much the games are using.

System Specs:
Athlon 1600 XP, Shuttle AK31A KT266A, 1 GB PC 2100 DDR RAM, Geforce 3 200 TI ($99 at Best Buy, hehe), IBM 60GB 7200, SB Live 5.1, Logitech Z560's

Thanks in advance for the insight

 

[ojai00]

Well, I don't really see the need for 1GB of RAM. I think that 512MB is enough on any normal computer. Unless you're doing really intense graphics work like with Photoshop or something, you don't need it. But since you have it...make good use of it!!!!

 

[suicideKing]

use 512 MB for PC ram and use the other 512 for a ram disk!

see www.cenatek.com

 

[MasterHoss]

512 MB will be the sweet spot for Win2k and WinXP for sure. Anything over that will basically deminish your returns...especially for what you use your computer for.

 

[Britboy]

SuicideKing, that RAMdisk sounds cool, I'll have to try it out, thanks for the suggestion!

 

[LanEvoVI]

Wow...that RAMdisk program looks really cool. Is anyone actually using it yet?

 

[ChrisIsBored]

512MB is definately a sweet spot and for gaming you shouldn't really have a need for much more. Like ojai00 said, if you were running multimedia applications then they might take good use of the extra RAM.

Otherwise it's probably just a waste.

I'm looking for a stick of 512MB PC2100. If you're interested in selling it off PM me with a price.

 

[Workin']

No matter what anyone says, there are 3 basic rules for computers:

1. You CPU can never be too fast
2. You hard drive can never be too big
3. You can never have too much RAM

Anyone who says otherwise is just jealous or can't afford it.

 

[RedShirt]

What about back in the Intel days where some pentium chipsets would preform worse with over 64MB of RAM!

HAHAHHAHHAHAHAAH- The one exception.

 

[Dunbar]

<< 3. You can never have too much RAM

Anyone who says otherwise is just jealous or can't afford it. >>


You can have enough though. Anything over that is a waste of money, period. Given what 512MB sticks of RAM cost it's hardly cost effective to max out your RAM with them.

 

[watdahel]

The more the better.

If you do video editing, you can encode an entire movie to ram(provided movie is smaller than ram available) and then have it save to harddisk after encoding. Since ram is faster than harddrive you won't have to worry of slow I/O slowing down your frame rate.

 

[spazntwich1]

<< Wow...that RAMdisk program looks really cool. Is anyone actually using it yet? >>



AHH! Don't use it!!! DONT DONT DONT!

I just messed around with the shareware version. I've got 768 megs of ram, and 611 of them were free. It wouldn't let me create a ram disk over 128 megs in size though. After I switched around a few options, (NOT use excluded RAM), I got it working at 128 megs of ram. However, right after it started working, ym system's stability plumeted. I started getting errors saying I was out of ram if I tried to start ANYTHING. I started getting very strange errors.

I restarted.

On bootup, all of my icons were gone, and many programs that tried to start said "file XXXXX.dll is not a valid windows image file, blah blah". My active desktop disappeared. I managed to get the damn program uninstalled. Upon reboot, everything appears to still work, but my ENTIRE SET OF TRILLIAN PREFERENCES are gone! Destroyed! *cry*

Save yourself the headache and avoid this program!

 

[BeauJangles]

<< No matter what anyone says, there are 3 basic rules for computers:

1. You CPU can never be too fast
2. You hard drive can never be too big
3. You can never have too much RAM

Anyone who says otherwise is just jealous or can't afford it. >>




Rule 3 doesn't apply anymore... look at the Nforce.

 

[smp]

No matter what anyone says, there are 3 basic rules for computers:

1. You CPU can never be too fast
2. You hard drive can never be too big
3. You can never have too much RAM

Anyone who says otherwise is just jealous or can't afford it.

I'll have to disagree as well. I do agree with the statement that you can have enough. If you aren't going to use it, then how is it never enough?
I don't think you need 1 gig of ram. I think you wasted your money.

 

[Workin']

<< I think you wasted your money. >>

Practically speaking -

If you have a more than a gigahertz CPU you wasted your money.

If you have a 60GB hard drive you wasted your money.

If you have a Geforce 3 you wasted your money.

etc, etc, etc, etc.

How do you decide when enough is enough? 640 kilobytes used to be enough. 4.88 megahertz used to be enough. A 14" monitor used to be huge.

I recently bought a gig of RAM, right at the trough of memory prices - it cost a whopping $110 delivered to my doorstep. It would have been stupid NOT to get it.

 

[WheelsCSM]

It may be overkill, but the way the prices were a while ago, why not? Anyway, why does it matter if it was worth it or not? You allready have it, and more RAM doesn't REALLY hurt. I agree it may not be economically justifiable, but so what.