Win2K RAM Hype??

[RxL77]

EVerybody says Win2k needs at least 256 Megs of RAM to be decent... Right now, I have 192 and it seems pretty good. Now is it worth it to buy a 256mB stick and pump my system up to 384? (Gotta remove that 64 meg stick though) I mean, how much speed are we talking about? 256, blah blah blah, worth it?

 

[AndyHui]

Depends on what you want to do with the system.

I tend to agree that some people tend to overstate the RAM requirements for Win2K. I achieve excellent performance with 192MB; at 256MB I see no difference in performance. However, I do not multi-task that heavily, nor do I regularly play that many games.

 

[RxL77]

Ahh, I play Counterstrike, multitask with Office apps, do some website design with Flash, Dreamweaver, nothing super super intensive. 192 is good? or 256? I also suffer from a really long startup after I log into Win2k... even though I have only two programs in the StartUp Menu. i'm a little new to Win2k... how do i edit the startup menu like in the older versoins of Windows? Thanks

 

[AndyHui]

While you can copy over MSCONFIG.EXE for limited functionality, StartUp Control Panel from Mike Lin is far more flexible and full featured, and works perfectly under Win2K.

 

[rbV5]

The difference from say 192 to 256 of course is not that great, but you are sitting at the lower limit before you start swapping to your HD, which definately will affect performance. My rig started with 128mb and the jump from 128 to 384 was a substantial difference(probably similar to going from 128-256 actually)in performance in everyday computing(noticed no difference at all going from 384mb to 640mb), but I do video editing and graphics work as well and at times still swap during editing, but adding the extra 256 made a big difference with large files.

With the price of ram and you say you multitask office applications, it certainly wouldn't be a waste, but maybe not a big difference as well.

I also use Startup Control Panel to configure my Applications that load at startup(great BTW) and your long bootup is maybe from Win2k looking for your network.

 

[MattCo]

I jumped from 128 to 256 and noticed a large difference. Of course ram is so cheap that I recently went to 512, I noticed a pretty small increase.

-MC

 

[ProviaFan]

Going from 64 MB to 192 MB makes an EXTREMELY LARGE difference in Windows 2000 Pro (I speak from personal experience here . But going beyond that will probably help only if you like to run lots of stuff at once, and edit digital video/audio, like one of the other posters in this thread.

 

[AndyHui]

Oh yes....64MB is certainly not enough for decent performance under Win2K. While it is fine with 128MB, I really think that everything has more room to move at 160MB or above.

 

[OREOSpeedwagon]

Yes, it does depend on what you want to do with it. 128mb of RAM works fine for me.

 

[bjc112]

i would go 256 just to be safe, and FUTURE PROOFED....

its so cheap, WHY NOT??

Bryan

 

[Junior77]

I just filled up my 3 slots with 256MB chips because i hate to see things empty. I'm going to school soon to learn programming, web design, so it will come in handy.

 

[d33pt]

if you want faster bootup time.. get a faster hd.. that maeks a world of a difference

 

[Sunner]

Just pull up the task manager occasionally and see how much memory you consume.
If you find yourself exceeding 192 MB often, an upgrade would make sense, if you dont, then not

 

[Shudder]

I think basic users could be just fine with 128.

My buddy did nothing much but word, online, mp3s.. and I don't think he got much past 100 if ever. I'm sure he'll eventually do more at once, but at 192, which I ran 2000 at for quite some time, it was good and had no problems.

Now, if you run Diablo 2 I think you could use about 500 megs of ram, that's about the only program I've seen that will use about all you have

At any rate, 128MB of ram is a 35 dollar issue these days.

 

[BreakApart]

192mb in my w2k Laptop has been simply sweet.
All my desktop W2K machines at work and home get 256mb.

This has been the perfect amount for my systems...

Now if your running Exchange or any of those other hard-core programs-(video editing) then more is always better. But for normal/average use 256mb is plenty.

*just my 2 cents*