tomshardware.com— This is a great article on improving your computer's performance and figuring out what your system needs as far memory goes.
Jan 15, 2006View in Crawl 4
Fact of the matter is: you can never have enough ram...But most people won't need more than 1GB and they cost about $80, honestly, I don't see how they could write a twelve page article on this topic.
@Paul in NYC, and the rest of you talking about Windows memory limitations:I thought XP was limited to 4GB, but decided to check out Microsoft's website to be sure."Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 Memory Support. The maximum amount of memory that can be supported on Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 is also 4 GB. However, Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition supports 32 GB of physical RAM and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition supports 64 GB of physical RAM using the PAE feature.The virtual address space of processes and applications is still limited to 2 GB unless the /3GB switch is used in the Boot.ini file. When the physical RAM in the system exceeds 16 GB and the /3GB switch is used, the operating system will ignore the additional RAM until the /3GB switch is removed. This is because of the increased size of the kernel required to support more Page Table Entries. The assumption is made that the administrator would rather not lose the /3GB functionality silently and automatically; therefore, this requires the administrator to explicitly change this setting."<a class="user" href="http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx">http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx</a> for the limitations of the other versions of Windows.I found this comment particularly insteresting:"Operating systems based on Microsoft® Windows NT® technologies have always provided applications with a flat 32-bit virtual address space that describes 4 gigabytes (GB) of virtual memory. The address space is usually split so that 2 GB of address space is directly accessible to the application and the other 2 GB is only accessible to the Windows executive software."
kolossJan 15, 2006
Fact of the matter is: you can never have enough ram...But most people won't need more than 1GB and they cost about $80, honestly, I don't see how they could write a twelve page article on this topic.
misterponyJan 16, 2006
Tom's Hardware has a lot of good articles but they are idiots to put all their articles spread out over 12 pages with one paragraph/page.
shadowmosesJan 16, 2006
`RAM= Happiness
paul_in_ncJan 16, 2006
I'll take 1GB of value RAM any day. IMHO mainly overclockers want/need/require/desire the Performance RAM.
jhorraJan 16, 2006
I do development at work with 2GB of ram. I still occasionally get "system low on resources" errors.
mdmoyaJan 16, 2006
@Paul in NYC, and the rest of you talking about Windows memory limitations:I thought XP was limited to 4GB, but decided to check out Microsoft's website to be sure."Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 Memory Support. The maximum amount of memory that can be supported on Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 is also 4 GB. However, Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition supports 32 GB of physical RAM and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition supports 64 GB of physical RAM using the PAE feature.The virtual address space of processes and applications is still limited to 2 GB unless the /3GB switch is used in the Boot.ini file. When the physical RAM in the system exceeds 16 GB and the /3GB switch is used, the operating system will ignore the additional RAM until the /3GB switch is removed. This is because of the increased size of the kernel required to support more Page Table Entries. The assumption is made that the administrator would rather not lose the /3GB functionality silently and automatically; therefore, this requires the administrator to explicitly change this setting."<a class="user" href="http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx">http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx</a> for the limitations of the other versions of Windows.I found this comment particularly insteresting:"Operating systems based on Microsoft® Windows NT® technologies have always provided applications with a flat 32-bit virtual address space that describes 4 gigabytes (GB) of virtual memory. The address space is usually split so that 2 GB of address space is directly accessible to the application and the other 2 GB is only accessible to the Windows executive software."
phlllJan 16, 2006
640k ought to be enough for anybody.
jmoneyJan 16, 2006Submitter
Same here.
osiriscky3Jan 16, 2006
this is market hype
xtardoxAug 31, 2006
tom had a decent look at this topic a while back<a class="user" href="http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/13/how_much_ram_do_you_really_need/">http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/13/how_much_ram_do_you_really_need/</a>