Ram: Too much?

[P T]

Can you have too much ram?

I understand you can go up to the limit of the motherboard, but at some
point, are you just wasting your money with excess capacity? How do you
tell?

Pete

 

[JK]

What OS are you using? What do you run? How many programs do you
tend to keep open at once? How much ram do you have now?
Most users would be comfortable with 512 meg of ram if they are running
Windows XP. Those running Photoshop with large images are advised
to have over a gig of ram.

 

[Phisherman]

Can you have too much ram?

I understand you can go up to the limit of the motherboard, but at some
point, are you just wasting your money with excess capacity? How do you
tell?

Pete

Yes you can have too much RAM, but that's not common. I'd probably go
for 1 gig of RAM at most, and I think 512MB should be enough for the
typical PC. But, really it depends on what you are running! Monitor
your memory usage with graphs or reports to find out. Too much RAM
is wasting money plus adds heat to your box.

 

[P T]

...Monitor your memory usage
with graphs or reports to find out....

How?

Running XP, Athlon xp2000, 384mg pc133, 40g hd, k7s5a, mostly surfing.

I suspect you'll say I have enough for this kind of modest system &
demands, but how exactly do you tell?
Thanks
Pete

 

[JK]

You could press CTRL_ALT-DEL and hit the performance tab and see
how much physical memory is available when you have the applications
you typically use open. You could do that at different times as the selection
of applications you typically use changes. If you see plenty of free ram,
then you don't need more ram.

 

[John R Weiss]

How?

Running XP, Athlon xp2000, 384mg pc133, 40g hd, k7s5a, mostly surfing.

I suspect you'll say I have enough for this kind of modest system &
demands, but how exactly do you tell?

The Win Task Manager is the easiest/cheapest. Hit Ctrl-Alt-Esc to bring it up,
then the Performance tab. Look at the Physical Memory box.

Then you can go to the Processes tab and see which of them are using that RAM.
Click the Mem Usage header twice to sort them in descending order.

If you still have physical memory available, and the PF Usage (Page File or
Virtual memory) doesn't go up significantly when you open another app, you have
enough RAM. In general, though, you have plenty for surfing, and can probably
open MS Word and/or Outlook Express at the same time with no problems.

 

[Phisherman]

I'm not familiar with XP, but with Windows 98SE or 2000 install System
Monitor and System Resource Meter (in the control panel | add/remove
programs | Windows Setup | System Tools). You may need your Windows
CD.

 

[John Doe]

I'm not familiar with XP, but with Windows 98SE or 2000 install System
Monitor ...

I miss System Monitor. I use Performance Monitor but it takes a whole lot
more screen space to show the same information. With system Monitor, I
could hit escape to make the menu bar disappear, make the window very
small, and move it to the upper right hand area of my screen. Oh well. I'm
not surprised Microsoft did away with another very useful tool.