How much RAM do we need?

JOSHSKORN said:
OK but with what resolution? Is it as good as playing it in a standalone blu-ray player and playing it on a 52" HDTV?
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To my experience, yes. 2GB of memory is enough for most tasks. For watching hi-def video like blu-ray, you want more video and/or cpu processing power.

I'm running a laptop with Intel Pentium dual core (T2370) running at 1.73GHz with 2GB of memory and an integrated intel graphics. It runs blue ray files just fine (That's 1920x1080 resolution).
 
JOSHSKORN said:
OK but with what resolution? Is it as good as playing it in a standalone blu-ray player and playing it on a 52" HDTV?
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The 52" TV with 1920x1080 rez isn't pushing that many pixels. Let's do the pessimistic math:

1920 x 1080 x 4-bytes x triple buffer = 23.7 MB

I think 2GB system ram and 128MB video ram has you covered!

Interestingly, 2560x1600 is almost twice (1.98x) as many pixels as 1920x1080 ...
 
I guess I'm a light-weight contender compared some others on this thread. I'm running with 4GB, but typically only consumer 2.4GB - 3GB at any given time. It's an "average" gaming machine with a 512 GeForce 9800 card in it. It's not a hardcore gaming machine, very average to light-weight gaming. I don't do much coding on this machine.

It doesn't seem like you NEED to upgrade to 8GB, but being a coder, it could help when you're compiling.
 
Have a total of 12 GB here, around 9GB being utilized constantly as my VM's are usually always running.

When my VMs are down my Win7 system holds on to about 2.5.

 
Andantie said:
Have a total of 12 GB here, around 9GB being utilized constantly as my VM's are usually always running.

When my VMs are down my Win7 system holds on to about 2.5.

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I'd love to see an image of your computer at full use, if you don't mind, I mean, with all of your VMs up. What VMs are you running?

ccmfreak2 said:
I guess I'm a light-weight contender compared some others on this thread. I'm running with 4GB, but typically only consumer 2.4GB - 3GB at any given time. It's an "average" gaming machine with a 512 GeForce 9800 card in it. It's not a hardcore gaming machine, very average to light-weight gaming. I don't do much coding on this machine.

It doesn't seem like you NEED to upgrade to 8GB, but being a coder, it could help when you're compiling.
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I'm running a 8800 and it seems fine for me. You're ahead of me there.

As far as coding, even when I was on 2 GB, for what I coded, it was just fine. Nothing advanced, just student level material.
 
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How I think it should be

Normal user / Email / Light use 2 GB
Gamer 4 GB (Min limit for 64-bit IMO)
Person that uses VMware and games like me and programs that eat alot of ram. 8 GB
12gb for serious VMware user with multipile VMware machines running, Workstation or 3D render machine.
 
JOSHSKORN said:
I'd love to see an image of your computer at full use, if you don't mind, I mean, with all of your VMs up. What VMs are you running?
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This is under load of running 7 VMs simultaneously, a mix of Window Servers/Clients, and linux firewalls for testing.

 
Well, with 8gb I never had a low memory warning.
However with 6, If i Play a game,I usually get a low memory warning if I have basic apps running in the background (outlook,chrome, acrobat...).
 
Are there any useful ramdrive applications that could be used to effectively break off 10gb of a 16gb ram install? I'm envisioning a ram drive that is automatically retored from the hard drive at boot and is big enough to hold a game or application you use all the time. The performance would be staggering...
 
R-Type said:
Are there any useful ramdrive applications that could be used to effectively break off 10gb of a 16gb ram install? I'm envisioning a ram drive that is automatically retored from the hard drive at boot and is big enough to hold a game or application you use all the time. The performance would be staggering...
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superspeed ram drive was pretty popular. Haven't kept up on it since windows 7 though. It's not free
 
pclov3r said:
12gb for serious VMware user with multipile VMware machines running, Workstation or 3D render machine.
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I guess it depends what you are using those VMs for, if you are trying to simulate a whole network of servers even 12GB may start to be tight.

There are other apps that can burn through memory too. 3D electromagnetics simulation is a big one. No matter how much ram you have you can always find a way to use more with that kind of stuff ;) (I have 48GB in a machine under my desk that is used for that kind of software and I know someone in our in our department who has 96GB).
 
I have 8GB installed, but I rarely use over 4GB of RAM. If you game, you can use up a lot of DRAM, but typically 4GB has been enough for my day-to-day use.

6GB is a nice sweet spot, though. Triple Channel 3x2GB is great for this.
 
2GB is fine for me. But I'm upgrading to 8gb with some black Friday deals. :)
 
I just upgraded from 8gb to 16gb from the black friday sale. I don't need it but I was think of starting a RAM disk with the memory.
 
I have 6GB but most of it goes unused. I went with a x58 system. 4 GB is more than enough for most things.
 
mmmmmdonuts said:
I just upgraded from 8gb to 16gb from the black friday sale. I don't need it but I was think of starting a RAM disk with the memory.
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Me too, let me know what you come up with!
 
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