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How much RAM is enough? New
motherboards hold 1GB or more. Where is the point of diminishing
returns?
Depending on what kind of memory your machine takes, an entire gigabyte at today's prices will probably cost you between $100 and $300, so the temptation is to say "fill 'er up." On the other hand, a few bucks is still a few bucks--or big bucks when you're talking about a company full of computers. For RAM, 256MB to 512 is just about right. Overall, these tests and others conducted show that a memory upgrade improves performance if it reduces a machine's resort to virtual memory (a technique that lets you load more applications and data than you have actual memory for, but uses hard disk reads and writes to accomplish the task). Virtual memory's use of the hard disk slows performance. For PCs with 64MB or less of RAM, just loading the operating system, an application, and some data can call up virtual memory, slowing your system. And that happens even sooner with larger OSs (read XP). Above 64MB, how often your system slows for virtual memory depends on how much you load into your PC (and to a degree, how fast your CPU is; slower PCs see less performance improvement for the same size memory upgrade). With 128MB of RAM, if you keep opening mail or browser windows--as most of us do these days--you'll start slogging around in virtual memory pretty quickly, especially with a Windows XP system. At just $49 or $59 for 256 megs of ram, the added headroom of 256MB to 512 pays for itself in productivity--so stick by our 256MB to 512 MB recommendation |
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