RAM - How much of it your system needs

Guys due to some reasons it’s long time I have posted anything but now onwards I ll be sharing my knowledge and experience regarding computers and related technologies.

Let’s talk about RAM today; something most people want in quantities without knowing why they need that much in the first place itself. Out of numerous queries regarding laptop and desktop purchases I used to get, RAM used to be something people demands a lot. Everyone seems to want 4GB RAM but they have no answer when I ask them why they need 4GB RAM, typical answer used to be that it’s the latest!! Other thing surprises me is that everyone wants DDR3 RAM only thinking that it’s the best. I ll cover the difference between DDR2 and DDR3 some other day but in short in day to day use it really don’t matter which type of RAM you have. Better to spend that money on a performance hard drive as hard drive used to be the bottleneck in desktop usage. One thing which people used to ask me is whether they should go for a high performance RAM or a value RAM would suffice; I ll discuss this thing while talking about DDR2 and DDR3 but in short you can go for a Value RAM but yes exceptions are part of life.

Though DDR2 RAM prices have almost doubled in a year but in my view it is still a good option to keep performance at optimum levels, just go with the recommended RAM capacity and then invest money on other components. If I talk a little on industry fronts then in short I can say that industry has limited chip manufacturing capacity and in future RAM prices will only increase. DDR3 prices can decrease somewhat but in end they are bound to increase. I ll post my analysis on RAM industry some other time but what I want to say is that don’t wait for future, and go for recommended RAM today itself.

So let’s see how much RAM capacity your system really need…

I am dividing this topic in two posts; one for people going to buy a new system and one for people already have a computer system and feels RAM upgrade is needed. In today’s post let me cover the first scenario; I ll cover second scenario in couple of days as a separate post and in that I ll put everything you need to know before upgrading the RAM.

In past I have received couple of queries where people have asked me whether more amount can be a disadvantage, I ll cover this thing also. One thing which couple of laptop users have asked me is whether capacity of RAM impacts battery backup time; this is really a good question and here I ll explain this here also. Today if you buy a new system you will get Windows 7 as OS. Now let’s divide this post in various categories:

            Home system

Surfing and multimedia being main usage with casual gaming and performance in application like Photoshop don’t matter.

Gaming system

Performance in Gaming being the main priority with good performance required in other applications.

Workstation system

Need to do things like coding in high level languages like VB 2008 with local DB server like Oracle or want maximum performance in CAD/CAM or video/animation editing software’s like 3dMax/Photoshop, etc.

Home System               

In past I have seen that most guys who want to buy a system for home use don’t understand how performance can vary just by changing small things. I have seen people with lots of RAM still complaining that there system is very slow, so let’s talk a little on this and then we will see what RAM capacity is perfect for home use system. Most complaints people talk about are that there system takes ages to boot and take very long time to launch applications. Guys this problem is not related to RAM, it’s due to data fragmentation which happens over time. I ll talk more on this some other time but its better to defrag your C drive or the drive on which OS is installed once a month; right click on the drive – properties – tools – Defrag Now. This simple thing can decrease boot time a lot and will decrease application loading time by 20-50% depending on application.

In home use we typically runs media player which consumes about 50-200MB of RAM, couple of browser windows which depending upon what is opened can consume anywhere between 50-300MB; at times my usage runs in more than a GB but that when I have more than 200 pages opened which might not be the case with you, then casually people use applications like Winzip which don’t use more than 100MB if you are not compressing hundreds of file. Most people have antivirus running in background which depending upon antivirus and what its doing can consume between 50-300MB of RAM. Most people go with Windows 7 Basic or Windows 7 Home Premium; default installation without anything else requires about 500-700MB of RAM.

So if you do everything above at same time, you need at max 1.5GB of RAM considering that Windows do not put temporary data in page file, typically Windows put most of temporary data in page file so the value decreased to little more than 1GB. What this means is if you used to do above things then 1GB RAM is sufficient, add couple of more applications or do light gaming and that at max sums to 2GB of RAM. So for home use 2GB is more than enough and this also means that there is nothing to get excited about if you are getting a system with 3GB RAM. As RAM is cheap so if in default configuration you are getting 3GB RAM then that’s fine but if you are really tight on budget than 2GB is more than enough even 1GB is enough if you don’t do all above things at same time.

So my final recommendation for RAM capacity for home use is 2GB; more don’t hurt.

Gaming System

Most people don’t buy dedicated gaming systems; they take gaming performance as granted on their systems. I have seen many queries where people buy a system with top class processor and only to complain that a game is not running or running very slow.

I ll post a separate article what should be the specifications of a gaming system but in short if your system does not have a dedicated graphics card then don’t expect much from it. Yes you can play most games at low resolution and older games at medium resolution but remember that’s the max your system can do for you. In fact most people buy graphics card only taking care of amount of dedicated RAM that card have but that’s not important you need to check its specifications, I ll post all that details in a separate post, for now let’s see how much RAM you need for a gaming system.

Depending upon game and quality setting RAM usage can be as low as 100MB to as high as 2GB, rarely any game require more than 2.5GB of RAM and this too when your system have top class graphics card with good amount of dedicated graphics RAM and you are using two or more displays. So if we consider the usage pattern of home system with gaming being the top priority than that sums to 3GB of RAM for a gaming system.

People in Infy Pune knows that couple of times I have posted against 3GB RAM; I ll keep the technical details for some other post but in short compared to 2GB RAM sometimes 3GB RAM can decrease computer performance. This might be surprising but it’s true.

So for gaming system I strongly recommend 4GB RAM even though you are using 32-bit OS. For people who don’t know 32-bit version of Windows 7 or any other desktop version of Windows cannot use more than 3GB of RAM so yes you are effectively wasting 1GB of RAM but I ll still recommend you to go for 4GB RAM. For guys who are going with high end gaming systems based on Intel’s X58 chipset, 6GB RAM should be used in 3x2GB layout or 3GB RAM in 3x1GB layout would also suffice.

Workstation system

Workstation is a system meant for getting high performance under any application except gaming. Workstation can be a system where you do animation for ultra resolution images, you do lots of video editing and want this to be completed asap or you have good budget in hand and want your main computer system to be ultimate in performance for heavy duty tasks or like me you want to multitask heavily and at same time want to run multiple virtual OS at same time; well I used to do all this on my laptop with only 4GB of DDR2 800Hz RAM. I ll post a separate article what all should go in a workstation system; here lets limit our talk to RAM only.

First of all I ll strongly recommend 64-bit OS for your workstation system as 32-bit OS will not be able to support more than 3GB of RAM. Another question I have answered many times is whether one should go for Server edition of Windows for workstation system and my answer used to be that Professional or Ultimate Edition of Windows is more than enough for this task and Windows Home editions are also capable of doing most tasks but as they don’t support Domain services so you might face problems if you want to run software which requires these services like Apache, etc and other this is 64-bit edition of Windows Home can only support upto 16GB of RAM which is more than enough. So if your system comes with Windows Home edition then do give it a try before upgrading your OS.

All major software vendors have plans for 64-bit versions of their software and this is good news for people who want more performance from applications. If you only want to image/video editing than 4GB will be sufficient till you don’t want to multitask this thing otherwise more RAM should be considered. Also type and speed of RAM directly affects application performance in workstation environment so 4GB high speed low latency RAM system can outperform a system with 6GB low speed high latency RAM.

So my final recommendation is that if you have budget than go with 8GB RAM especially if you want to multitask a lot and that too working with high amount of data. Otherwise 4GB will be sufficient but yes at times you will feel slowness doing things like applying filters to a video etc. Do remember that a 32-bit applications cannot use more than 3GB of RAM even though you are using 64-bit OS, so you need 64-bit applications to get the speed boost.

Conclusion:

1. Value RAM is sufficient in most scenarios, any day go with more capacity value RAM than less capacity high performance RAM but yes as said exceptions are part of life.
2. Latency increases with RAM speed, so don’t think that high speed RAM is always good. Except high end use high speed RAM doesn’t show much difference in performance. Like there is not more than 5% difference between DDR3-800MHz and DDR3-1333MHz RAM.
3. Don’t go for cheap unbranded RAM; brands like Crucial, Kingston, Transcend, Hynix are good.
4. RAM upgrade for laptop is not as hard as most people think; you can do it yourself easily. Service centers charge lot of money for RAM upgrades so better to do this job yourself.
5. RAM is very sensitive to voltage changes and is the first thing to fail in case of voltage fluctuations; what this means is in case you have to carry RAM, carry it with case and never touch the edges as a single finger touch can fry your RAM; yes this is true.
6. As just discussed always install RAM in size multiple of number of memory channels. Except Intel’s X58 chipset all other desktop systems have dual channel memory controllers so install 2x RAM sticks of same size; ex you want to have 4GB RAM than it would be much better if you install 2 stick of 2GB RAM each than a single 4GB RAM stick. This also means that after 4GB next RAM capacity should be 8GB than 6GB. This way you will get optimal performance from your computer.
7. DDR3 RAM prices might decrease more in next 6 months or so but after than prices might increase so better to plan RAM capacity for your system today itself this might save you money.
8. A system with 1GB RAM can do everything a system with 4GB RAM can do but yes will do it more slowly.

Now the question whether more RAM can decrease battery backup time. The answer is it will actually increase the backup time as with more RAM your system has to do less read/write from HDD which consumes lot of power. Yes this increase can be minor or not more than 2% and at times RAM increase can decrease battery backup time or do so only if your system is sitting ideal all the time.

So guys that’s all for RAM stuff,, please do comment on this article specially what you want to know more etc. In a day or so I ll be posting a short article on latest Intel Corei3/Corei5 and Corei5 as I have seen many queries whether these are better than Core2Duo or not.