[apprentice21]

im costum building my computer now and ive bought my parts, but now it seems that 512 megs of ram isnt enough, since ive looked at your rigs and all and practically everyone has a gig of ram, when ive got 2 x 256 ddr 400 sticks. do you think i should just get rid of them and buy 2 512 sticks? with faster timings and all? or what?

thanks!

 

[YiffyGriffy]

It's enough, I've lived confortably on 512MB of RAM for over a year now...

 

[The Bartender Paradox]

only if you do hardcore gaming or video\\audio editing you need 1gig of ram. if you're on a buget 512 is fine.

 

[Bullyveldt]

1 stick of 512 will overclock better and further, so I've read here and other places.

 

[YiffyGriffy]

That's true, but 1 stick of 256MB will overclock further than 512MB

 

[Bullyveldt]

But he has 2 sticks right?

And not all 256 is made equal. I killed my DDR266 by upping voltage to 2.8 from 2.6.

It was nice having a frontside bus of 295 for 5 hours. then things went south

 

[YiffyGriffy]

lol

Well anyway, back on topic. You can live perfectly happy on 512MB of memory. There's even some windows tweaks you can do to keep memory usage down (I'll soon be putting up a guide on how to do so).

 

[Bullyveldt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by YiffyGriffy lol Well anyway, back on topic. You can live perfectly happy on 512MB of memory. There's even some windows tweaks you can do to keep memory usage down (I'll soon be putting up a guide on how to do so).

Bring on the guide!! We love links!!

 

[YiffyGriffy]

lol I meant soon as in like the next week, I still gotta write it

 

[Bullyveldt]

Have any links for where you are getting info for it??

Oh yeah to stay on topic, 512Mb is sufficient!

 

[YiffyGriffy]

Most of it I got from a magazine, but a fair bit of it is my own experience as well.

 

[Sloth_Boy]

Writing giudes can be pretty sweet

 

[Bullyveldt]

I have something to look forward too now, woo woo.

512mb is sufficient for gaming.

 

[flarkit]

Quote:

Originally Posted by apprentice21 im costum building my computer now and ive bought my parts, but now it seems that 512 megs of ram isnt enough, since ive looked at your rigs and all and practically everyone has a gig of ram, when ive got 2 x 256 ddr 400 sticks. do you think i should just get rid of them and buy 2 512 sticks? with faster timings and all? or what?

Well, your rig is not to be sneezed at either! It'll handle anything regular use can throw at it. Sure, if you are going for major video encoding then extra RAM would help, and recent games like HL2 or Vampire Bloodlines also benefit from 1Gb of RAM.

Other than such extreme applications though, you'll be happy enough with 512Mb. Additionally, you could add a 512Mb DIMM later.

Ultimately, it's more of a budget consideration, IMO. If you can afford 2x512Mb now, go for it! Windows XP will work faster and you'll be set for the heavy-duty jobs too. If the budget's tight, even straight 512Mb will be OK for few months.

For overclocking, faster chips are useful naturally.

 

[apprentice21]

thanks mate

 

[natureca]

i recently up'd my ram from 512 to 1gb, only real difference i've noticed, is that World of Warcraft, doesn't lag everynow and then. Only games, that need huge amounts ram you will notice any big change. To sum it up, go with the amount that won't keep yer stomach away from the big old steak.

 

[HaYChE]

512 ram is fine i run with 2x256 ballistix rams its excellent! PC4000

 

[setite]

yea the thing about 1gig of ram is you dont notice what it does for you unless you have done the same things with 512... im going 512 for about a week due to cash restraints... as soon as i get paid im doubling the ram... and the hard drives... it wont do a damn thing for me in linux... but in windows gaming it will... so far ive tried to make linux lag on this celeron.... the test is when i use windows with aim(or gaim), winamp, opera, and irc... if i wait like 30 mins and decide im tired of a band and click winamp... ill be lucky if it responds within 10-20 seconds... usually i gotta go back to opera and browse for several minutes... and that is even with a fresh install... not so with linux... and also... ubuntu rocks because of synaptic... i dont have to use command line to download apps... so this **** rocks... and a big noticeable difference if i pause a song for more than a minute... and go to restart it... i hear a blip of it... then it waits another noticeable second and then plays it... sorta like using a cd... and, you guessed it, this is not the case in linux... its the small things that made me change... but i do not suggest it for a full move because they dont support surround sound in games yet which is just not good... but for everything else it rocks it.. imma test it with a dvd and all this running too... windows CAN NOT do that....

 

[The Duke]

The only way you'll need a gig of RAM gaming is if the game requires 512 total megs of vid RAM.
Vid card + AGP Aperature = total vid RAM. So if you need 512megs total you cant do it with 512megs of RAM with a 128 meg vid card because you'd have to allocate 512megs in the AGP Aperature and you would have none left for the OS. Thats because the Aperature incriments in (usually) 32, 64, 128, 256 and 512.

 

[setite]

Quote:

Originally Posted by flarkit Well, your rig is not to be sneezed at either! It'll handle anything regular use can throw at it. Sure, if you are going for major video encoding then extra RAM would help, and recent games like HL2 or Vampire Bloodlines also benefit from 1Gb of RAM. Other than such extreme applications though, you'll be happy enough with 512Mb. Additionally, you could add a 512Mb DIMM later. Ultimately, it's more of a budget consideration, IMO. If you can afford 2x512Mb now, go for it! Windows XP will work faster and you'll be set for the heavy-duty jobs too. If the budget's tight, even straight 512Mb will be OK for few months. For overclocking, faster chips are useful naturally.

mmmmm... bloodlines(homer voice)... i love bloodlines... and 512 is enough... but for how long i may add... if you are on a budget cut corners... but corners cut can be performance lost.... personally... ive spent time on windows xp with 256 for quite a while.... sucked... 512... nicer... but not enought... 1024 is what im going for with this next rig... but if your choice is 1gig of ****... go with 512 of quality