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Lindaloo
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Computer question

#1 Postby Lindaloo » Sat Dec 09, 2006 11:22 am

What does memory do for your computer, does it make your PC faster?
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#2 Postby Tstormwatcher » Sat Dec 09, 2006 12:59 pm

It allows you to put more stuff into it and yeah that helps it to go faster.
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#3 Postby Lindaloo » Sat Dec 09, 2006 1:28 pm

Thank you! :D
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#4 Postby coriolis » Sat Dec 09, 2006 3:19 pm

All the programs that are running, including your virus scan and everything that is running in the background, plus all the files that are open at any time are temporarily stored in the memory. If there isn't enough memory available, the files are temporarily stored in a cache or "swap file" on the hard drive. Memory is solid state so it is much faster than the hard drive which is mechanical, so if your computer is swapping files in and out of the cache, its making the processor work harder and it takes more time to find and read those files. It slows everything down considerably. If you have a lot of things open, and you hear your hard drive working continuously, that's what it's doing.
Window XP will work with 256 MB, but 512 MB or more is desirable.
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#5 Postby Lindaloo » Sat Dec 09, 2006 3:24 pm

I have 2.00 GB of ram on my computer now. Is that enough?
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#6 Postby O Town » Sat Dec 09, 2006 3:30 pm

Lindaloo wrote:I have 2.00 GB of ram on my computer now. Is that enough?

Yeah thats alot. I only have 512 MB. Each GB is about 1,000 MB. So you are all hooked up as far as memory goes. When I doubled my memory on my computer not long ago it went much faster.
Last edited by O Town on Sat Dec 09, 2006 4:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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#7 Postby alicia-w » Sat Dec 09, 2006 4:36 pm

actually, a gigabyte is a 1000 megabytes....
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#8 Postby Cyclenall » Sat Dec 09, 2006 4:37 pm

Lindaloo wrote:I have 2.00 GB of ram on my computer now. Is that enough?

That is definitely enough! It will do for a while.

Each GB is about 1,00 MB.

You forgot another 0 on the end of that number. Each GB is 1000 MB if you want it simple.
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#9 Postby O Town » Sat Dec 09, 2006 4:37 pm

alicia-w wrote:actually, a gigabyte is a 1000 megabytes....

lol, thats what it was suppost to say. See where my (,) is? I forgot a zero.
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#10 Postby Brent » Sat Dec 09, 2006 7:12 pm

Lindaloo wrote:I have 2.00 GB of ram on my computer now. Is that enough?


That's an amazing amount. It is more than enough and your computer should run very fast.
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#11 Postby Lindaloo » Sat Dec 09, 2006 7:34 pm

It does Brent. :D I just didn't know if I had too much or what affect it would have.
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#12 Postby kevin » Sat Dec 09, 2006 7:52 pm

O Town wrote:
alicia-w wrote:actually, a gigabyte is a 1000 megabytes....

lol, thats what it was suppost to say. See where my (,) is? I forgot a zero.


A gigabyte is actually 1,024 megabytes or 1,073,741,824 bytes
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#13 Postby coriolis » Sun Dec 10, 2006 9:11 am

2 GB? Sheesh I remember hard drives smaller than that.
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#14 Postby VanceWxMan » Mon Dec 11, 2006 8:09 am

2 gigs is to much.. Windows XP will not know what to do with it. 1 GIG is Window's XP sweet spot! :D
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#15 Postby Lindaloo » Mon Dec 11, 2006 8:19 am

Hey Vance! I am not having any problems with it.
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#16 Postby j » Mon Dec 11, 2006 8:37 am

VanceWxMan wrote:2 gigs is to much.. Windows XP will not know what to do with it. 1 GIG is Window's XP sweet spot! :D


Not exactly true (but in Linda's case, probably so).

If you are running a memory hog like a solid modeling program, and open another hog like Excel, and a few other's you will need every bit of those 2 gig's and more.
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#17 Postby gtalum » Mon Dec 11, 2006 8:49 am

VanceWxMan wrote:2 gigs is to much.. Windows XP will not know what to do with it. 1 GIG is Window's XP sweet spot! :D


While 2 GB may be more than most of us need, it is impossible to have "too much". More memory will never slow a computer down.
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#18 Postby therock1811 » Mon Dec 11, 2006 3:22 pm

I know this firsthand, since my mom runs a lot of her work through our parents' computer. Yes Excel, Money, etc. are memory hogs, no doubt. If you're running any of those, then you definitely need those 2 gigabytes at least and it really wouldn't hurt to have 2.5 to 3 (if it's possible to have a 3 gigabyte hard drive).
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#19 Postby Cyclenall » Mon Dec 11, 2006 7:00 pm

VanceWxMan wrote:2 gigs is to much.. Windows XP will not know what to do with it. 1 GIG is Window's XP sweet spot! :D

Wrong, I think your talking about 4 GB of RAM. How can Windows XP not know what to do with it? There is a limit but 2 or 4 GB is not it. I think the sweet spot is 2 GB at the moment.

While 2 GB may be more than most of us need, it is impossible to have "too much". More memory will never slow a computer down.

That's not exactly true, sometimes too much memory can slow down a computer for other reasons (latency issues?). I've read about it many times with computers having around 4+ GB of RAM. If you don't use it all up, it may not be worth it apparently. Generally you can never have too much memory or processing power, but there can be exceptions.
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Rainband

#20 Postby Rainband » Mon Dec 11, 2006 9:31 pm

I have 512 and have had 0 problems. :D
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