Does 1GB RAM improve PC performance ? How ?

Question

I have purchased my dream computer for a whopping Rs.60,000 [apprx. £770]. I have installed a RAM of 1GB capacity after I was told a high capacity RAM improved PC performance, especially if the PC involved high-end gaming. I thought I could play loads of games and hence went for 1GB RAM.

However, being a novice in computing, I haven't been able to find signs of improved PC performance for the sake of self satisfaction. Could anyone help and explain to me where to look for changes with a 1GB RAM ?

PS: No funny answers please.

Answer 1

Lions, and Tigers, and Bears
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RAM, Processors, and Hard Disk Storage are among the most common components of a computer that are misunderstood by end users. People often state that RAM makes a computer faster which is not necessarily the correct explanation.

The Playing Field
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Think of a park or playing field. If you have a very small field you can only have a few activities going on at the same time. If you try to overload the field with more activities, what happens? Everything slows down. RAM is exactly the same, it is space for activities in the computer to work.

RAM and Memory
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Now RAM is classified as Memory and there are two types in a computer. Physical RAM which is an actual integrated circuit board inside of your computer and Virtual RAM. Virtual RAM performs the same function as Physical RAM, but is slower. This is because the computer uses part of your hard disk to function just like Physical RAM.

Access Times for Physical and Virtual RAM
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Access time for Virtual RAM is about 8/1000th of a second while access time for Physical RAM is about 5/100,000th of a second. Now this may seem fast in our world but in the computer world 8/1000th of a second is slow.

Does the Computer become faster by adding more Physical RAM?
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The answer is, all computers have a performance mark called a benchmark. When you increase the amount of Physical RAM you do three things:

1. Bringing the computer closer to its maximum benchmark
2. Allow more activities too occur at the same time
3. Allow single activities to occur without affecting the performance of the computer

Answer to your question
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So the reason why you are not seeing a performance increase is that in your situation you have created the condition where you can have more applications running at the same time without affecting the current performance of your computer.

Answer 2

Well the speed of the system alone isn't based just on the RAM but the whole system as a whole. What does the motherboard provide regarding the bus speeds? What is the computing power of the processor? What I usually do depending on the game in mind is to at least double if not triple the processor requirements that the game asks for but to at least go 3X's the amount of recommended RAM or come close to the maximum the system can handle. You won't always see this change some some of the applications or programs and in others you will see a big change. Good Luck.

Answer 3

You are going to the right direction mate. Gaming machines nowadays come with at least 2GB of RAM. 1GB is just insufficient. You will definitely get a better gaming experience from doubling your RAM. However, you have to keep in mind that adding extra RAM.

Answer 4

RAM is extremely important, especially for things like gaming, 1G is the recommended amount right now. It is used for buffering the data, so the more capacity it has, the more it can buffer.

The thing to remember is it works hand in hand with your CPU (central processing unit - the 'chip'), so if your applications are very resource intensive, but you have a slow CPU, upgrading your RAM can only help to a certain extent.

As for noticing the change in performance, you typically only notice big changes if you (at minimum) double your amount of RAM. For example, if you already had 756 megs, you probably won't be able to tell the change. If you had only 256 megs, then you definately would.

Use the other user's answer on how to find RAM to also find your CPU speed. I believe for 1GB you should probably have around a 2.0-3.0GHZ CPU speed.

Answer 5

Hm, if you had 512 MB RAM or more before you might not notice a big difference. But you surely can feel a difference between 128 MB and 1 GB RAM? Anyway, for a good game performance you need also a good graphics card. You will surely also feel the benefits of 1 GB RAM if you open many programs at the same time or if you edit big video files.

Answer 6

1GB of RAM enables your computer to run more processes without having to dump as much memory into a page file. Basically having more RAM allows your computer to do more thinking without having to "write" anything down.

I have 2GB of RAM in my main computer because I do a lot of programming and generally have anywhere from 10 to 30 windows open at once. When I upgraded from 1GB to 2GB I saw a significant improvement in performance. If you do any gaming I would recommend at least 1GB of RAM.

If you cannot see a boost in performance, do this:

Run 5 different applications and see how long it takes to boot all of them up.

Shut down your computer and remove 512MB of your ram.

Do the same thing and you should be able to see a significant slowdown in the performance.

Good luck with your new machine, may it serve you well.

Answer 7

For games, 512 MB of ram is probably enough. You will not see much in the way of extra performance, since most of the work is done by the video card which has its own (very fast) memory.

The move to 1 gig helps if you are programming, because the tools are such memory hogs. Essentially, extra memory reduces swaps out to the page file which improves performance. But if you never use more than 512 MB to start with, 1 Gig improves nothing.

-Dio

Answer 8

For Rs.60,000 you could have easily got 2GB or more of RAM! More RAM means better throughput(number of jobs done per second) and hence faster computer. Typical games require heavy resources, and so more RAM is required.

Answer 9

hi,
when you add more ram to you computer you give the OS a chance to store the necessary files used by the loaded application into memory instead of the swap file ( swap file is a file created on the hard disk to simulate ram ), and of course memory is much faster than hard disk that is why.

Answer 10

1GB of RAM should be enough for most games but be sure to get a descent graphics card that uses its own RAM. I had a Dell with a 256MB gpu but it actually has 128MB of its own memory and used 128MB from my RAM which dropped my total memory from 512MB to 256MB, which is not enough for most of my games. So be aware of gpu's that rob you of RAM.