vista how much memory?

Question

hi i currently have a decent system or so i think?
however with 2gb of ddr 2 667mhz ram i still feel it could be improved for perfomance and basic tasks on the desktop as vista can be sluggish at times i need information whether im the only person that has this problem and if its worth to upgrade to 3gb ram as vista dosent use the 4gb of ram so i gather?. please can someone help me here also thinking of getting some usb ready boost maybe 4gb to boost system

Thanks in advance
Dean

intel quad core
2gb ddr2 667mhz
7200 hard drive
8800 gts 320mb extreme
vista ultimate

Answer 1

You can run a free test at http://www.crucial.com and find out what kind of RAM (memory) your computer needs. It will automatically test your system and tell you what you need and have in the computer (each slot).

You can get cheap memory at http://www.tigerdirect.com or http://www.newegg.com

Answer 2

The sluggishness that you're experiencing is likely not from a lack of RAM or from having an underpowered machine. With that hardware setup, Vista should be zipping along fine. Something else, either a driver/software/hardware conflict or a misconfigured application is causing the problem.

You can add more if you like, however, I doubt you're using the amount of RAM you have now. Check to see how much your using when you're experiencing a slowdown. If you still have a lot of free RAM, then lack of RAM isn't the problem.

Also, ctrl-alt-delete and tab over to the "Resources" tab to locate what process is using the most resources.

BTW, the 4GB or less limitation on RAM is a 32-bit operating system limit and it's not exclusive to Vista. All 32-bit operating systems have that limit.

p.s. The use of ReadyBoost is a good idea. Make sure you have a ReadyBoost capable drive.

Answer 3

Although the minimum specifications on the Vista Ultimate box says 1 GB, but our college recommends a minimum of 2 GB. Typically I would always recommend going above the minimum. Some people have recommended the 4 GB of memory.

This is an article I found on it:
http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/2007/03/29/vista-how-much-ram-is-really-enough/

Answer 4

I have built a few test systems for Vista, to be honest, I always find the performances a bit slower, no matter how I tweak them.

In your case, adding another GB may help as the rest of the system are very high performance. Shame Vist32 still stuck at the 3GB limit.

Answer 5

Vista is a big resource hog.

4 Gigs of DDR2 ram would give your PC more elbow room.
If you don't want to upgrade the ram then downgrade the bloated graphics engine of Vista or turn it off.

You system looks like it is very nicely spec'd. However you PC will never be able to use the quad core until your 3rd party software supports it. Keep that in mind as a single core based program cannot run efficiently in a dual or quad core environment.

Answer 6

Well, since you definitely have a good system, I would add a gig. That sounds like ram would be the bottleneck. It's a nice computer, so if you're not using it to it's full potential it would be a shame.