TR Forums

So it seems like 4GB is not enough for moderate multitasking anymore.

On my laptop I have chrome and firefox opened with lots of tabs open, thunderbird, adobe reader, inkscape and I'm maxed out on my physical RAM usage.

On my home desktop, I have 16gb of RAM now, and even that I can somtimes use to 12GB. Superfetch can basically use up the rest too. So, maybe 16GB really isn't enough for heavy multitasking? haha

I seem to recall that not even 4 years ago that 2GB was considered more than enough.

well, looks like its time to upgrade my laptop... maybe I'll put in a SSD too

I just upgraded my Zenbook UX32VD-DB71 from 4 GiB to 10 GiB of memory. It was a good bump for just $38 (plus another $10 for a screwdriver kit with a tiny Torx T5 bit).
http://www.crucial.com/search/searchres ... =CT3340957

i just looked up the specs for my laptop and the max ram it can hold is 8GB of DDR3 1333mhz ram, 2 slots, and 4GB max each.

eh oh well RAM is cheap anyway, and I can still save up for a new laptop.

Yup, my work and home desktops are both at 16 GB now. 4 GB is pretty much the new minimum baseline; power user config is at least 8.

CB5000 wrote:

i just looked up the specs for my laptop and the max ram it can hold is 8GB of DDR3 1333mhz ram, 2 slots, and 4GB max each.

You might try a quick Google search to see if someone has posted in a forum after successfully installing a pair of 8 GiB SODIMMs in your model.

Yeah, I have a DDR machine I'm bringing up and I'm not even considering Windows 7 for it because I only have 1GB DDR DIMMS.

With the caching algorithms that Windows uses now it doesn't matter how much memory you have. It will always use it up unless your complete work data set is smaller than the amount of physical memory you have.

Open fewer tabs and don't use cruddy memory hog browsers.

Seriously, 4 GB with a few programs open? Something isn't right. Which OS are you using? Check task manager to see if programs are really using all the physical memory.

Chrome is a bit of a memory hog if you have a lot of tabs. The overhead isn't bad for, say, a dozen tabs but if you're the type to have several dozen then it adds up.

Still, 4GB doesn't ever feel cramped to me for normal usage. It's when I start breaking out virtual machines or compiling where the extra RAM helps.

I've got just 2GB in my Vista netbook. I don't think adding more would really speed things up much...

Something seems wrong if you're using 12GB of physical RAM and you're not running a bunch of VMs or using some sort of heavy hitting multimedia apps. I have 16 in mine, and the only way I push it that high is running 4+ VMs.

absurdity wrote:

Something seems wrong if you're using 12GB of physical RAM and you're not running a bunch of VMs or using some sort of heavy hitting multimedia apps. I have 16 in mine, and the only way I push it that high is running 4+ VMs.

Each Chrome/IE8+ tab is a separate process, the overhead gets quite scary once you have more than 20 or so open. At one point when I did not know I had 50+ and it blew my 8 gigs pretty quick, no VMs needed.

They had good reasons to farm tabs out to process - isolation. The assumption was the RAM is somewhat plenty after the Vista wave of hardware. I wonder what IE10 is doing with some Windows 8/RT configurations where RAM is back down to like 2 gigs.

ITT: Data-pack rats

2-4GiB is plenty of memory for non-professional use. The only reason web browsers consume any significant amount of memory is because you load up 10-20 tabs that each contain dozens of memory-hogging ads and flash animations. The same ads and flash animation tend to cause memory leaks.

You kiddies probably don't know that users use had to deal with managing 2-4MB of memory. It was a PITA trying to free up a few KBs in the 0-640KiB range a.k.a (conventional space) to run your desired application.

I'm constantly running out of memory on my 8Gb lappy, browsing only, +50 tabs on chrome.

Paging file size is set to zero on the other hand, but random crashes do happen from time to time, crazy.

Wow, I remember when 6GB of RAM was considered the power user's extreme.

Of course, I also remember when 8MB of RAM was considered the same. My first computer had 16K of RAM.

Sigh.

TaBoVilla wrote:

Paging file size is set to zero on the other hand, but random crashes do happen from time to time, crazy.

Yes, I agree, setting your paging file to zero is crazy.

just brew it! wrote:

TaBoVilla wrote:

Paging file size is set to zero on the other hand, but random crashes do happen from time to time, crazy.

Yes, I agree, setting your paging file to zero is crazy.

The never-ending idiocy of eliminating the page file never fails to amuse me. Just take your OS out behind the barn and shoot it in the kneecaps.

Captain Ned wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

TaBoVilla wrote:

Paging file size is set to zero on the other hand, but random crashes do happen from time to time, crazy.

Yes, I agree, setting your paging file to zero is crazy.

The never-ending idiocy of eliminating the page file never fails to amuse me. Just take your OS out behind the barn and shoot it in the kneecaps.

Pandas are getting killed again.

If pagefile is set to 0, should not have opened up so many tabs.

BTW, if you do need so many tabs, from time to time I just figure that I don't need all 10 youtube videos loaded in RAM. So I just bring up Chrome's Task Manager and kill the Shockwave: Flash process. That should free up some memory.

So the conclusion to this thread is that if you open a lot of applications and use a lot of memory you will not have much memory left. Genius.

Someone should invent browser bookmarks or a session saving plugin so you can save links to all those thousands of tabs in just a tiny little bit of persistent storage space.

I exceed 4 GiB of memory in use when I'm running Guild Wars 2 with one Firefox tab open. I was able to run these things satisfactorily with just 4 GiB, but now that the system has 10 GiB available, it's keeping more in memory.

Linux is awesome in regards to memory useage. My 5 year old X61 laptop (2GB DDR2) running Mint 13 X64 uses about 330 megs of ram at the desktop, and rarely goes over a gig while browsing etc. I'm only a 5-8 tab person though.

In that scenario, my Windows 8 test machine worked fine too (2GB, some applications along with Firefox and Chrome both with a half dozen tabs, still 1GB RAM free). It's not exactly a heavy scenario.

Now if you can cram that all into 512MB of RAM then it'd be something worth noting.

I don't plan to ever go over six. The only time I've had problems was when I had the pagefile off and was saving/closing Sims 3 and opening Skyrim at the same time.

This was just the reminder I needed -- nearly forgot my Acer 1810TZ supports up to 8GB in two slots. No serious memory issues so far with 3GB, but given that I can upgrade to 8GB for $60, I might as well do it.

EDIT: whoops, I think that's a 4GB limit. Oh well, it's been worth it so far, may as well go for it.

You can easily hit 12 GB of memory usage with 2 big foot print games open like gw2 + gw1 with 20+ tabs open. If you are into multi gaming, you need a lot of ram. I also run multiple instances of certain games to use several accounts at the same time.