Is 1gb of ram enough for Vista?

Henne220

Hi everybody, I just have a quick question. Would 1gb of ram run vista home premium to its full capabilities? no pausing between things?
The ram is: OCZ Platinum DDR2 PC6400 1024MB KIT
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=318548&CKS=PCW

It would be running with a Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 processor.
Any help or recommendations would be appreciated?

CiaranC

Vista enterprise is using 512MB of RAM on my machine, sitting there idle with no applications open!

Aero needs 1GB to run, and presumably eats a chunk of the next 512MB (I havent got it switched on). I wouldnt want to be doing anything memory intensive without 2GB tbh.

Blazer

If you plan on playing games etc or a lot of multimedia you'd be better off with 2GB..I'm running Vista ultimate on my machine with C2D 2.4G and 2GB ram and vista alone is using nearly 600MB. The more memory you get the faster your programs will start etc., or else you have a spare 512MB stick lying around you could always stick that into the back of your pc and use it as a readyboost stick. Gives a nice boost to those with lower memory.
Have a read of the below to get a better understanding of readyboost.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/31/windows-vista-superfetch-and-readyboostanalyzed/

iremex

using 1gb ram on a duo 1.66Ghz laptop, with aero switched on, and the CPU meter is at 67% with excel, word, IE, outlook open at the moment..runs smoothly enough.

at home i have vista running with 1.25gb ram on a P3.6 and its DOGS slow for some reason. i know the processor isnt as fast but the difference is incredible. going to have to bump it up to 2gb and see how she handles..

i have 1gb memory stick lying useless here(completely wiped), will that improve it vastly? please say yes!!!

Henne220

So i would be better off to save up a bit and go with 2gb of this ram?:
Corsair Value S. PC5300 DDR2 2048MB Kit
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=313834&CKS=PCW

even though its only pc5300 in comparison to the above pc6400.
or stick with the faster 1gb and just plug in a usb2 stick?

8T8

You can see some benchmarks on Anandtech, in general 1GB is required in Vista for optimal operation with everything enabled.

You can get by with 512MB in you turn off all the eye candy but as RAM is so cheap it's better to get more RAM.

2GB of RAM is the sweet spot so and improves things a little bit more.

Henne220

Anyone else got any advice or ideas?

Anti

Just got vista installed today on my opty. 512 is unuseable. 1gb is slow. 2gb is okay. 4gb is more like it.

DaSilva

Anti wrote:

Just got vista installed today on my opty. 512 is unuseable. 1gb is slow. 2gb is okay. 4gb is more like it.

I can't grasp how increasing capacity, once you have sufficient capacity would increase speed.

Unless of course I'm not correct on how RAM works. Does it's efficiency degrade after a certain amount of capacity is reached like some hard drives do after they are more than 50% filled?

Let's take this example. Program A takes 100MiB of ram. Computer A has one stick of ram (512MiB). Computer B has one stick of ram also (1GiB).
Assuming everything else is perfectly equal, load time and speed should be identical.

I can see 2GiB being a good idea, because Vista might use 1GiB, and then you have 1GiB left over for other software, but 4GiB shouldn't do anything unless you are using over 1GiB on other processes, which seems excessive for anything a home computer with Vista installed would use.

Too answer you're question, if Vista with everything turned on uses 1GiB, then you need 1GiB + memory usage of whatever other software you use.

1.5GiB -> 2GiB should be enough, but it depends on what you are doing.

8T8

Plus you can't even use 4GB in 32-bit Vista with memory remapping the most you will get is about 3GB or roughly in the ball park depending on the hardware in the system.

I'm with DaSilva on this 2GB is plenty enough for everyone anything more is unnecessary unless your are running speciality software that requires large amount of RAM & then you are better off going the 64-bit route if that's the case.

Cuddlesworth

Considering that some games take around 1,400megs of ram(BF2) with Xp, its not surprising that Vista might be pushing the 2 gig boundary. Outside of games 2 gigs is the sweet spot but not necessary. I would feel pity for the person running Vista on 512megs.