How much ram for vista?

[eatinpaper]

I currently have Windows XP running on 2 gigs of ram. I plan on building a new pc and don't know how much ram to get. I plan to use Windows XP and linux, then upgrade to Vista later. I see 2 gigs is reccomended for Vista. But ram is qute expensive now. Getting to the point, should I get 1 gig now, wait for the price to go down, then get another when Vista comes out, get 2 gigs now, or just stick to 1 gig?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820145566[url] Just curious, is this good ram?

 

[eatinpaper]

Fist of all, isn't Vista in 32 and 64 bit versions or am I just confused. Also I'm just a regular old, run-of-the-mill gamer. Would I really need as much as 16 Gb of ram? My wallet doesn't open that wide

 

[ericatabq]

I ran the beta version with 1GB on three of my machines.

1) AMD 64 2800 with 1GB DDR 400
- office software, PowerDVD, Windows Media Player
2) Core 2 Duo E6300 with 1GB DDR2 8000
- office software, Matlab, TV tuner, PowerDVD
3) AMD XP 2200 with 1GB laptop
- office software, Power DVD

I don't know about games or more demanding applications though. They all run fine for what I need them to do so 2GB would probably be safe.

 

[V8VENOM]

Buy a Mac Pro and be free of M$ mediocrity. You get the best (or worst) of both worlds.

Seriously Vista is bloated garbage, just check out how many services is loads -- compare them with WinXP. BLOAT BLOAT BLOAT

Remember, every service has a timer, each timer consumes your precious resources.

 

[hoxlund]

vista will come in 2 flavors

both x64 and x86 versions

so far my system runs completely fine in both flavors of vista ultimate

but i would always keep an eye out and pick up an extra 1gb stick if you find it cheap

 

[croc]

1GB will be just fine for most apps. If you plan to use some heave duty devx or other video decoding, then how much can you afford? (up to 8GB, that seems to be the limitation of most MB's...)

On my system RC2 eats ~ 600 MB writing this. Getting better.... Used to be > 750 MB in RC1. But it seems to use virtual quite quickly. Also you can plug in some USB memory and augment the system ram....

 

[godman]

try and get 1gb (one stick) for now but when vista comes out get annother gig stick o' RAM.

have a look at that 10th aniversary crucial ram 1gb stick, they're supposed to be good ... i think, though perhapos a but expensive (over here in england anyway)

 

[eatinpaper]

How did Vista run on each of the machines. I don't need anything in depth but I'm just curious.

 

[wiz83]

Sweet ... I think I might just run 16GB of RAM when I decide to run Vista ...
Don't think my current mobo will support it ...

Again ... 16GB ... gotta love that number ...

 

[ryokinshin]

if ur wallet will open wide enough, get a mac pro and u can run windows vista or xp, the deal with mac pros, is the server cpu power its got, 2 dual core xeons woodcrest obviously and throw in the x1900xt, u can put ur own gfx card into the pcie slots(mac pros hav 4), but u wont be able to run programs that are gfx heavy

otherwise jus go for a pc

 

[starwhite]

My hardware boasts dual Xeons, 3.4 GHz, 2 GB DDR2 3200 RAM. I experimented with XP Pro 32 bit and Vista RC2 32 bit. While ripping a DVD, watching a DVD XP used aprox 656 Megs of RAM. By comparison Vista gobbled up 1.2 to 1.3 GB of RAM. Personally, I see no advantage to Vista.
Its a bloated version of XP. Its like Elvis Presley in his 20's VRS Fat Elvis before he keeled over and died. I am sticking with XP thank you kindly.

 

[croc]

What a load of BS... There are many MB's that support 16GB or more RAM. They just happen to be server MB's ATM, but that hasn't stopped people on this forum before.

As an excercise in futility, I handed rc2 an 8GB flash drive, and rc2 took 4GB. That's on top of the 2GB ddr I give it.

 

[tfm]

I have been running Vista on a 2GB dual Xeon machine since the end of August. This gives a comfortable margin and is certainly sufficient to enable Office 2003 applications to run without much disk-thrashing. I believe it also to be sufficient for any current game.

However, for other purposes, 2GB is barely sufficient or even outright inadequate. One particular problem arises when using modern photo collecting/manipulating software. The "bridge" in Photoshop CS and Adobe Digital Darkroom (albeit still a Beta) are prime examples: 2GB just isn't enough for such purposes.

I have spent some time investigating memory options in Vista. There is a lot of misinformation on the internet, including on the Thurrott "supersite" - which includes a table saying that Vista 32bit will support as much RAM as you install. This is simply wrong. Microsoft's own documents on its MSDN website state clearly that the maximum RAM supported by Vista 32bit is 4GB. That is hardly surprising, as 4GB = 2^32, which is the largest address that a 32 bit operating system is capable of addressing without using more than one byte of data (which, in broad terms, is how some flavours of Windows 2003 manage to do it). To support more than 4GB you need a 64 bit flavour of Vista.

Another confusing topic, is that NONE of the 32-bit flavours of Windows can "see" a full 4GB of physical RAM. The amount of physical RAM visible in a 32-bit Windows environment is (i) the first 4GB of physical RAM LESS (ii) the amount of memory addresses taken-up in order to communicate with system devices. So, for example, a 4GB computer with a 512MB graphics card will suffer a 512MB reduction from the amount of visible RAM. And so on. The bottom line: in practice, for most purposes there is little to be gained by installing more than 3GB on a 32-bit Windows environment, including Vista.

 

[tfm]

PS: there is a switch (/PAE) which can be added to the boot.ini file launching Windows XP/2003, which CAN reduce the extent to which devices take-up memory addresses otherwise available for addressing RAM. But it is considered unreliable. It has been disabled for Windows XP SP2. Vista uses a slightly more evolved version of PAE, but it is yet to be seen whether developers will take it up properly. At the moment, I can confirm that a 4GB Vista 32 bit machine still does not see the full 4GB (I have recently added a 2nd 2GB).

 

[enewmen]

I agree, 2 gigs is enough for now. The ONLY 64 bit DX10 game I can think of now is Crysis. I wonder how much RAM is recommended for that game? The web-site did not say, so it's just a guess.

 

[emogoch]

The main thing to remember with Vista in terms of memory is that the more RAM that you through at it, the more RAM that it'll use. Yes the Aero GUI and other such things take up more RAM, but a much larger portion goes towards Vista's Pre-fetching system which will keep frequently used programs / data in unused portions of RAM.

That said, I read a brief article one the DailyTech or something of the like a couple weeks ago that said that Gateway is recommending 2GB of RAM in their computers for Vista.

 

[starwhite]

As I stated in my post above, Vista uses double the memory while running the same applications on my PC. However, with XP I am able to turn off my windows swap file, edit my registry to have everything run in RAM. This is much smoother. However, with Vista 2 GB is not enough for this to work correctly.

 

[niz]

I ran the beta version with 1GB on three of my machines.

1) AMD 64 2800 with 1GB DDR 400
- office software, PowerDVD, Windows Media Player
2) Core 2 Duo E6300 with 1GB DDR2 8000
- office software, Matlab, TV tuner, PowerDVD
3) AMD XP 2200 with 1GB laptop
- office software, Power DVD

I don't know about games or more demanding applications though. They all run fine for what I need them to do so 2GB would probably be safe.

sure vista will boot in 1 gb, but it doesn't leave much for anything else. You can still run games, but they'll be paging out to disk like crazy, meaning performance will suck bigtime.

 

[niz]

The main thing to remember with Vista in terms of memory is that the more RAM that you through at it, the more RAM that it'll use. Yes the Aero GUI and other such things take up more RAM, but a much larger portion goes towards Vista's Pre-fetching system which will keep frequently used programs / data in unused portions of RAM.

That said, I read a brief article one the DailyTech or something of the like a couple weeks ago that said that Gateway is recommending 2GB of RAM in their computers for Vista.

Linux has been doing that pre-fetching thing for years.

 

[p05esto]

I also think XP is bloated garbage. I run a very tweaked/lean version of WIN2000 and and very happy. It's fast, stable and does everything I need an operating system to do. Basically just run programs...LOL. Nothing bothers me more that operating system bloat.

All they do is keep adding features and more features to sell the product and make $$$ - the features are all non-essential and are slowing the system down and making them buggy and hardware hungry. IT'S TIME FOR A REVOLUTION!!!!

Is Linux worth looking at? I don't think so because it will not run my programs and games. Is modern computing doomed?

 

[starwhite]

I agree, XP has alot of bloat, but it is the lesser of the evils, when compared to Vista. My hope is that people will wake up, see that Win 2000, Win XP has everything you really need, and not support Windows Vista. It is silly bloatware. There is not one thing a User can do with Vista that cannot be done in XP. I should know this, I alpha and beta tested Longhorn, and Vista for years. With Vista you are simply feeding Micro$oft more $$$, for Non-essentials. I promise you I will not be using Vista anytime in the near future. I challenge one person in this forum to try and convince me WHY I need this new OS. I will open your eyes, not your wallet , unlike Micro$oft.
Micro$oft's new cash cow is Vista. See, you need to pay for all those new features you just can't live without, like Digital rights management upgrades, thus limiting what the User can do. They need to keep tabs on everyone. Hey, I am not paranoid! I KNOW they're watching me! ;-)

 

[emogoch]

I challenge one person in this forum to try and convince me WHY I need this new OS.

That one is easy: DirectX 10. Don't know if it applies to you personally, but for most enthusiast gamers, within 1 year, Vista will be required to play the latest games with all their effects enabled.

 

[exarrkun]

i think i'm getting back to win98 ver2
in my opinion still the most stable windows ever... 8)

 

[pkellmey]

If you are serious about Vista, build with 2G and upgrade to 4 if you need to. However, from all of the early postings, running the usual Vista services and other applications, 2G looks to be more than enough (for the early roll out - future apps/updates may change this).

 

[exarrkun]

the minimum recuirement: 512 ram is DEFINATELY too few, i ran rc2 with 512 and it totally lagged... :roll: