What does memory do and how would it suit my needs

[Source]

What does memory do and how would it suit my needs?

Say I have a 1GHz computer and the only thing I want to upgrade is the memory - I have 512mb in there and I want to upgrade it to 1536mb - How is this going to affect the overall speed of the computer, if I'm running graphical applications like Photoshop, 3DX Max rendering, the overall speed of programs loading up and running?

Thanks

 

[svol]

In the memory your PC loads all current programs and drivers that are needed to run your system and apps you're using. The CPU can pick stuff out of the memory and do calculations with it and after that place it back or do something else with it. Everything you use has to be loaded inside your memery before you can be used.

If your system needs, say, 700MB of RAM to store data your RAM hasn't enough space... therefore the system puts the remaining x MB of data inside the much much slower virtual memory on your HD.

So if you use lots of memory intensive programs and textures, etc extra memory can give a great boost to the running speed of your program, not the loading speed as that is determined by your HD (the data has to be loaded from the HD to the RAM when you start an app).

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