Do You Really Need More Than 4. GB of RAM With the price of upgrading system RAM extremely low these days, people are always asking me whether its really worth it to upgrade beyond 4. GB today well answer that question for everybody. More RAM Means Better Multi Tasking. First, lets take a moment to clarify what exactly more RAM can and cant do for you. The biggest benefit of upgrading your PCs memory is better multi tasking, especially for those of us using RAM hogging applications like Photoshop, Outlook, or Firefox 5 minutes after weve opened it. Having a lot of memory means that you can quickly switch back and forth between the different applications without Windows writing the process memory out to the pagefile. The pagefile performs much the same purpose as RAM, but the data is stored on your much slower hard drive. To put it another way, your RAM generally does not make your PC faster, it just allows it to do more things at once. If your single application uses 2. This web site uses cookies to improve your experience. By viewing our content, you are accepting the use of cookies. To find out more and change your cookie settings. Microsoft Dynamics Nav Sharepoint Integration With Sql. Fu6mc.jpg' alt='Can Vista Use More Than 4Gb Ram' title='Can Vista Use More Than 4Gb Ram' />MB of RAM, it wont matter if youve got 2 or 8. GB of total system memory, but if youve got 1. MB each, then you are probably going to benefit from an upgrade. What Applications Actually Use 4. GB of RAM Its true, very few applications are going to use large chunks of your system memory, but there are some applications that will benefit greatly from an upgradeimage editing applications like Photoshop, videoaudio editing applications, or virtual machines like Virtual. Box or VMware will use as much RAM as you can spare. On my desktop with 8. Can Vista Use More Than 4Gb Ram' title='Can Vista Use More Than 4Gb Ram' />After installing Windows 2000 Datacenter Server or Advanced Server or Windows 2003, system properties shows that only around 3. GB of physical memory RAM is. I am looking for a text editor that will be able to load a 4 Gigabyte file into it. Textpad doesnt work. I own a copy of it and have been to its support site, it. GB of RAM, Im able to run all of the above at the same time, without showing any signs of slowdown when switching from one application to another. More RAM Will Not Make Single Tasks Faster. Other than the specific applications that hog your RAM, if you think bumping your RAM from 3. GB to 8. GB is going to increase the speed of a regular application like a video gameyou should think again. The only thing that additional RAM does is allow your computer to do more things at once, not actually make it faster. So if you normally have a few dozen windows open before you launch your video game, youll see some speed improvement by upgrading, or you could just close a few apps. How Do You Know When to Upgrade If you are running with 2. GB or less RAM in your system, you could probably benefit from an upgrade unless you barely use your PC or run a single application at a timeit should be easy to open up Task Manager and check whether your memory usage is reaching the limit. If you consider yourself a power user, youll want to consider upgrading your PC to 3 or 4. GB of RAM. So what if you already have 3. GB installed Should you drop the cash for 6 or even 8. GB of RAM To really analyze whether your PC is using the memory properly or paging to the disk, the best tool is the Resource Monitor included in Windows 7 or Vistait gives you a quick view at exactly what resources are being used, and what they are being used for. The key thing to pay attention to is the Hard Faultssec graph, which tells you how many times an application attempted to read memory that Windows was forced to push into the pagefile because of a lack of memory. What About 3. 2 bit vs 6. So youve upgraded your PC with 8. GB of system RAM, only to find out that Windows doesnt see all of it. The reason is simple 3. Windows XP, 7, or Vista cannot use more than 4. GB of system RAMat least not without an ugly and unsupported hack. If you want to actually use all of that RAM that you installed, youll need to install a 6. Windows. The Bottom Line. Lets break it down into a couple of bullet points for easier digestion If you are a regular user, just light browsing, IM, or You. Tube, you are probably just fine with 2. GB of RAMbut check Resource Monitor if you arent sure. If you consider yourself a power user but dont use Photoshop or virtual machines, you should probably have 3 4. GB of RAM installed. If you are a power user with virtual machines or you do heavy audiovideoimage editing, you should consider upgrading with as much RAM as you can affordjust keep in mind that youll need a 6. Windows to take advantage of it all. Want some actual proofThe well known PC building site Toms Hardware ran a bunch of tests on machines with different RAM configurations, and ZDNet ran through a number of tests with the same conclusionunsurprisingly, most people just dont need 8. GB of RAM at this point. Still, we wouldnt call Lifehacker readers most people, so be sure to examine your needs and upgrade appropriately. If youve never opened up your computer to install RAM, dont worryweve walked through how to install RAM before. What about you Have you already upgraded your PC beyond 4. GB, and has it helped your performance Share your thoughts in the comments.