I am attempting to purchase a new computer. However, my funds are limited, and I would rather not have to spend the extra $100 to attain 2GB of RAM. How necessary is it to have 2GB instead of 1? I am planning on doing picture editing, game playing, and internet surfing for the most part. The games I will be playing will be games like Fifa '08 and ones that don't require extremely good graphics cards.

 

Should I get that extra 1GB, or will I be safe going with only 1?

 

 

 

[hide=FREE COOKIE]After hearing it from a lot of different people in all tracts of life, I have decided that it would be best to build my computer on Newegg. I will give you a free cookie if you give me the links to the optimal computer components for my basic gaming/surfing/video watching. If you do this...please try and keep the price within $600. You will get the ULTIMATE cookie if you do this!!![/hide]

Well it depends, if your on Vista Home Basic then it will be fine for everyday use and some light gaming. If your on Vista Home Premium then 1GB of ram is pretty much for office and internet use only. You can try and stay with 1GB since Fifa is not too demanding and then if you can't play it then you can add some more ram.

You could probably get away with 1 GB for a little while....but eventually, you'll most likely want to buy another GB or two.

Vista ran really slow on my 4400+ X2 with 2GB RAM, I'm pretty sure it was because of a lack of proper IDE drivers, but I'd suggest a minimum of 2GB as it is a very memory hungry OS. At any one time, I was using over 1.5GB of my RAM just on background tasks. Admittedly, windows XP is similar in that, if you add more RAM it uses more. So it probably will run on 1GB... Just not advised, by me. :P

I would recommend 2gb for Vista, especially if your motherboard supports dual channel.

 

 

 

Microsoft say that 512 is the minimum amount of RAM Vista will run on, but in my experience this is not enough even for XP to run smoothly after all the service patches etc, so I would say that 1gb is the minimum for Vista and 2gb is ok.

 

 

 

3gb would be better but you couldn't use that configuration in dual channel mode. And don't bother with 4gb unless you are using Vista 64 bit as 32 bit Os's cannot address above about 3.6gb of ram.

Vista is a memory hog, theres no way you could do anything in a reasonable amount of time with the 512 meg Microsoft reccomends

Vista is a memory hog, theres no way you could do anything in a reasonable amount of time with the 512 meg Microsoft reccomends

 

There's an echo in here :D

I would say 1gb would be fine for surfing the web and everyday gaming and stuff like that. If you want to play games like Second Life which has an interface that dose not stop loading. You will probably need around 3gb.

It would be worth noting, that since you're on a budget, getting your local geek to build you a machine via newegg.com (or another local site if outside the US) or just flat out buy the extra gig at another, cheaper location would be best. Adding an additional gig of ram to the setup would only run around $40-$50 off Newegg and would probably still be cheaper if you shop around the local brick and mortar stores.

Vista is a memory hog, theres no way you could do anything in a reasonable amount of time with the 512 meg Microsoft reccomends

 

There's an echo in here :D

 

 

 

ya, didnt notice yours till after i posted :oops:

Definitely you need it. I have 2Gb of ram, and I hardly ever have problems. It takes quite a bit to make even Half-life 2 lag.

im no computer genius, but when i went to best buy w/ my dad to get his laptop...the dude said to get 2 gb cause windows vista tkaes about 750 mb of ram. his has 2 gb and its pretty fast...

If you run Vista on a lower video setting 1GB should be fine. If you run the highest visual scheme than 2GB or a graphics card with loads of its own RAM will make your life easier because at the highest setting vista renders EVERY window weather its open or not. My laptop runes at 1.16GB RAM used on the highest setting.

I would say 1gb would be fine for surfing the web and everyday gaming and stuff like that. If you want to play games like Second Life which has an interface that dose not stop loading. You will probably need around 3gb.

 

I can run SL with 64MB ram. It usually takes up 300-600M ram.

 

My advice is format the hard drive, and install XP, Vista has too many problems.