1 GB Ram and Vista - add 1 GB?

I am looking into an HP Pavilion but want to shave off as much of the price as possible, but am not sure if I really need 2GB with Vista. I don't play high-graphic games, mainly just internet and word processing.

Three options:

1) Configure Pavilion with 2GB instead of 1GB. Cost = $100.
2) Buy 1GB of RAM at Newegg.com. Cost = $37ish.
3) Stick it out with 1GB RAM. Cost = $0.

 

U cant buy 1Gb as you will have two 512 sticks in there...so get the 2Gbg for a hundred bucks more...well worth it and you will see a world of difference.

 

It depends on the manufactor and if they give you an option for one stick or two. For $20, Sony gave me one stick instead of two 512s.

That aside, I am running a T7300, Vaio SZ680 and 1gb RAM on Vista and I think it is okay. But it REALLY depends on what you will doing with you computer. So far, I am only surfing the Internet and using Office.

Try to buy 1 stick, manufactors always overcharge on RAM and upgrade to 2gb is 1gb doesnt suit you.

 

Just order the laptop with 1 GB and buy 2 sticks of 1 GB RAM from another company.

 

Buy the 1gb from newegg for $37, sell the 512mb on ebay/craigslist to help offset the cost of the 1gb stick and you end up with 1.5gb on your laptop. No brainer here.

 

I have 1G(with 128/256M taken by the IGP) and don't find it starving for RAM and is quite snappy after I disable search indexing, superfetch and all the virus protection things.

 

You disabled Superfetch? The purpose of superfetch is to keep track of the programs and tings you access most. It is a performance increase.

To say you sacrificed a performance increase to get a performance increase lol....

 

"purpose", not in reality, at least for my case. On my machine, my CPU usage is most of the time at very low/idle range. My used memory is only 512M(so not starving for memory yet) yet my HD light keeps on flashing. While people would say it doesn't matter(which I initially thought so too), the point is, it slows down what I am doing because most tasks would end up going to the HD and they all need to queue for access.

After I disabled them, I no longer experience the lagging.

 

Save your $$$$$! 1GB Ram is more than enough running Vista and basic (Internet/Office programs).

Don't buy into the hype.

 

I am upgrading to 2gb in my sony n365 any manufacurer suggestions or are they all the same. I saw 2 gb at newegg of Crucial ram for $70. If I am going to upgrade I want the best I can get.

 

Stay with a brand name, Crucial, Corsair, Kingston, PQI, OCZ, Patriot, etc.. and you should be fine. Newegg is also a good site to purchase from, so look for the best deal you can get.

 

Thanks. Well, if I do get a new computer now I won't buy extra RAM...although if need a little extra boost, I suppose I could scarf it from my current rig and then sell the other 512 on ebay...

 

That may be true if 1gb was still $100, but...

1GB (from newegg) shipped - $35
Sell 512mb on ebay/craiglist - $10

That makes your upgrade only- $25

Memory is the most inexpensive upgrade you can do to improve performance. This is a no brainer, you can't go wrong by added memory. More so, that it is so f***ing cheap.

 

If a system NEVER EVER accesses it what good is it ???

Kinda like a High Horsepower car driven by someone that is afraid to tromp on the gas! The wussy driver will NEVER EVER access the Vet engine's high revving horsepower.

I have 1GB in this dinosaur machine here and according to FreeRamXP Pro, it's NEVER used more than 500MB in any one session. I have all sorts of things running at one time and normally 10-15 Internet Explorer windows each with 3-4 Tabs open. So for my system here adding anymore RAM would be a complete waste of $$$$$.

But again, IF you are running VISTA (1GB RAM MINIMUM) and you are a GAMMMER, Load up on as much RAM as you can afford!!!

Just my 2 cents....

 

Vista works better with 2 GB than 1 GB, even if you're just surfing the web and doing Word documents. Now it isn't absolutely necessary to go 2 GB, but it still helps out.

 

If you could purchase the power of a Vette (not vet) for a little more than the price of a Camry Hybrid, why wouldn't you do it? Some day you may need the extra power.

Vista is a memory hog, the more it has, the better it runs. In your case, XP can run just fine on 1GB. And like I stated before, for the price of a few days worth of Starbuck's lattes, adding 1gb is a no brainer.

 

Because Camry is nicer to the environment and throughout its useful life, the saving(both money and CO2 emission) can be quite significant. Beside, how likely one would need the extra power of a Vette over Camry. I would assume Camry with normal loading can run pass the legal speed limit by quite some margin(computer program capped speed) ?

Though I would say 2G RAM for Vista is not too excessive as in the Vette vs Camry case but not absolutely necessary.

 

I think you are right. I've ran Vista with 1 and 2 GB.

Even when I opened a lot of progams 1GB seemed to be fine.

(Vista business, so no Aero)

 

I also think it depends on the cpu. I just scrapped XP yesterday on the Compaq in my sig and have to say that overall Vista performance leaves much to be desired (even with 2GB ram). The Sempron seems to be nearly overtaxed just running simple tasks (with 40+ other processes running in the background).

The other lappy in my sig (Turion X2, 3GB) is like night & day in comparison. A dual-core cpu definitely seems to help in Vista (even moreso than ram).

BTW, Vista Business has Aero, Home Basic does not.......

 

LOL, now we're talking about CO2 emissions...

Sure the Camry will get there... eventually, but the Vette will get there now! And with electronics most everyone perfers now to eventually. That was the reason for the comparison. Vette power for a little more than Camry price. The best value for your dollar, and to add 1GB of ram for only $25 - $35 is one hell of a value. I remember the not so distant past, where that same 1GB would run damn near $200!!

Anyway, babes love the Vette...

 

Depends on what time of day. A Vette at 25mph is just as fast as a Camry at 25mph when the line in front can only go that fast. And if there is more people in the Camry, it may get there faster using that poll lane.

 

Not really, I had my 1520(Vista Premium) with 1 Gig running smooth for 2 weeks, and the only thing that didn't run properly was BF2 on mid settings or higher(too many hangs due to hard drive loading stuff every 5 seconds).

I upgraded to two Gigs just because of that, now BF runs at max with no problem, but no overall performance increase in Vista(computer does boot 10 seconds faster - but that's about it).

When not playing games the memory just hangs at about 600MB, goes to 700MB with word, and ie7 working at the same time, and as long as it doidn't reach 800 everything went smooth(my video card steals 256MB so that explained that 800MB limit).

 

i thought that 4gb was excessive for vista... until i realised how wrong i was

 

Vista or XP doesnt matter, as long as you run winword or IE 1 Gb is plenty, but even if you plan to play games such as Warcraft 3 or more demanding than the higher ram the better/faster gameplay although there is a limit of 2GB afterwards it is either the CPU or GPU that becomes the bottleneck(looking at your system).

Any OS type better than vista Basic; vice versa Premium, business, Ultimate uses slightly more ram.

But if you have an integrated GPU solution(x3100, ati1270) than ADD more ram!! because they suck alot of it.

If you have vista ultimate and running with ati1270/go 7150m than you will notice a great improvement by adding 1gb more.

However if it is business and you have atix1400/go7400 than performance increase will be insignificant in everyday use and not even worth 20$

daniel G can you also tell the allocated pagefile because i can also run Doom 3 with 512mb ram and it shows 256mb used but the pagefile is 1,6GB. so if your pagefile comes at any time higher than 500MB than you are missing ram.
anything under 500mb is normal.

 

Right now, my used physical memory is 676MB(UAC disabled), and my pagefile is 1523MB, thus following your logic would make even 2Gigs a bad choice for Vista...

My logic is that if any of those 1523MB of pagefile wants to move to the physical memory, I get the same performance running either 1 Gig, or 2 Gigs. The bottleneck happens only if 300MB, or more of pagefile decide to use physical RAM at the same instant.

Here: I opened all the crap I could until I reached about 1Gig. My pagefile went down by about 200MB, and physical usage of memory went up by about 250MB.

So basically, I would need to open all those programs shown on the taskbar at the same time to feel a performance decrease with 1Gig. Note that even with all those programs 2 Gigs seems like a waste.

 

That is not going to last forever! when xp introduced 256ram was more than enough these days you need more than 512 mb ram to rn xp smoothly same will happen to vista after new programs appear but as i stated before1GB is plenty for IE and word. and yes you have also paint on wow.

 

I just upgraded my Vista from 1gb from 2gb. Everything runs and power up the same. There is no noticable difference.

But for $30...whatever...