Is there such a thing as too much RAM?

[brawnypandora0]

The phrase, "you can never have too much RAM" was common ever since the early days of personal computing and still is today. But say right now I buy a state of the art motherboard that can accommodate 100GB of RAM. With that much RAM, I should be able to last at least fifty years, right?

[jwcalla]

That might get you to Windows 8.

Maybe Windows 9.

In general I agree... there is a certain point of diminishing returns. It really depends on usage. A server would be more apt to require that much memory.

I think the money could be better put towards SSDs for improving everyday performance, and of course a high-end video card for gaming performance.

[gnomeuser]

A friend of mine just ordered 24GB of ram for his gaming rig.. to which he also plans to add 3 way SLI graphics.

That is just.. way to much RAM.

My nettop came with 4GB (1GB dedicated to the GPU), with the exception of memory leaks, I have never experienced using more than half of this.

[whatthefunk]

The phrase, "you can never have too much RAM" was common ever since the early days of personal computing and still is today. But say right now I buy a state of the art motherboard that can accommodate 100GB of RAM. With that much RAM, I should be able to last at least fifty years, right?

I doubt your chips would last 50 years. My experience has been that after about ten years, hardware starts to fail.

[rmayer32]

There was a time when I thought 128 MB of RAM was insane.. So to answer the question, more RAM is always good. But the 50 year thing, no way.

[ctrlmd]

A friend of mine just ordered 24GB of ram for his gaming rig.. to which he also plans to add 3 way SLI graphics.

That is just.. way to much RAM.

My nettop came with 4GB (1GB dedicated to the GPU), with the exception of memory leaks, I have never experienced using more than half of this.
24 g for gaming purpose :o ? why is he going to play 7 games in one time

[brawnypandora0]

So is there a Moore's Law for RAM?

[gnomeuser]

24 g for gaming purpose :o ? why is he going to play 7 games in one time

I tried asking and didn't get a clear reply, I think he is assuming an unlikely collation between size variables for purposes of personal compensation.

Now the really funny bit is that when he ordered the RAM, he was so excited he didn't check the model he was ordering.. so he had a delivery of 24 GBs of ram in modules intended for Mac laptops. Was it not for the alcohol and the bacon spreading goodness in my body at the time, I might have died from the pure hilarity of the matter.

[asifnaz]

With that much RAM, I should be able to last at least fifty years, right?

we will never need more than 16 MB hard disk space . Bill Gates (1984)

[Grenage]

The phrase, "you can never have too much RAM" was common ever since the early days of personal computing and still is today. But say right now I buy a state of the art motherboard that can accommodate 100GB of RAM. With that much RAM, I should be able to last at least fifty years, right?

For a gaming desktop, I'd use 8GB; more is a bonus, but then you're into diminishing returns. Every case is different, so take that with a pinch of salt.

[mips]

I tried asking and didn't get a clear reply, I think he is assuming an unlikely collation between size variables for purposes of personal compensation.


Seeing he's got 24GB RAM & 3-way SLI does he at least have a SSD?
Maybe he intends to create a RAM disk at startup, copy games in there and play them from ram?

[Khakilang]

To me its the kind of usage that determine the amount of RAM need. For gaming the more RAM the merrier. For my usage, it only use 1/4 of my 2GB RAM. But who knows how huge is the OS we having in another 10 years time.

[Paqman]

Depends entirely on what apps you're running.

For a normal desktop user running Linux i'd say anything over about 2-3GB is of very marginal usefulness unless you're running VMs.

[handy]

I tried asking and didn't get a clear reply, I think he is assuming an unlikely collation between size variables for purposes of personal compensation.
...

You may appreciate this vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8Bc7eRTdWY

[_outlawed_]

Hell I got 4GB RAM and I don't use most of it. xD

[3Miro]

For my job, you can never have too much RAM. For home and gaming, at this time, you don't need more than 8GB. This will naturally change in the future.

[cgroza]

Too much RAM? I would say "USELESS RAM"!

[mcduck]

Hell I got 4GB RAM and I don't use most of it. xD

I have 1GB on my main computer and I'm not using most of it. :D

(on the other hand my other machine is for 3D rendering and I'm yet to find any limit to the amount of CPU power and RAM I could fit into that machine and still find out I haven't got enough... :D)

[HowBizarre]

The only solution for too much RAM is more RAM.

[DouglasAWh]

The phrase, "you can never have too much RAM" was common ever since the early days of personal computing and still is today.

Depends on how you define "too much". You wouldn't use 100GB on a desktop unless...well, I don't know, but I don't think it's going to hurt anything. Even "too much processor" might not be an accurate statement since power consumption is based on usage.

Of course, if there's a space concern, then there could be too much. The motherboards we get at work have four slots, so unless you get 25GB sticks, the motherboard isn't going to support it.

Is there a point at which it's useless? Yes.

[DouglasAWh]

For a normal desktop user running Linux i'd say anything over about 2-3GB is of very marginal usefulness unless you're running VMs.

I disagree with this, but certainly not the first part. If you do a lot of research and have 100s of Firefox tabs open, more than 3 can be useful.

It also depends on the ability of applications to use the memory. For instance, if your entire music database index is in RAM, that could be useful while the processor is busy compiling stuff. Does banshee have an index of my 15229-song music library in RAM? I doubt it.

So, I guess in that sense (the sense that apps don't know how to best use it), it's usefulness *is* marginal, but I certainly noticed a difference when I jumped from 4GB to 8GB. Graphics card is what is holding me back these days.

[matt_symes]

You may appreciate this vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8Bc7eRTdWY

Ouch. :lolflag:

[aaaantoine]

To answer the question asked in the topic title: yes, there is, because you typically have to *pay* for that RAM. if you spend over $1000 to get 100GB RAM when your usage only ever reaches -- say -- 6GB before the rest of your computer goes obsolete, then you, sir, have wasted your money on too much RAM.

[jerenept]

I disagree with this, but certainly not the first part. If you do a lot of research and have 100s of Firefox tabs open, more than 3 can be useful.

It also depends on the ability of applications to use the memory. For instance, if your entire music database index is in RAM, that could be useful while the processor is busy compiling stuff. Does banshee have an index of my 15229-song music library in RAM? I doubt it.

So, I guess in that sense (the sense that apps don't know how to best use it), it's usefulness *is* marginal, but I certainly noticed a difference when I jumped from 4GB to 8GB. Graphics card is what is holding me back these days.

100's of tabs? wta! Using FF4's Tab Candy, or Opera's Tab Stacks, I suppose, otherwise they wold be all crammed up together.

[fuduntu]

I remember upgrading a computer from 32k to 64k of memory and it being a big deal. :/

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

The phrase, "you can never have too much RAM" was common ever since the early days of personal computing and still is today. But say right now I buy a state of the art motherboard that can accommodate 100GB of RAM. With that much RAM, I should be able to last at least fifty years, right?

I work on systems that use blade servers. One system has 96 blade servers and each blade server has 24GB of RAM. There are already Intel Xeon 5600/5500 blade servers with 192GB DDR3 RAM. http://www.supermicro.com/servers/blade/module/SBI-7126T-SH.cfm

It all depends on your needs.

If you are Google or Amazon Cloud, 100GB per server probably wouldn't last you 5 years.

Like others posting here, in 1981 my personal home computer had 32KB of RAM. Now I prefer 4GB of RAM for my personal home computer. After 30 years I prefer 125 times as much RAM.

[JRV]

You can not have too much RAM, or too much computing power of any kind.

US corporations are realizing that the personal computer has become a very powerful tool and they are doing all they can to control your use of computing power.

Apple and Microsoft are the obvious examples, but many other companies are all trying to control what you can do.

Adobe is another one that can not be trusted. Why is the Windows version of Adobe PDF reader is ten times the size of Foxit reader. What is it doing with all that extra bloat? Is it tracking what PDFs I read?

While on the subject of Adobe, The Linux version of the Flash player just started hiding the file it is streaming. It used to be in /tmp, now it is buried deep in a hard to find directory.
For more information on this problem and a fix look at this thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1687218

With all the excitement over cloud computing corporations are even trying to lock us in to their programs, and getting control of our data.

What do you think of Sony putting a root kit virus on CDs?

Digital Rights Malware should be considered a virus and the corporations that are trying to control us are no better than the Russian mob.

I've heard that there is talk of building DRM (Digital Rights Malware) into the next generation processors at the hardware level.

I think it is important to keep my hardware on the cutting edge, so when they try to cripple it I can have the best possible system.

Then I will quit buying hardware, just like I quit buying Digital Rights Malware.
I will not purchase anything that tries to take power away from me, and I suggest you do the same.

Well, that's my rant for today, I hope you enjoyed it.

[BrokenKingpin]

[QUOTE=brawnypandora0;10515344But say right now I buy a state of the art motherboard that can accommodate 100GB of RAM. With that much RAM, I should be able to last at least fifty years, right?[/QUOTE]
The amount of RAM may be sufficient for decades to come, but by the time something is using that amount of RAM, that 100GB of RAM would probably be very slow and all the other hardware has moved on.

Really, going of 8GB of RAM would be useless for a PC, even for higher end video games.

[lisati]

I remember a hand-held "computer" I once had which could be expanded to a massive 1Kb of RAM. That's right, a whole kilobyte! It was, in essence, a calculator that happened to be programmable in a dialect of BASIC. It's a pity that its premature demise was brought about by being dropped and promptly stood on.


You may appreciate this vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8Bc7eRTdWY

**cough** **splutter**

[MisterGaribaldi]

we will never need more than 16 MB hard disk space . Bill Gates (1984)

And, we'll never need more than 640K of RAM, either.

[pricetech]

NEVER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At least that's the short answer.

I always told folks who were looking to buy a computer to get all the RAM their budget could stand.

I still tell them that.

[DZ*]

Big arrays are back in my neck of woods (genetics). My Fedora desktop at work has 32Gb of RAM and I can bring it to a crawl if I'm not not careful. A few years ago I started to think I'll never have to worry again about what integer type to use to handle a table of data. Well was I wrong. Back to C++ coding stuff up from scratch. Rabid biologists are ahead of statisticians, again.

[Dustin2128]

My nettop came with 4GB (1GB dedicated to the GPU), with the exception of memory leaks, I have never experienced using more than half of this.
Dumb question... but what the hell is a nettop?

[jerenept]

Dumb question... but what the hell is a nettop?

A desktop with a netbook processor. They are popular as Home Theater PC's.

[stmiller]

More ram makes a difference on the desktop if the software you are using can take advantage of mega-ram.

The photoshop gurus I know can easily max out their available ram with a single session...

[Ocxic]

I have 8GB of RAM,, 3GB of which are allocated to a constantly running Windows 7 VM. My next computer will have at least 16GB of RAM as i run Photoshop CS 5 and Bridge and the 3GB I've allocated just isn't enough. (running 32bit windows 7)

[Jagoly]

24gb for games.
Crazy.
99% of games today are designed to run with 2-4gb of ram, because that's how much ram the majority of computers have. If game devs built there games for machines with 24gb of ram, they would have a pretty bloody small consumer base. Imagine if TV's costed $50,000 dollars. There would be a fair few less dvd's in the average persons home.

[MisterGaribaldi]

@OP: Actually, if you have more than 2GB of RAM in your computer, you have too much.

As a side note, feel perfectly free to give your extraneous RAM to others here on UbuntuForums. We gladly accept donations in all sizes and denominations. :)

[Jagoly]

I would say that for the average user 4gb would be about standard. Power users need more ram because they do more, noobs need more because they have no concept of memory managment. Have look at he average noobs windows desktop: 20+ icons in the info panel, 30,000 icons on the desktop (mostly things that just haven't been sorted), and 800 applications open at once because they never bother to close anything. Also, windows (which is the noobs OS of choice) uses 99 percent of your ram at boot.

[ssam]

ssam@sam:~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 129184 7969 121215 0 171 4549
-/+ buffers/cache: 3248 125936
Swap: 259999 0 259999


:-) our big machine for particle simulations.

[brawnypandora0]

I would say that for the average user 4gb would be about standard. Power users need more ram because they do more, noobs need more because they have no concept of memory managment. Have look at he average noobs windows desktop: 20+ icons in the info panel, 30,000 icons on the desktop (mostly things that just haven't been sorted), and 800 applications open at once because they never bother to close anything. Also, windows (which is the noobs OS of choice) uses 99 percent of your ram at boot.

Why does Windows use 99% at boot? Is there some mutual business agreement with RAM companies to increase profits?

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

Why does Windows use 99% at boot? Is there some mutual business agreement with RAM companies to increase profits?

Operating systems report memory usage differently. Even Ubuntu gives you different RAM usage numbers. Let's look at ssam's post #40 above.

ssam@sam:~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 129184 7969 121215 0 171 4549
-/+ buffers/cache: 3248 125936
Swap: 259999 0 259999
It shows that his computer is using 7969 of memory out of the 129184 he has. It appears that Ubuntu needs 62% of his RAM just to run. However, there are non-essential processes running in the background that are taking advantage of the available free RAM. They will use the free RAM until the essential processes need it. When the essential processes need the RAM, the non-essential processes will be throttled to use less or no RAM.

How do I know this?

Looking at the line starting with "-/+ buffers/cache:" I see that the essential processes are using 3248 of the 129184 available. Therefore, Ubuntu is actually requiring only 25% of his RAM to run. The other 37% of the used RAM is being used by non-essential processes. Possibly being used by processes like the update notifier.

With Microsoft Windows, you have things like anti-virus programs that will use as much of the available non-essential RAM space as they can get. However, they will be throttled to use less RAM when essential programs need to run.

Microsoft Windows doesn't report memory usage in the same way as Ubuntu if you are using the System Monitor application. You need more advanced system monitoring applications to determine what the true RAM usage is for the essential versus non-essential processes.

[forrestcupp]

Seeing how Watson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Watson) has 16TB of RAM right now, I don't think 100GB is going to last you very long. :)

[mamamia88]

i don't know. right now i'm using about 765 mb ram. all i have running is firefox 4 with 5 tabs, miro, and gwibber. i am also using compiz if that makes a difference. still got 1.2 gb or so leftover ram to do other stuff. for my purposes I don't see myself needing more ram.

[Jagoly]

Why does Windows use 99% at boot? Is there some mutual business agreement with RAM companies to increase profits?

I was having a joke. I just dislike windows. Also it does use a lot more ram than any Linux distro I know.

[KiwiNZ]

I would say that for the average user 4gb would be about standard. Power users need more ram because they do more, noobs need more because they have no concept of memory managment. Have look at he average noobs windows desktop: 20+ icons in the info panel, 30,000 icons on the desktop (mostly things that just haven't been sorted), and 800 applications open at once because they never bother to close anything. Also, windows (which is the noobs OS of choice) uses 99 percent of your ram at boot.

Please refer the Code of Conduct ...

"The purpose of the Ubuntu Forums is to provide support for Ubuntu. We also want this to be a place where community can develop and we can enjoy one another's company. To achieve this, we strive to maintain an atmosphere that can be enjoyed by all and we ask all members of the community to be respectful at all times. This means please use etiquette and politeness. Treat people with kindness, gentleness and respect. If you do this, the rest of the code of conduct won't need more than a cursory mention.

Trolling, Attacks and Flaming: These are always forbidden.
Trolling is posting in a way that provokes emotional responses.
Attacks and derogatory terms of any kind are not welcome. This includes references to other operating systems and the companies that produce them.
Flames are messages that personally attack or call any people names or otherwise harass. These, along with any generally condescending posts will be edited or removed at the moderators discretion.
If a thread is flame-bait (appears to be intended to start an argument or is likely to cause an argument rather than enhance discussion, as in trolling), it will be locked or removed without notice. Individual flame-bait comments in a post may be deleted or edited at the moderators' discretion.
If the thread turns into an argument, it can be closed to further comment or removed without notice. Sometimes a moderator may split the thread or delete certain portions in order to keep the discussion going, but that is not always possible since we are a staff of volunteers with limited time and numbers."

Remember this in future when posting

[Jagoly]

Please refer the Code of Conduct ...

"The purpose of the Ubuntu Forums is to provide support for Ubuntu. We also want this to be a place where community can develop and we can enjoy one another's company. To achieve this, we strive to maintain an atmosphere that can be enjoyed by all and we ask all members of the community to be respectful at all times. This means please use etiquette and politeness. Treat people with kindness, gentleness and respect. If you do this, the rest of the code of conduct won't need more than a cursory mention.

Trolling, Attacks and Flaming: These are always forbidden.
Trolling is posting in a way that provokes emotional responses.
Attacks and derogatory terms of any kind are not welcome. This includes references to other operating systems and the companies that produce them.
Flames are messages that personally attack or call any people names or otherwise harass. These, along with any generally condescending posts will be edited or removed at the moderators discretion.
If a thread is flame-bait (appears to be intended to start an argument or is likely to cause an argument rather than enhance discussion, as in trolling), it will be locked or removed without notice. Individual flame-bait comments in a post may be deleted or edited at the moderators' discretion.
If the thread turns into an argument, it can be closed to further comment or removed without notice. Sometimes a moderator may split the thread or delete certain portions in order to keep the discussion going, but that is not always possible since we are a staff of volunteers with limited time and numbers."

Remember this in future when posting

I was prety much describing my own computer...
Sorry.

[pbpersson]

we will never need more than 16 MB hard disk space . Bill Gates (1984)

The moral to the story is to never say never

I have hundreds of movies on my server hard drive and each one is around 4GB:guitar:

[brawnypandora0]

When I used Windows, I sometimes got a message that my virtual memory was too low and so Windows was increasing the paging. At what point does Windows automatically do this?

Does the same thing happen with Ubuntu, only without the popup warning?

[NightwishFan]

Linux generally uses a static swap partition. It will use it as it needs it (and be very efficient at doing so). It is up to the user to increase it in size. Generally, if your system needs enough memory to increase even a conservative size swap, you should upgrade your hardware.

[ssam]

Operating systems report memory usage differently. Even Ubuntu gives you different RAM usage numbers. Let's look at ssam's post #40 above.

ssam@sam:~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 129184 7969 121215 0 171 4549
-/+ buffers/cache: 3248 125936
Swap: 259999 0 259999
It shows that his computer is using 7969 of memory out of the 129184 he has. It appears that Ubuntu needs 62% of his RAM just to run. However, there are non-essential processes running in the background that are taking advantage of the available free RAM. They will use the free RAM until the essential processes need it. When the essential processes need the RAM, the non-essential processes will be throttled to use less or no RAM.

How do I know this?

Looking at the line starting with "-/+ buffers/cache:" I see that the essential processes are using 3248 of the 129184 available. Therefore, Ubuntu is actually requiring only 25% of his RAM to run. The other 37% of the used RAM is being used by non-essential processes. Possibly being used by processes like the update notifier.

With Microsoft Windows, you have things like anti-virus programs that will use as much of the available non-essential RAM space as they can get. However, they will be throttled to use less RAM when essential programs need to run.

Microsoft Windows doesn't report memory usage in the same way as Ubuntu if you are using the System Monitor application. You need more advanced system monitoring applications to determine what the true RAM usage is for the essential versus non-essential processes.

the message is right, but you figures are wrong. out of the 128GB of RAM, 4GB is used for caches, and 3GB for processes. the usage is low because it had been rebooted recently and was pretty much idle at the time.

[NightwishFan]

What kind of massive system is this!? :P

My Debian is sad in comparison:

virgil@debian-ghibli:~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2983 2805 177 0 52 2080
-/+ buffers/cache: 672 2311
Swap: 2859 9 2850

Edit: I love the cache usage on mine though, spare no expense.

Though note the amount reported in gnome system monitor (if that is what you go by) will be nearer to buffers/cache (which is the line to pay attention to (unless you know what buffers/cache are)
http://www.linuxatemyram.com/

[handy]

I remember a hand-held "computer" I once had which could be expanded to a massive 1Kb of RAM. That's right, a whole kilobyte! It was, in essence, a calculator that happened to be programmable in a dialect of BASIC. It's a pity that its premature demise was brought about by being dropped and promptly stood on.

I've still got my Casio FX-770P which sounds very similar (though I didn't stand on it).

It was an essential component in 1986 & thereabouts for those doing the Electronics Engineering Certificate course at what is now the University of Technology in Sydney Oz.

It has 1,504 bytes which was expandable to 3,552 bytes. Which I've always regretted not doing, as you haven't been able to get the OR-2 RAM expansion pack now for decades.

I had great fun programming in the old line numbered BASIC, it has 10 program areas, so whilst ever you still have storage RAM... It is non-volatile due to 2 x CR2032 batteries & 1 x CR1220 which is basically the backup so that when you change the CR2032 batteries you don't lose the contents stored in your RAM. It also had an assembly language simulator so you could practice your machine language just for fun. It is of course a very well equipped scientific calculator with statistical functions included as well.

Its interesting how what was great fun & stimulating once becomes boring as the years go by...

Even so, I think I'm going to have to put some fresh batteries into the little black box & have another play with it after all these years.

[Lucradia]

The maximum consumer-capable RAM you can have currently is 32-64 GB. It's getting to the point where we may need more in the short future, but we also need better GPUs, and frighteningly, the best is starting to become the worst in GPUs.

[del_diablo]

For there to be uses of more RAM, there must exist a applicationo of the surplus of the RAM.
If you get tons of RAM these days, all you can do is to cache application or do 3D rendering.
Which means the "consumer" practically got no useage of it, until games for the PC catch up and allow full cache.
Something like pointcloudsearchdata could actually end up as a RAM eating tech.
HOWEVER, a full HD movie is what.... 7-8 GB of data? Does that not mean that we do not have a "proper" use of 8 gigs of RAM yet does it?
After the OS have enough to cache everything, you do not need more.
Which means at after some point in the future consumer PC's will likely have "low" amounts of ram, like consols have today.

[DZ*]

the message is right, but you figures are wrong. out of the 128GB of RAM, 4GB is used for caches, and 3GB for processes. the usage is low because it had been rebooted recently and was pretty much idle at the time.

But it's not a desktop, or is it? I have a similar monster (128Gb RAM, 64 CPUs, named fluffy) but I've never seen it in person. It was delivered to some kind of computer basement and equipped with CentOS and remote access.

[FoxEWolf]

try running Vista under that much RAM and watch it still crash under the overload of GUI and effects.

[SE7EN-LOCSTA]

i have 9gb of ddr3 ram, and i would have to say it's maybe useless, for now. ive tried (on windows 7) to run as much crap as i can at once, and never even came close to hitting that over 4gb mark where you would need 64bit. it came with my computer, so i didnt pay more for it, and its nice to just know i have it.. just in case.

coming from 2 years ago, runnin a p4 with 1gb ram, where running photshop cs4 meant closing everything else down and waiting forever to start, its good when you can have it up in a few seconds and still listen to music and keep your other background stuff running. better to have and not need than need and not have....

[ssam]

But it's not a desktop, or is it? I have a similar monster (128Gb RAM, 64 CPUs, named fluffy) but I've never seen it in person. It was delivered to some kind of computer basement and equipped with CentOS and remote access.

its a 2U server

[brawnypandora0]

Back when I used Windows XP, I commonly had to wait to click the End Now dialogue box button whenver I tried to shut down. This was very annoying and time-consuming; so far I've only had to do this only a few times with Ubuntu. Does this indicate that my RAM isn't sufficient to CLOSE programs? I have 512MB DDR RAM.

[NightwishFan]

512mb is getting to be a little low end, but it is not bad. A little IO wait might make the box pop up, but it will end eventually if you just click wait. If it does not ever close the program on it's own, it is probably hanging.

[Lucradia]

512mb is getting to be a little low end, but it is not bad. A little IO wait might make the box pop up, but it will end eventually if you just click wait. If it does not ever close the program on it's own, it is probably hanging.

1 GB is starting to become low-end, actually.

[NightwishFan]

1 GB is starting to become low-end, actually.

Sad but true. :/ It makes me really want to use something more efficient, because I see no reason for most software to need that much memory.

[Lucradia]

Sad but true. :/ It makes me really want to use something more efficient, because I see no reason for most software to need that much memory.

Flash has to go if you want anything efficient.

Next on the list: Adobe Air, Silverlight, .NET Framework, Security Center API for Windows (Causes most modern firewalls to not work if removed), Java.

[1clue]

All these numbers are subjective.

If you're just running Linux desktop and whatever you would use to do your work, then 2G is probably plenty. If you're a heavy user (software development, etc), maybe 4G but that's really tough to fill.

Services take extra space. Running an app server or a database can suck down some memory especially if you're using it heavily. Bigger the database or whatever the more RAM obviously.

I use tmpfs in smart places, like any temp space where a lot of disk caching goes on during compilation. Even so, I have a really tough time using 6G actually used by some sort of software.

What I find though is that the OS will use any available RAM as a disk cache. If the system runs long enough and accesses enough disk, then RAM will be completely full. So you really have 4 "spaces" so to speak:

User space
Services (including VMware or other virtualization)
TMPFS
Disk Cache


My system has actually used SWAP exactly once. The next day I went out and doubled my RAM to 12G.

[brawnypandora0]

So if I upgrade to 8GB of RAM let's say, does that mean an average user like myself will never experience my computer lagging?

[NightwishFan]

Ram is not the only bottleneck. :D With well designed software? Nope, you shouldnt lag. Sadly all software has bugs

[1clue]

It means no such thing.

You won't run out of RAM, but that doesn't mean you won't have other bottlenecks. If you do something disk-intensive or network-intensive, you can get something going that blocks based on that and your computer can seem to slow down or even lock up.

Video for example will probably depend on your Internet speed, and that has not much at all to do with RAM as long as you have enough.

RAM is cheap right now. IMO you should be able to put System Monitor on your panel and never see the memory graph fill up. I won't say you should never use SWAP, but it should be extremely rare.

Chances are you could go to 4G and not need to worry much, but if you have the money for 8 I'm the last person to say no. But if you're not using something like VMware or some sort of server software, you probably don't need more than 4.

One thing you could do is open your box, see how many memory slots you have. If half of them are empty, then buy 4G for that number of slots and keep your existing memory.

[ikt]

So if I upgrade to 8GB of RAM let's say, does that mean an average user like myself will never experience my computer lagging?

It depends on what you mean by lagging.

For me to remove general slowness it was a multi-part solution,

First, switching to ubuntu from windows, immediately computer is faster and more responsive.

Second, upgrading from 1gb of ram to 4gb

Third, and this had the biggest effect by far, getting an SSD drive, with it ubuntu boots up in under 10 seconds, and the majority of programs I run load instantly.

However if I had less ram and had multiple programs open, I'd still get a bit of lag as my ram usage spilled over into swap space.

So I'd recommend baseline if you want to be sure to get rid of any lagging, 4gb of ram + SSD drive minimum.

[1clue]

I would hold off on that SSD solution.

If you have enough RAM, then all your read-only disk access will read once from the disk, and then stay there until you reboot.

Theoretically, the SSD might be a bit faster. Realistically, there is no practical difference unless you have a laptop. In that case, the SSD will use less electricity and extend your battery life.

[handy]

I upgraded my iMac from its 1GB (which wasn't really enough) to 6GB recently. I don't need 6GB, but with a strong Oz dollar, & the price of the RAM being so low I thought I'll max it out now. The price will eventually go up as the technology gets older.

Apple say the iMac can take no more than 4GB of RAM. But they were/are wrong. Some other Macs can also be upgraded beyond their stated maximum too.

Here is the page where I discovered this information:

http://www.maconsteroids.com/blog/imac-2007-2008-6gb-ram-upgrade/

[ikt]

I would hold off on that SSD solution.

If you have enough RAM, then all your read-only disk access will read once from the disk, and then stay there until you reboot.

I have to question whether you have ever used an SSD.



Theoretically, the SSD might be a bit faster. Realistically, there is no practical difference unless you have a laptop.

Realistically, there is a massive difference!

Ubuntu boots in under 10 seconds, and the majority of applications open in under a second, the system becomes unbelievable responsive!

Although this video is based on windows, similar performance increases can be found in ubuntu with an SSD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lyz1xDe3xO8

Can I just reiterate that an SSD drive has been the biggest noticeable performance upgrade to my computer ever, no graphics card, cpu, ram, hard drive, motherboard or anything else has made such a massive difference to system performance.

[1clue]

Boot time, I can see where they would be faster. But I boot about twice a year. Once an app has loaded once it then is already in RAM because the disk cache still has it around, so my second launch is faster than your SSD.

So your SSD saves me about a minute a month tops.

[Lucradia]

Boot time, I can see where they would be faster. But I boot about twice a year. Once an app has loaded once it then is already in RAM because the disk cache still has it around, so my second launch is faster than your SSD.

So your SSD saves me about a minute a month tops.

shutting down your computer can be very helpful. Keeping it on all the time is usually only saved for seeding and folding. When seeding or folding, it's in your best interest to remove your USB devices, and your video cable until you need to use the computer again. This way, the processor or graphics card can focus more on the application, rather than displaying to a screen.

[Paqman]

Boot time, I can see where they would be faster. But I boot about twice a year. Once an app has loaded once it then is already in RAM because the disk cache still has it around, so my second launch is faster than your SSD.

So your SSD saves me about a minute a month tops.

So, you never write any data to disk? I/O is a huge bottleneck in most computers, there's tons of times an SSD will shine over a magnetic drive.

Yes, installing lots of RAM and caching aggressively will freshen up the system, but so will an SSD.

[1clue]

I write to disk, but not nearly as often as you might think. The directories I write to most frequently are temp directories, and I have them mounted as tmpfs -- which means they write to RAM, unless I run out. That has happened exactly once in the past year or two, at which point I went out and bought another 6G.

I'm using high performance filesystems where non-volatile write speed would become an issue, and there are write caches. The driver writes to a RAM buffer and then unblocks, then the write happens on another thread. The disadvantage of that approach is that if I were to lose power while a write buffer is dirty I could get serious filesystem damage, so I have a really good battery backup.

Ext* filesystems are chosen by default because they have reasonable performance and they are more difficult to damage, mostly because they block while writing. The only caching you get is the built-in hardware cache on the drive itself, which is still bound by the card bus speed.

[ikt]

Boot time, I can see where they would be faster. But I boot about twice a year.

Do you feel this is a typical situation for most users?



I write to disk, but not nearly as often as you might think. The directories I write to most frequently are temp directories, and I have them mounted as tmpfs -- which means they write to RAM, unless I run out. That has happened exactly once in the past year or two, at which point I went out and bought another 6G.

I'm using high performance filesystems where non-volatile write speed would become an issue, and there are write caches. The driver writes to a RAM buffer and then unblocks, then the write happens on another thread. The disadvantage of that approach is that if I were to lose power while a write buffer is dirty I could get serious filesystem damage, so I have a really good battery backup.

Ext* filesystems are chosen by default because they have reasonable performance and they are more difficult to damage, mostly because they block while writing. The only caching you get is the built-in hardware cache on the drive itself, which is still bound by the card bus speed.

Or buy an SSD :)

[1clue]

SSDs are a really neat idea, but they're not the only way to improve disk I/O speed.

If you're going to just do the easy install of Ubuntu, I can see where you might get significant speed improvements, but who really does that? Surely you've tweaked your system before you tried the SSD?

An SSD is still limited to the speed of the sata/sas card's max throughput. I have 4 drives creating two volume groups, and try to arrange my partitions on those groups to make it so as to make the fewest scheduling collisions possible for the things I do that are heaviest use.

Really it comes down to these scenarios:

Compiling. Compiler is loaded in RAM, the scratch files go into a tmpfs directory. No write.
Application server execution. Everything's cached except the deployment of a new app, which happens generally in under 10 seconds. Don't care.
Database. Database server is in RAM. Data is read/written using a high performance filesystem, which does not block. Writes happen when scheduling works out.
YouTube or similar. I'm loading off the Internet, which is limited to 15 mbps. WAY slower than my disk speed. Don't care.
Settings files for apps I run. Tiny writes, don't care.
Hand-written documents like email or word processing. Tiny writes, don't care.
Gaming. Heavy read, just about no writes. Data gets cached, and the second time I run the hard disk light flashes once or twice and stops, which means it was cached. If that's happening nothing else is. Don't care.

[1clue]

Do you feel this is a typical situation for most users?

Or buy an SSD :)

Yes, absolutely. Most computer users I know leave the machine sitting there and just move the mouse or press a key to start using it. Most of them don't even bother with a locking screen saver. If it's a laptop they stop typing, close the lid and put it in their backpack. Then get where they're going, flip the lid over and click a key to wake it up.

FWIW I've been trying to justify an SSD for awhile now. So far I don't think I can. Look at my hardware, it isn't like I can't afford one. I've seen one working on hardware similar to mine and it's just not that much faster -- in most cases that intersect with my scenarios, not faster at all. And FWIW if I had one the biggest drive hit I would use is database, and I wouldn't put that on an SSD no matter what.

[Lucradia]

A typicalaverage ubuntu user wouldn't know how to use RAID, or set up LVM.

[1clue]

Agree with that, but the default installer uses LVM anyway, just uses it stupidly.

It's just a situation where thousands of people have been working to minimize disk performance issues since the invention of disks. A lot of really good ideas are out there, but the distribution projects don't necessarily implement them because their main goal is something else. In the case of Ubuntu it's making things work in the easiest, most reliable way possible without having to learn something. It's admirable, and face it I'm using Ubuntu on this system now because I need a workstation that just works without all the extra headaches.

That doesn't mean I don't tweak it to be better in ways that matter to me though.

Really, an SSD is a wonderful idea on a laptop. No way I would get another laptop without an SSD in it unless something else completely prevented it. The power saving alone makes it a no-brainer.

It's just that if you have sufficient RAM and you tweak your system to perform better in things you care most about, you can nearly eliminate any gain an SSD gives to a desktop or server system.

[ikt]

Surely you've tweaked your system before you tried the SSD?

There's no point doing what you did, I start up and shutdown my PC almost daily, suspend doesn't save power at all, and hibernate would take as long as booting up to resume, and keeping my pc on 24x7 is a massive waste of power.

[1clue]

Using tmpfs in strategic places would help even your SSD system if you have enough RAM to do so.

I'm not going to argue with you about how much power your system uses while suspended. Mine is significantly lower suspended than idle, and it's a server for other things on the network anyway so I don't want it turned off.

I don't care what type of drive you're using, there are ways to make your system faster and probably ways to make it use less energy. FWIW I would do the tmpfs thing anyway because of the finite number of times you can write to any individual region of an SSD drive.

[ikt]

FWIW I would do the tmpfs thing anyway because of the finite number of times you can write to any individual region of an SSD drive.

SSD drives have write endurance marked in the 10's of years*, I personally don't use hard drives older than 10 years old, and even that's a stretch, my oldest drive in use is in a server and it's from 2004, and has very minimal use, so even if I abuse the crap out of this SSD (which I am) it only has to last 5 or so years anyway before it is put into a situation of minimal use.

Given how fast the tech is moving, and with SSD drives quickly starting to push even the SATA3 to its limits no doubt I'll consider this current drive 'slow' by the time I build my next pc in a couple of years.

*http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

But I agree that people looking to improve their performance and have a lot of RAM should look towards what you are doing :)


I don't care what type of drive you're using, there are ways to make your system faster and probably ways to make it use less energy.

TBH I'm pretty lazy, I sit with defaults on most things so an SSD drive really hits the mark between careface and performance improvement :/

[1clue]

LOL, no harm no foul.

From this little discussion I realize that your situation is much different than mine.

I develop database software. So I compile the software, deploy it, drop the database, recreate the database, run tests against it which read/update/delete a boatload of rows, and it's done in a few seconds. With the size of any reasonable SSD at the moment, I think I would still wear a hole in the drive before I was inclined to replace it.

Keep in mind that even though the drive software tries to level out the number of writes to any block, it can only shuffle empty blocks. If you're at 98% full and you pound the crap out of it, it will still write the same few sectors a bunch of times. My personal preference is to never have any data partition be more than about half full just so the defragmentation software has an easier time of it.

Peace man!

Good luck and have fun.

[beetleman64]

Is there such a thing a too much RAM? I'd say theoretically no, but if I suspect you'd hit a bit of a glass ceiling in terms of how much performance you could get. I'd say 8 GB is the max for now, but like others have said, I remember when 256 MB was described as "far from excessive", so 50 GB might just get to Windows 8 or 9!

[ikt]

Peace man!

Good luck and have fun.

Definitely appreciate the tips, when I get a chance I will try your changes on desktops that have older hard drives :)

[themarker0]

I'd say past 16gb its silly for a desktop. I do desktop virtualization, so its gets useful.

[s3a]

In my opinion, too much RAM is when you more RAM than required to cache every single program into your RAM as well as be able to run every single program on your computer at the same time while being restricted by time when creating the largest files possible. :) (Using this theory, you could actually calculate how much RAM is too much for each individual if you really want to waste your time doing so).

[Jagoly]

If you play flight simulators, you need a 24gb minimum to get to the menu.

[Paqman]

If it's a laptop they stop typing, close the lid and put it in their backpack. Then get where they're going, flip the lid over and click a key to wake it up.


They do this precisely because the performance of magnetic disks is so poor. Since fitting an SSD to my netbook I generally turn it off when it goes in my bag. Longer battery life + short boot time = win.


suspend doesn't save power at all

Compared to what? I tested my desktop a while back, it uses 6W when off, and 7W when suspended. Unless you also turn a desktop off at the wall you won't see s significant power saving by shutting down instead of suspending. On a laptop you will, and every joule is precious in a battery-powered device anyway.

[medic2000]

24 GB of RAM?.

This is the most pointless thing i have heard.

[medic2000]

we will never need more than 16 MB hard disk space . Bill Gates (1984)

Bill Gates said that he had never said anything like that.

[jerenept]

Bill Gates said that he had never said anything like that.

it was 640kb.
And he never said that, someone in his position would never say that.

[1clue]

They do this precisely because the performance of magnetic disks is so poor. Since fitting an SSD to my netbook I generally turn it off when it goes in my bag. Longer battery life + short boot time = win.


Compared to what? I tested my desktop a while back, it uses 6W when off, and 7W when suspended. Unless you also turn a desktop off at the wall you won't see s significant power saving by shutting down instead of suspending. On a laptop you will, and every joule is precious in a battery-powered device anyway.

No, they do it precisely because they are lazy. I do it because I'm lazy too, but at least I use a locking screen saver. If I had an SSD on that laptop I would still just slap the lid shut and put it in my bag. I would have more battery life than I currently have, but right now I have more than enough.

My mac laptop can run on battery longer than I've ever tried to run it on battery. I can go work at a restaurant until I can't stand being there anymore, then go somewhere else and plug in. I've been working on battery for more than 6 hours, and didn't seem to be in danger of running out of juice. Get a better battery.

[Paqman]

My mac laptop can run on battery longer than I've ever tried to run it on battery. I can go work at a restaurant until I can't stand being there anymore, then go somewhere else and plug in. I've been working on battery for more than 6 hours, and didn't seem to be in danger of running out of juice. Get a better battery.

Batteries are an imperfect technology. I'm glad that you've managed to work it out so that battery life isn't ever an issue for you, but i'm sure you can appreciate that many people do find it a constraint.

[Jagoly]

I thought this thread was about ram, not battery life...

[Philsoki]

I thought this thread was about ram, not battery life...
Is there such a thing as too much battery life?:p

[Jagoly]

Is there such a thing as too much battery life?:p

An infinite battery would sell a fair few laptops :KS

[Shining Arcanine]

I tried asking and didn't get a clear reply, I think he is assuming an unlikely collation between size variables for purposes of personal compensation.

Now the really funny bit is that when he ordered the RAM, he was so excited he didn't check the model he was ordering.. so he had a delivery of 24 GBs of ram in modules intended for Mac laptops. Was it not for the alcohol and the bacon spreading goodness in my body at the time, I might have died from the pure hilarity of the matter.

What is the difference so long as his laptop has enough space for all of the individual compact modules?

[Shining Arcanine]

Depends entirely on what apps you're running.

For a normal desktop user running Linux i'd say anything over about 2-3GB is of very marginal usefulness unless you're running VMs.

I run Gentoo Linux and I have 8GB of RAM. If I had more RAM, I could compile the OS in a tmpfs with debugging information included in the binaries to be split into separate files at the end of compilation so that it doesn't use memory at run-time, but is available in the event of a crash.

[Paqman]

I run Gentoo Linux and I have 8GB of RAM. If I had more RAM, I could compile the OS in a tmpfs with debugging information included in the binaries to be split into separate files at the end of compilation so that it doesn't use memory at run-time, but is available in the event of a crash.

I would suggest that this is possibly not a normal desktop use case ;)

[1clue]

I run Gentoo Linux and I have 8GB of RAM. If I had more RAM, I could compile the OS in a tmpfs with debugging information included in the binaries to be split into separate files at the end of compilation so that it doesn't use memory at run-time, but is available in the event of a crash.

You can have tmpfs spaces larger than RAM. It's handled by the same mechanism that handles SWAP, and if your system runs out of RAM then some portions of it will be written out to SWAP according to the priorities that your memory manager thinks appropriate.


I would suggest that this is possibly not a normal desktop use case ;)

That depends on what distribution you're using. If you run Gentoo then you WILL compile the kernel, since absolutely everything on your system is by default compiled on that system. As well, up until relatively recently compiling your own kernel was considered something most linux users got around to sooner or later, or in some cases something you do frequently.

[MasterNetra]

A 100GB of ram would be do its job provided your harddrive (data transfer rates, etc), processor(s), video card, etc is to scale. As for what would you do with what is currently a insane amount of resources...just about anything you want and then some.

Edit: Actually would be awesome for compling 3D Animations and large amounts of video, audio, and 3D stuff instead of using computer farms to compile. Compiling vids especially 3D scenes takes a crapload of resources.

[handy]

On the Bill Gates "quote", it seems like it is quite possible that he did say some such.

You need to take the technological circumstances of the time into consideration when passing judgement. The desktop computer world was really just at the beginning of defining itself, & even for the top tech heads it was just so unpredictable.

From other quotes & talks he has given in the past he says that he was really surprised when they did eventually run out of memory address space in the 640kb range.

Bill's denial of having made the statement comes so many years after it was incredibly popular on the net.

It is usual to make a public denial when a misquote becomes widely read public knowledge, not 15 years later.

Here are a couple of links on the topic for anyone interested:

http://imranontech.com/2007/02/20/did-bill-gates-say-the-640k-line/

http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/media/1989%20Bill%20Gates%20Talk%20on%20Microsoft.html

[cogadh]

You may appreciate this vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8Bc7eRTdWY
Thanks, now I have to clean all the grape soda off my monitor. At least it didn't come out my nose this time...