An interesting thread once you know what it's all about... I thought it to be a good idea for everyone to post about their own PC setups, and whatever else they use to access the Internet regularly. That alone sums it up pretty much! Here are my setups as of Thursday, 2nd February, 2012: iMac 21.5" (1920 x 1080) Mid-2010 - 3.2 GHz Intel Core i3, 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3, ATI Radeon HD 5670 512 MB, Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 iPhone 4 - Black, A4 chip, iOS 5.0.1 I can't wait to see what you guys have and please be as descriptive as you'd like. I'd like to point out that I am considering purchasing more DDR3 memory for my iMac as I am only using 2 x 2 GB memory slots (and can get it quite cheaply for well-known and highly regarded brand names; about $50). Apart from an increase in performance, would purchasing additional memory improve anything else on my system? Would it be worth it?
The best reason to buy any upgrade for your machine is relevant to the question "Do you need to?" More memory would indeed be a wonderful increase in available memory addresses, but what would you do with it? If I upgraded my memory, I would probably do it for the sake of running heavier virtual machines or handling my massive web browsing session better. What are my specs? I've nearly forgotten all of the detail stuff. This will be a good reminder for myself as well as the first time I think I've ever really documented any of this. Desktop - custom built Fall 2009 (I think) - 2.8 GHz Intel Core2 Duo [E7400, no VTx ] - 4 GB 400 MHz DDR2 - ATI Radeon HD 5700 1GB GDDR5 - Windows 7 64-bit - and an Asus VW198 Monitor (1680x1050) Netbook - Spring 2010 (again, I think) - Asus 1005HA (1024x600) - 1.6 GHz Intel Atom [N280 with two double-threaded 'logical CPU' cores] - 2 GB MHz DDR2 - Intel 945GME EMC (1024x600) - Xubuntu 11.10 32-bit Both aging, but I'm content with these machines (and the fact that together they came to less than $600USD when bought new).
Not bad builds, especially your custom-built desktop. Have you considered upgrading or is there really no need to at the moment? In regards to getting more memory on my iMac, it's not absolutely necessary and I don't need it I guess. But if it's there it's worth using, no? The only benefit to increasing my memory would be the performance of games (as my system runs perfectly in any other way), which at the moment is only StarCraft 2. I am unable to run at full settings and maximum graphics, would getting more memory benefit this?
Nope. Getting more memory wouldn't necessarily allow for better graphic settings; a better Graphics Processing Unit would though. CPU - handles the processes such as AI and actual program stuff + physics if your GPU doesn't handle that RAM - holds stuff for the CPU (it's like a bag for holding freshly picked apples before the CPU prepares them for apple pies, which are then stuck back into the bag for later processing [such as saving to the hard drive; putting in the refrigerator] ) Graphics card - contains both a processor (GPU) and memory: the processor here does the math for rendering on the display (2D and 3D is a lot of vector and matrix math) and the memory stores stuff for the GPU such as textures and colors and stuff I'm not an expert on the GPU thing, but I know enough to say more RAM won't let you pull off better graphical settings unless you have an integrated GPU which borrows the mother board RAM for its graphical resource storage, but that's only seen in lower power devices (such as my netbook's Intel 945GME). Getting faster and bigger RAM is for letting your CPU pull more stuff out and keep them handier (such as loading parts and functions of the game itself instead of having to grab it from the hard drive [offtopic: which is the magic behind Solid State Drives ]). Back on topic of the Memory though, yeah I guess I would buy it if it was available to me and I could see a functional boost to come from it. For instance, I'm waiting for the next Ebay holiday sales to appear for a specific type of RAM for one of my machines. I have the patience to wait an entire year (if it takes that long) because I quite simply do not need the RAM upgrade, but I can imagine what more I could do with it. To me it seems the most poplar reason people would buy more memory for their motherboard now days is so they can store more web pages in their web browser sessions. The Internet has grown massive, and people might not realize how many GB of raw access data is kept on their RAM when they go surfing the net, so they make RAM upgrades for their web browsers to perform better. That's obviously not the only or even best reason for upgrading RAM, but I was hoping it might help clear the picture of what RAM is actually for by applying it to something simpler.
So not essential or necessary, but definitely a good thing if I can afford it? That's fair enough then Kris. I'll look more into it and see how much it'll cost me for sure but I am tight on spare/muck around cash at the moment especially with having an insecure job so I just wanted to get opinions before investing in getting more memory. Thanks for all the information. You've definitely given me an insight into the whole memory business (you learn something new every day).
