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Do I really need 2 Gb RAM on a PC?

I buying a used 2.8GH Pentium 4 PC, with 2Gb of RAM.

When would I ever use 2Gb or RAM?

14 Answers

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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    You don't NEED 2 GB of RAM, unless you are a serious gamer or video editor. A single GB of RAM is plenty for any regular user. If you are buying a used system, it all depends on price. You do want to know what type of CPU and motherboard are in it. You want a 64-bit processor (CPU).

    You want one or two hard drives, so you can install the operating system and your programs on the primary drive and save all your files, documents, etc. on the second for safe-keeping.

    The second hard drive should be big, so you can put a lot of things there, photos, music, etc.

    If you have further questions, email us at acconcepts@qwest.net and we'll be happy to give you some advice. We work for the people, we are experts and we do the best we can to help. Advice is always free because we want to help.

    Source(s): Myself
  • 1 decade ago

    If you commonly run sophisticated programs like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, or such, and have to have several other programs open simultaneously, you need as much RAM as you can get. However, if you commonly use your computer for word processing, spreadsheets, accounting, email and web surfing, and don't commonly need many windows open at the same time, 256 kb is perfectly adequate.

    Think of RAM as a blackboard, the hard drive as a textbook. Your teacher can put a lot of information on the blackboard, which might be useful if you're learning advanced physics. However, a smaller blackboard (256 mb RAM) would probably suit most college courses just fine.

    It seems that nobody makes a case for saving money by buying less RAM, but really, there is one, as I outlined above.

  • 1 decade ago

    Get the most RAM you can afford. Windows 98 was a memory hog, windows XP was worst, Windows Vista is going to be a nightmare. But to answer your question, you can run an XP computer with 256MB of RAM if you want.

    Source(s): Personal experience.
  • 1 decade ago

    the more ram the better it really depends on what you are doing

    when your computer runs low on ram it uses virtual memory also known as pagefile when this happens it takes your computer longer to process information it uses a part of your hard drive like ram. if you are gaming go for it if your just browsing the web no big deal you dont need all that ram. unless you want it :)

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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    If you process video files, it will be used!

    If you process video files in Linux, it will be used most efficiently!

    You can join Microsoft.com, the Redmond Campus, Google.com, Hotmail.com, MSN.com, Boeing, NASA, NSA, DOE, NOAA, 165 Nations, Hollywood (all movies since "Titanic - 1997" built, rendered, created, animated, on Linux on clusters of desktops!), and the Fortune 1,000, in running Linux!

    Linux runs upto 50X faster, on the same hardware!

    Linux is 32 and 64 bit ready, running since 1993!

    Linux runs multiple processes, on one, two, or 10,512 parallel processors, without license fees!

    Linux is virusproof, cracker free! Get a FREE LiveCDrom!

    http://pclinuxos.com/ comes with 1,900 FREE games, programs, suites, and browsers! Install takes 20 to 40 minutes, opens upto 5,000 FREE games, programs, online!

    And, if you don't like it, pop out the CDrom! It is the major tech. tool for most smart technicians!

  • 1 decade ago

    Well, if you're buying a used one with 2 gig of ram, go for it... It's like Tim the Toolman Taylor says, more powerrrr.. and, of course, depending on what you do with your puter, more ram is great..

    games, music, videos, dvds, burning cd's or dvd's.. all is faster with more ram..

  • 1 decade ago

    Get it. My first computer had 40 mb of ram and we were told we would never use that much. We used it. Now you can get more memory than that on a flash drive.

  • 1 decade ago

    2Gb of RAM is good for gamer or video/photo editing :)......Just curious but why would you buy a 2.8 P4 nowadays since it comes out with conroe with a much faster core?

  • 1 decade ago

    You won't have too, if it has XP on it, XP will use as much as it possibly can, Seriously, if you have 2Gb, it will use around 1 of that if not more, you give - it takes

  • 1 decade ago

    1 gig is more than enough.

    you use 2 gig when you have tons of program run in the background and foreground

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