Although 256 MB RAM is
sufficient in most scenarios, 512 MB RAM will be better and might offer you
better performance while you use more than one or two applications.
Role of
the Memory: On a PC when you open for
example Internet Explorer, it is read from the disk and running portion of
the application is loaded into the RAM. This is done since RAM is the
workbench and also because RAM is 100 times faster compared to the disk.
When you start opening more applications at the same time, for example,
word, excel, PowerPoint, and then the RAM usage steadily increases. At this
time if you had only 128 MB RAM, it could get almost fully loaded and the PC
might start paging (swapping) the data.
Paging is a process in which
the disk is used for temporary storage when the PC does not have enough
RAM to use as a workbench. Portion of the RAM that is least used at that
moment is copied to the disk and the new application is loaded onto the RAM.
When you begin to operate these applications almost simultaneously and do
other function like printing, sine the system RAM is almost full, PC
generally begins to slow down and sometimes slows down heavily.
Hence if you want your PC to
respond quickly to your commands even when many applications are open,
expanding the RAM is a good option. However you start the OS and work on
only one simple application all the time, even 64MB can be an acceptable RAM
for windows XP. In any case to summarize, 256MB RAM is sufficient on any PC
for fair performance. However 512 MB is increasingly seen advisable.
On older OS's like win98
and Win95, the RAM requirements will be less as the OS itself would not
require much space as the work-bench as these OS's were made to run with
much less memory.
Next :
Video (Graphics)
factor.
