Do You Really Need More Than 6 GB Of RAM?

The notion that bigger is better has taken a beating lately in all aspects of society.

Once the pride of the so-called upper middle class in the United States, McMansions and SUVs have now become symbols of excess and waste--at least the reminders of an era past. Green movement proponents should certainly be happy that so many “earth abusers” are beginning to see the light, but what about performance-computing fanatics? With memory prices near record lows, is there any good reason not to fill every slot with low-cost 2 GB DIMMs?

Environmentalists could point out that IC and PCB production turns a large quantity of natural resources into post-production waste, while most of the end-product is not recyclable and the additional components add to the system’s energy consumption. Power users could easily counter energy concerns by pointing out that a better-performing computer allows them to get their work done in less time. But neither argument is sufficient to answer the question we’ve asked so many times before: How much RAM do you really need?

Our 2004 article pointed out weaknesses in the once-popular single-gigabyte configurations. But 512 MB and smaller modules are now a distant memory. It wasnt long after that 2 GB became the performance standard, and by 2007, 4 GB kits could be found in all but the lowest-cost systems. Is it time to take the next step, to 8 GB or more? More importantly, were 4 GB modules ever really needed for games and everyday applications? And with the 32-bit addressing limit of 4 GB making only 3 GB available to many users, should everyone switch to a 64-bit operating system simply to support higher capacities?