Why is better to have more memory in your computer?

Answer 1

there are several answers i could come up with for this one, depending on the OS you use, many systems use empty hard disk space and convert that into what is called "virtual memory." so systems use both, actual memory installed, and virtual "paged" memory. so to simplify the answer, the more memory you have, the less time programs have to use your hard disk "memory" to finish, or run tasks. when your drive is being accessed for memory, it takes away access time for applications. The limiting reagent model: your system can only go as fast the the slowest reagent. Information moving from memory to CPU - fastest, speed of current Information moving from Hard drive to CPU - slowest, friction of drive turning to access information More memory means more information can be stored electronically and be accessible electronically. Of course, all of this must take into account your OS and how the program you want to run is coded. If the program will not load into memory but constantly accesses the hard drive by design, more memory will not help it so much. More memory really comes into play with the processes Behind the Scenes in Windows. By having more space for Windows XP to run free, you allow necessary functions to flow quickly.

Answer 2

The benefits of additional RAM are increased speed, performance, the number of applications that can be run at the same time, and the ability to open increasingly larger files, such as large photoshop files. When your computer allocates memory, it has basically three places it can keep stuff. First, it puts commonly used instructions into RAM memory. Next, it places other instructions into the page file. A page file acts like memory, but it is really a part of your hard drive that can be accessed quicker than the hard drive itself, but much slower than memory. If you have low amounts of memory, and are trying to view and open different programs, the system has to decide which instructions to keep in memory, which to move to the page file, which to write back to disk or close. Basically, the larger the amount of memory, the less swapping it has to do. It can keep more instructions loaded at the same time, without having to move things back and forth from the page file (called page swaps) and the quicker it can access the information stored in the RAM. There can be an overkill point, but generally speaking, the more memory, the better your computer is going to perform.

Answer 3

RAM stands for random access memory. The amount of RAM in your computer is how fast your computer goes. Everyone wants their computer to go at lightning speed, so adding more RAM will make the computer load, run, etc. faster.

RAM actually doesn't directly determine how fast your computer is. The reason we have RAM is because modern processors are so very fast.

When you want to run a program on your computer, the processor needs to read the instructions for that program. However, all programs are stored on the hard drive disk (HDD), which is relatively slow when compared to the processor. It is so much slower, in fact, that processors became capable of doing work faster than instructions could be read from the HDD. This meant that no matter how fast the processor was, your computer would always be limited by the time it took to read data off of the HDD.

Thus RAM was born. It was designed to be an intermediate step between the processor and the HDD. The access time of RAM is a small fraction of the access time for a HDD, so it made much more sense to read a program into RAM, which would then be loaded into the processor many times faster than loading it directly from the HDD.

So we now know RAM is important. But what happens if we need to run a program which requires more RAM than we have available? In these cases, computers will default back to using the HDD to store currently unused sections of information. So with these large programs (or even with many smaller programs) being loaded into memory, we will again be limited by the very slow speed of a hard drive.

Now to get back to the original question...

More RAM means more information we can have stored in a high-speed medium for the processor to access. If we don't have enough RAM, then hard drive space will be used to store necessary data. And once we get to this point, we are once again limited to a much slower speed of execution due to limitations in the access time for information on a HDD.

Answer 4

Well the main reason you need RAM is because your computer is running slow, but also there could be more reasons like for example, some programs need specific amounts of RAM to operate efficiently, or because you simply are upgrading your system...

Answer 5

I assume you're talking about RAM, which is the "stick" type memory. RAM is <1,000,000 times faster than a hard drive. Your computer takes data from the hard drive and stores it on the RAM for quick access when it's running a program etc. The only problem is RAM has a much smaller capacity than a hard drive, and the data disappears every time the PC turns off. That's why we have hard drives.

Anyway, RAM is needed because it's so much faster. If you're computer doesn't have enough RAM, it will have to go grab data from the hard drive over and over again, which is much slower. So by adding more RAM, you give your computer for free space to place data on when it needs it FAST.

Think of a hard drive as a cook book, and RAM as a page in the book. If you're making a recipe, you refer back to the page repeatedly, so it would be stupid to close the book after every time you looked at the recipe while cooking! This is what's happening if your PC doesn't have enough RAM. It has to open the book, find the page, and find where it was over and over again, instead of just glancing at the already available page.

Answer 6

RAM (Random Access Memory) is a temporary source for your computer to dump files and associations. Unlike Hard drive memory this area is meant to be cleaned out and overwritten often and the more of it you have the more you computer can store in it before it has to wipe sectors out that are old and not needed.

with a low count of ram you computer has to overwrite files that it wanted to keep and thus has to go through a cycle of returning and recycling, with more room your computer has more time before processing a recycle and thus it doesn't have to fight for room so much.

in short more RAM will allow you computer to store temporary files associated with the current program or set of programs. the more you have the more you can do before a recycle of a needed/uneeded file.

Answer 7

You will only notice improvements if you are constantly running low on memory or keep a lot of things loaded. When you are low on memory, less things can stay in memory at once. So that means things have to be swapped out to the hard drive or that things have to get loaded from the hard drive more often. So if you increase the memory, you decrease the swap file usage and increase the amount of things that are kept in memory.

However, increasing the memory can increase memory speed in some instances. If the machine has dual-channel or quad-channel memory abilities, and the machine only has one stick of RAM, then adding memory can make use of all the memory channels and allow the different memory sticks to be used simultaneously.

Answer 8

You will only notice improvements if you are constantly running low on memory or keep a lot of things loaded. When you are low on memory, less things can stay in memory at once. So that means things have to be swapped out to the hard drive or that things have to get loaded from the hard drive more often. So if you increase the memory, you decrease the swap file usage and increase the amount of things that are kept in memory.