What is Ram?

[Brandenhee]

Hi all. So I have been trying to learn more about computers lately. There is a myth that you need a lot of ram in a computer for it to be "beastly". However, from linus's videos I learnt that this is not true. So I would like to ask what is Ram? How much of it do we need and how does it affect performance? I currently have 8 gb of ripjaws ram in my computer. May be getting more if it really helps performance.

[Swndlr]

not true, the amount of ram determines certain things, not power of the pc overall. it is basically what your pc uses to operate and complete the tasks being ran right then and there. you wont need more ram if youre only gaming, more ram only benefits content producers/heavy gfx makers, etc... or hardcore chrome tab abusers.

[NeatSquidYT]

You don't need a lot of RAM for a beastly PC. It's basically the component that holds all of the tasks that the CPU is doing. In most cases, a lot of RAM dosent make any difference.

[Jaybird]

if you are running projects such as video editors and photoshop you want as much ram as possible because you computer will litterally be using 16gb worth of data and you will want to access that data at a moments notice. however, for browsing the internet and business oriented task you only need about 4gb of ram. if its a computer for your mom you can get away with even 2gb. 

[SadTech]

Not to be a ass but google or Wikipedia would give you a definite/textbook answer. I have 8gb of Ripjaws and that is plenty for what I do, I mean I would like at least 8gb more but just 8gb is fine atm.  

 

 

edit::::: to add to the above poster our PC's at the office I work at only have 2GB of RAM, if you play games I would recommend 8gb. Any kind of rendering etc the more the merrier.

[Glenwing]

RAM is where the processor stores information it's currently working with.  RAM in itself doesn't do any processing or calculation, so it doesn't directly affect performance.  If your computer is doing very heavy tasks and working with a lot of data in a lot of programs, enough to exceed your RAM capacity, the computer will slow to a crawl.  However, adding extra RAM won't increase performance if you weren't having RAM-related issues already.  The best way of thinking about it is that RAM doesn't increase performance, more like it prevents performance decrease from that situation.

[SeanBond]

RAM Random access memory, it caches all of the data you are currently using, like an application. Ram is important because it is so insanely fast compared to even an ssd. 1866mhz ram typically can transfer about 15gigabit per second. So basically when you have an application open it loads all of the data there so any part of that data can be accessed instantly. Though it's violatile memory, meaning when it loses power it will not retain data. This is my understanding of ram. 

[Glenwing]

RAM Retro active memory, it caches all of the data you are currently using, like an application. Ram is important because it is so insanely fast compared to even an ssd. 1866mhz ram typically can transfer about 15gigabit per second. So basically when you have an application open it loads all of the data there so any part of that data can be accessed instantly. Though it's violatile memory, meaning when it loses power it will not retain data. This is my understanding of ram. 

 

*Random Access Memory

[PixelPips]

Think of RAM like this: Temporary memory. It's FAST. The point of ram is make things faster. If you were constatly reading and writing to your physical hard drive every time something happened, your system would be very slow. What RAM does is it takes the things that need to be accessed right then, like a program, and loads them up into memory. Instead of reading/writing from the hard drive, you're reading and writing to the RAM, which is 1000x faster.

[SeanBond]

*Random Access Memory

I was just testing you. Not sure why I said that. But it could be because I have been up 30 hours now.