Functions of RAM

[Ephy]

Can anyone explain to me what RAM exactly does?

I cant really find a clear explenation,

Thx

[Bananasplit_00]

holds data that the CPU needs to acces quickly but that either 1: dosent fit in the cashe or 2: is there so you dont need to acces your harddrive all the time

[Zyndo]

20 minutes ago, Ephy said:

Can anyone explain to me what RAM exactly does?

I cant really find a clear explenation,

Thx

essentially RAM holds temporary and highly relevant information for your CPU (and VRAM for your GPU) so that it can perform its tasks with as little delay as possible whilst looking for the information it needs.

 

a HDD can get read speeds (read speeds are how quickly your computer can access the information on any given storage device) at about 100-200 MBps tops. a SATA SSD can get around 500-600 MBps tops. even the massively high performance NVME SSD drives really don't get more than 3-3.5 GBps... that may sound fast right? well with how fast CPU's are nowadays, that just isn't fast enough. the information needs to be accessible much quicker than that. RAM (especially high performance DDR4 RAM) can easily be 40GBps or more as well as having significantly higher IOPS (inputs/outputs per second, a way of measuring read speeds when they're not large sequential files, but a whole bunch of little random ones). so your RAM makes up for this super slow storage on the HDD or SSD by offering a small pool of cloned storage that is often 100's of times faster than what the CPU would normally have access too. It gathers and temporarily stores any information it thinks it needs(rather, usually the program it is running and the memory controller/CPU decide what it deems relevant) so that your CPU doesn't need to slow down and wait for the relatively slow HDD or SSD speeds in order to function normally. It also stores temporary information like tabs in a browser, so that when you're clicking between windows there is no delay when it has to access the information again (instead of having to load it from the internet again or accessing it from a slow place on your HDD/SSD)

 

If you're looking for a generic desktop use-case and/or gaming just get yourself 8GB of DDR3 or DDR4 (whichever kind your platform uses) and you will be fine. the speed/frequency (or MHz) doesn't really affect performance for most users and most computers since even slow RAM speeds are already much much faster than what most people need. there ARE applications that can benefit from increased RAM speeds (such as server applications or extremely high end gaming rigs) but most people just don't need it/can't make use of it.

 

for most users, capacity is the most important thing, not speed/frequency. the 3 most commonly used configurations in computers today is 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB. 4GB is enough, but sometimes can leave you wanting (especially if you use google chrome and love to have a ton of tabs running in it). 8GB is a good sweet spot if you're not looking to spend too much yet still want all the RAM your PC might need. 16GB is overkill for most users, but with how cheap RAM is nowadays, some people like to get 16GB just for the extra headroom and assurance. Your computer is also smart and can recognize how much RAM it has, and that can affect how much information it wants to store in memory. Running the EXACT SAME programs might give you 3GB of RAM used if you have 4GB of total RAM, but if you have 16GB total RAM you may notice your usage at 10GB instead. This is because now that you have more capacity, your computer now knows that it can hold onto more of that relevant information at a time and it doesn't need to always be swapping it in and out.

 

 

Hope that clears some things up for you.

[PirateFish]

And just to give a simpler explanation.

 

It's a place where it can store data temporary (it will be gone when you reboot). It's very fast to get data from here, so applications and games store data in them. Minecraft for instance has most of the visible blocks in ram, so it's fast to work with them.