REALLLY noobie question on RAM

**tdevil** · 01-31-2005, 09:25 PM

ok 512 vs 256 we all know and love the various hibernation times we get with this.

but looking further down into this.. OTHER THAN gaming

how does ram affect our carputer performance?

i.e. Does decoding Mp3s require high ram usage, calculating GPS cords?, displaying a dvd?

i think RAM only improves performance with programs doing a lot of disk read/writes where they will use the RAM instead of going to disk. does that apply to mere MP3 GPS proggies?

**stevieg** · 02-01-2005, 03:34 PM

I think you've kinda answered your own question... 256MB is usually OK for most CarPC stuff like DVD/MP3/GPS of course the more you have running at once the more useful the ram

**1300mer** · 02-01-2005, 03:40 PM

256mb is that absolute minumum if you're running WinXP. At idle,, when you check taskbar manager, you're using very close to that amount. Right now at idle I'm using 390mb, but that's mostly due to the 10 progs I have running in the taskbar. All the reasons you stated above are necessary for more ram, but for a general carpc user, I notice that opening up an instance of media player and playing video uses another 90mb or so. So what I'm tryign to say is go with 512 on WinXP and 256 should be fine on anything prior.