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Follow UsDoes adding more RAM increase the performance of your PC? Can you keep increasing RAM and expect faster and faster performance? Not really. The amount of RAM a PC needs depends on what it’ll be used for. For example, a PC that’s used only for word processing or Web browsing needs lesser RAM than one that’s used for high-end graphics work like running PhotoShop, video editing, etc. To find out how much RAM you need for various kinds of work, we ran some tests at
PCQ Labs.
The results we got were quite iluminating. You get a significant performance boost if you change from 32 MB to 64 MB when running productivity applications on Win 9x. However, a further increase to 128 MB gives only about a 10 percent performance boost. So, unless you want to squeeze every ounce of performance from your PC, you don’t really need this extra RAM.
However, if you’re into intensive applications, that extra 64 MB really gives a solid kick. On a 440BX motherboard, 128 MB RAM gives you a performance boost of about 24 percent over 64 MB. On the 820, it gave an increase of about 27 percent.
But the story doesn’t end here. To check how far you can increase RAM in graphics systems and continue getting better performance, we increased the RAM on the Intel 440BX to 256 MB. This gave a marginal increase of 5 percent in performance. So, if you are into processing intensive stuff like heavy graphics or video, then 128 MB is the minimum you will need.