I am thinking about buying 2GB of DDR2 ram. Is this excessive? Does anyone really need this much? I want my computer to be as fast as it can be. I also want to be able to run like 16 programs simultaneously. So what do you all think? And another question, why the hell is DDR2 ram so damn expensive?!

i think you should get 1gb of ram, thats what i have and i can run quite alot.When programs need more memory then ill buy another 1gb memory

I like more RAM for I enjoy gaming. The more RAM you have the better the game plays, especially online. This is because most of the times the RAM plays the game instead of your own processor.

1gb of ddr2 should be fine, but if you want 2 no-ones stopping you......
i am assuming your motherbord can use DDR2? :D
i'v know that before........ :eek:

Yes, the new computer that I bought does have a motherboard that is for ddr2 ram. Is DDR2 better? I have never even heard about it until I bought this new computer.

Currently, ddr2 is not much better than ddr ram. The latency timings for dd2 ram are much higher than what you can get for "regular" ddr. DDR2 ram is also a lot more expensive. If I was trying to get the best performance for the money I spend, I would not get ddr2. But if you're not concerned about the money for your computer, then I wouldn't tell you not to get ddr2.

Having 2Gb's of RAM would mean that you could set your computer to access the harddrive less and the RAM more, this is notibly useful for running network servers like Webservers and Programming language interpreters for scripts etc.

Most normal computer users will find that their harddrive is constantly accessed because the Operating systems try to use the Cheapness of the harddrive in conjunction with the RAM to deal with larger than RAM files. However the Accesses can take their toll on the harddrive, in once instance you have the fragmentation of your file structure (as when a single access occurs, it usually tells the system to lock whats being read so nothing can write over it. The management of this can be alittle slow and even errored depending on the depth of the programming, so that accesses can seemingly remain open and the system can eventually lock when an access limit is reached. That limit is either defined internally by the OS or by the hardware itself)

However using the harddrive has it's benefits, afterall it can actually store data that doesn't need to be constantly cycled. For instance if you typed your name somewhere, it could be saved on the drive in a swapfile rather than being cycled in a memory address since it might not be accessed greatly.

The newer RAM isn't just about being Faster and larger than it's predecessors, it's also about being able to cope with larger amounts of accesses in comparison to the harddrive, especially when it comes to dealing with graphics. (Afterall every image/graphic/icon/glyph projected to your screen undergoes being housed in memory, so large amounts of RAM increase your graphics capacity by speeding up whats outputted to your graphics card due to "Chunksize". Chunksizes are larger with greater sized memory sticks which means data transfers can be faster at the expense of a little waste when not all a chunk is used.)

Personally I wouldn't go out of your way to hit the Top notch RAM yet, look at the prices and think that after a year or two the price will come down, if you can buy the normal DDR now use it for a couple of years then sell those sticks and purchase the one your looking at now then, you might find that you actually get it for cheaper.