How much memory

[Heartofgold]

My computer is suppose to have 1 gigabit of memory. I used Everest Home Edition 2.0 and it says I have 960 MB. What does this mean?

My other computer has 352MB, how much is that in gigabits?

[ringfinger]

Depending on the make and model of you RAM the amount recognized by certain software and Windows itself may be skewed. I have, as well as many others I'm sure, have seen this all over the place. And you're asking how many GB 352MB is... exacly .352GB 1 GB = 1024MB

[cyprod]

@ringfinger, your math doesn't add up, 352/1024=.34375 GB.

And @HeartofGold, the more likely reason you're only showing up as 960Mb of RAM is because of your video card. Most, if not all, integrated graphics cards use system memory for their own use. When the video card reserves that memory, it's no longer available for use and will not register as part of your system memory.

[ringfinger]

BAH! 343... 352... who cares ... you didn't have to bust out the calc on me man. Thanks for the info on the vid card tho

Edited January 4, 2007 by ringfinger

[skinnyjm]

Interesting thread!

Got a chuckle out of it.

Thanks Guys

[cyprod]

Sorry, but I just can't help myself, .34375 doesn't round to .343... Sorry, I had a long day at work full of much test plan reviewing. Pointing out stuff like that is how we make it bearable.

[Heartofgold]

Thanks cyprod. It makes sense now to me. I'll have to keep that in mind the next time someone asks me the same question.

[TravisO]

Umm you shouldn't be measuring memory in bits, it's silly. The only reason you would use bits is to make a small number seem very large, something that only a slimely marketer would attempt.

Memory is measured in bytes, nowadays, you want a solid 1GB (that's gigabyte) ram in order to have a nice snappy PC, but you can get by in XP with 512MB as long as you don't use user switching.

Edited January 12, 2007 by travisowens

[cyprod]

Glad somebody caught that, I noticed it right before I hit submit but couldn't be bothered to fix it. Though to continue the cycle of hell, mb would be milibits, not megabits. and I don't think anything could function on a .512 bits

[TheFlash428]

You also have to consider the different definitions of Gigabyte in use. Some define a GB as =1,000,000,000 bytes; but computer memory actually defines GB in powers of 2, where GB = 2^30 bytes.

Gigabyte

[Joe K]

Umm you shouldn't be measuring memory in bits, it's silly. The only reason you would use bits is to make a small number seem very large, something that only a slimely marketer would attempt.

Memory is measured in bytes, nowadays, you want a solid 1GB (that's gigabyte) ram it order to have a nice snappy PC, but you can get by in XP with 512mb as long as you don't use user switching.

For the most part I agree with your advice on memory. For a really stripped down machine you can get buy with 256 mb. I loaded XP Home on an old 450 Pent II with 256 ram. It runs ok. I ran both Integrator and PowerPacker. I loaded a minimal version of Roxio and hooked up an external CD burner and it will burn a bootable disk. I tried this 4 different times and all 4 discs booted and I loaded one on virtual machine on my other computer. It is It takes about twice as long for Integrator and PowerPacker to run! I use this mainly as a spare. Doing something complicated like a registry edit it's nice to have the site up on one computer while you work on the other. I kept software to a min AVG Free, Zonealarm Free, Spybot and network software. You get spoiled with 2 computers.

[LLXX]

My computer is suppose to have 1 gigabit of memory. I used Everest Home Edition 2.0 and it says I have 960 MB. What does this mean?

My other computer has 352MB, how much is that in gigabits?

One gigabit is... 128MB.

352MB is 2.75 gigabits.

Edited January 7, 2007 by LLXX