How much RAM should I run?

[morphjk]

I am wondering how much ram is recommend for a HTPC running Vista these days?

I am now running a Hauppauge HVR2200 and DigitalNow TinyTwin. I am occasionally going to be recording up to 4 channels, watching blu-rays and the normal other HTPC tasks.

I currently have 2gb but was wondering if I should run more now?

[mickjf]

I'm doing the same as you with 2GB of RAM and have never run out of memory. I tested by recording 4 HD channels and playing back a blu-ray movie from the same HDD simultaneously and had no problems.

[Astrotoy7]

If having 2GB is achieving what you want, why fork out for more

a simple system monitor (eg. the mulimeter sidebar gadget) or even windows own performance meters in task manager will tell you how much memory you are using when doing that stuff.

Im currently using 2 folding clients and still able to watch and record telly from a dual tuner in my rig with a x2 6000.. Having a dual(or more) core CPU just makes it all easier from a multitasking POV. Whilst my CPU and GPU is getting taxed by the folding stuff, the 3GB of RAM is only being used at 50%.

watching tv (even 4 channels) is not near as taxing.

But everyones rig is different.... observe and tweak as necessary : The money you save can be used on beer and loose women

astro

[Sutty]

Astro pretty much has it. It all depends on what you use the rig for. I ran performance monitors like he described, and when running as a MC, I never used over 1.5G.

Media playing - being a realtime activity - does not benefit greatly from large use of memory.

Sutty

[BladeRoNNeR]

I did an upgrade to quad core processor and 4GB RAM over 2GB and dual core recently.

In terms of VMC, Zero difference I have seen, although I am sure it is perhaps slightly better if I could benchmark it.

Like said above, if you are happy with it then dont worry about the upgrade. Not sure how much beer or loose woman it would buy though lmao , my 4GB RAM was only $130 so would be cheap for a further 2GB if you decide to go for it. If you use your system for more than VMC, then Games etc will take advantage of it along with Windows itself. Bear in mind, I have 4GB running 32bit currently so only 3GB actually gets used.

Coolies

[logifuse]

I use 2 x 1GB, & 512MB of that goes to the onboard graphics. 2 x HVR-2200s, often have 3 or 4 recordings on the go while watching HD TV/recordings or 720p MKVs - not an issue.

Justin

[supafly]

2gb ddr2 here too, more than suffice for media centre

[Minotaur]

I run 2Gb in mine, I also have a dedicated 4Gb swap partition as well. Not sure how much of that gets utilised though...

[Sivdogg]

I think spreading RAM across the whole bus would improve results but anymore than 2Gb in terms of size is not going to be utilised. What I mean is 4 x 1Gb sticks would increase the bandwidth to the ram modules as opposed to 2 dimm slots being used. Especially in dual channel mode.