Is 4 Gigs of RAM overkill?

boricua9215boricua9215 Hollywood, FL.
edited November 2006 in Hardware
Topic says it all.

Im having a custom built pc sent to me soon from a friend and this is one of the features it has. Here is more information that may help clarify and answer:

Intel Pentium 4 3.0 Gig Processor
ATI Mobility Radeon X1300 Pro
Soundblaster Live sound card (not sure which one, but a most recent one to date)
500 Gigs hard drive memory
4 Gigs RAM

These are just the main specs I remember at the moment.

Comments

  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited November 2006
    I suppose it depends what it will be used for. Word processing, yes, video editing, probably not.
  • boricua9215boricua9215 Hollywood, FL.
    edited November 2006
    Gaming and general use (school, work, whatever else)
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited November 2006
    Yes, 4gb is overkill for what you do. 2GB is pretty much ideal.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited November 2006
    Are you building a new computer from scratch or are you recycling the Pentium 4 proc? If you are building from scratch, go with a better processor than a P4. That's way old tech nowdays and you can get an Intel Core 2 Duo processor for less than $200. And the cheapest C2D processor will just smoke that P4 even with the e6300 at stock speeds. Spend the extra money that you would have spent for the extra 2 gigs of ram on a decent p965 board such as the Asus P5B-E and a Core 2 Duo e6300. You will be glad you did.

    I'm presently working on retiring my P4 systems myself and replacing them with the more energy efficient (and higher performing) C2D processors.
  • ins4n17yins4n17y Cabanatuan City, Philippines Icrontian
    edited November 2006
    i would also like to add is i thought windows xp is limited to 3gb ram....is this true?

    does anyone here have a 4gb ram under windows xp sp2 (all updates and patches of course)
  • WeAreNotAloneWeAreNotAlone
    edited November 2006
    isiea268 wrote:
    i would also like to add is i thought windows xp is limited to 3gb ram....is this true?

    does anyone here have a 4gb ram under windows xp sp2 (all updates and patches of course)

    Every post I've seen of people who have 4 gig say a Windows machine will only address 3.2 gig via the OS, the bios showing 4 gig
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited November 2006
    Limitations for XP home falls between 2.8 and 3.5GB, depending on drivers.
  • ins4n17yins4n17y Cabanatuan City, Philippines Icrontian
    edited November 2006
    how about windows xp?
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited November 2006
    isiea268 wrote:
    how about windows xp?

    All 32 bit versions of Windows XP have the same ram limitation, AFAIK. Windows 64 is different though; I'm not sure how much it can utilize but it's more than 4 GB.
  • ins4n17yins4n17y Cabanatuan City, Philippines Icrontian
    edited November 2006
    muddocktor wrote:
    All 32 bit versions of Windows XP have the same ram limitation, AFAIK. Windows 64 is different though; I'm not sure how much it can utilize but it's more than 4 GB.

    thx. i don't plan to jump on the vista bandwagon anytime soon. i take it there will be a slow transition from win xp to vista concerning 32 to 64 bit migration, the hardware required and the general time it takes to adopt cutting edge technology in general coupled with the additional time for market penetration.

    this will prevent me from getting 4gb ram, i'll just get 3x 1gb sticks for now. ;)
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