Do You Really Need More Than 6 GB Of RAM?
Is “Too Much” Really Just Enough?
The notion that bigger is better has taken a beating lately in all aspects of society.
Once the pride of the so-called upper middle class in the United States, McMansions and SUVs have now become symbols of excess and waste–at least the reminders of an era past. Green movement proponents should certainly be happy that so many “earth abusers” are beginning to see the light, but what about performance-computing fanatics? With memory prices near record lows, is there any good reason not to fill every slot with low-cost 2 GB DIMMs?
Environmentalists could point out that IC and PCB production turns a large quantity of natural resources into post-production waste, while most of the end-product is not recyclable and the additional components add to the system’s energy consumption. Power users could easily counter energy concerns by pointing out that a better-performing computer allows them to get their work done in less time. But neither argument is sufficient to answer the question we’ve asked so many times before: How much RAM do you really need?
