General questions about RAM
 

Hello all,
Would like to clear few doubts regarding the size/quality etc of RAM

1> which one is better having two RAM's of 128 i.e total of 256Mb or having 256Mb of single RAM.

2> If u have 512 Mb of RAM then how much space should be allocated for swap ( plz. don't tell me the thumb rule swap = 2 x RAM, that's an older concept )
Some of you may be having 1024Mb of RAM......do you still leave space for SWAP. ???

reagards

With hard disk storage space as cheap as it is nowadays, why wouldn't you have swap? Better safe than sorry.

jrtayloriv

While I never use the swap partition I made, the partition itself hardly makes a dent on my 160 GB hard drive.

Is there any way of knowing that whether any process is using the swap portion ???

But someone having merely 10GB will definitly see the dent

regards

Yes, there is. I've used it in both KDE and Gnome.

If you have 512 MB RAM, don't bother with swap, then.

ruudra: Can't resist the first question: It's better to use two 256MB modules, if you've got two slots available.

As for your actual question, as long as your BIOS supports the 256MB module, there isn't a lot of performance difference between two 128MB and one 256MB. There usually is a significant financial difference, with two used 128MB modules usually being cheaper than one used 256MB module.

The swap question is a tough one, especially with a small drive. For your situation with a small drive and 512MB of memory, you will not use a lot of swap very often if you just use the system for basic web surfing and word processing. Image processing would be a completely different game.

It is probably a good idea to create a swap partition of at least 256MB, but you could drop that to 128MB if you feel pressed for space. In reality, if you are using more than a few MB of swap at a time, you really should install more physical memory.

Regarding the RAM
use what is cheapest
but it is usually cheaper to buy a 512 than 2 x 256

Re Swap
you should always have swap
250 megs is OK for 512 Ram
there have been one or two threads lately where the user didnt allocate a swap partition because they thought they had enough ram, and they came unstuck, and had to re-format and re-partition.
The rule about double your ram to calculate swap is a little out of date now since you can buy 256 -512 ram easily.

floppy

Re: General questions about RAM
 

I have 512MB RAM, and a 1GB Swap partition. That's plent. Like jrtayloriv said, Better safe then sorry.

I haven't been using swap since I moved to 1gb. I have never seen it go to swap, that is through compiling kernels, playing a bunch of different "high profile" games (including Doom 3), moving huge files, etc.
You don't need the safety net anymore, I even compiled swap support out of my kernel.

Go with two DIMMs if your motherboard supports dual-channel operation; you will reap a modest performance increase.

You should consider your future plans as well when buying RAM. Suppose you initially start with 512, but figure there's a reasonable chance that you might want to go to 1G in a year or two.

Scenario #1 - Buy two 256 sticks now. If you later need to go to 1G, you've got to replace them both, and you'll need to buy two 512 sticks later. Overall you have to buy a pair of 256 sticks plus a pair of 512 sticks.

Scenario #2 - Buy one 512 stick now. If you later need to go to 1G, you only have to buy one more 512 stick. Overall, you only have to buy a pair of 512 sticks.

Economically, option #2 will be cheaper. -- J.W.