Linux - HardwareThis forum is for Hardware issues.
Having trouble installing a piece of hardware? Want to know if that peripheral is compatible with Linux?
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
I'm going to be building a PC for Linux pretty soon and I was wondering what people's views are on whether more than 4GB of RAM is really necessarily on a Linux desktop.
I'll be using the PC for general tasks mostly (web browsing, Open Office, music, videos, DVDs, etc) with the occasional use of more resource intensive programs such as compilers, Virtual Box, very rarely some basic video editing.
Right now for instance, running KDE with several Chromium tabs open, a document viewer and a terminal emulator, I'm using just 503MB of RAM. Unless I was running a video editor, virtual box, image editor and compiling a program all at the same time (which I obviously won't be), am I likely to see much benefit from 8GB of RAM?
By the way, just so you have some more of an idea the system I'm building will have an i5-3570k (3.4+ GHz quad-core) CPU with integrated HD 4000 graphics and Asus P8Z77-V (Intel Z77 chipset) mobo.
Last edited by makeyourself; 02-16-2013 at 09:01 PM.
If the graphics card is amd hd4000 the graphics support is dropped so only legacy drivers. You need above hd5000 & above for supported drivers. 8-Gigs sounds good to me 4 will run decent though.
The video chip is the Intel HD4000, not the AMD HD4000 (which also still has support through legacy drivers).
But anyways, only you can decide if it is worth to go for 8GB of RAM. It definitely helps if you want to run more than one VM at the same time, or compile larger software projects (compiling Firefox with "only" 4GB of RAM can be quite cumbersome). You can also speed up the system with mounting temporary directories into RAM. For basic usage (surfing the net, office work, watching videos, ...) you won't need 8GB of RAM, your system will run fine with 4GB.
If the graphics card is amd hd4000 the graphics support is dropped so only legacy drivers. You need above hd5000 & above for supported drivers. 8-Gigs sounds good to me 4 will run decent though.
Thanks for the speedy reply! No its the Intel HD Graphics 4000, the CPU that it's integrated into only came out in 2012 I think. It does work under Linux, although I've seen the odd bug report for the distro I use (Debian) that it might only work on 3.4+ kernels.
So you would say its realistic to fill 4GB of RAM under normal circumstances then? I suppose it helps to have some free RAM for disk-buffers.
Distribution: Debian Sid AMD64, Raspbian Wheezy, various VMs
Posts: 7,680
Rep:
Personally I have 16GB of RAM as my plan was/is to use a lot of virtual machines under VirtualBox. I'd say with 4GB you'll likely be OK but if you want to run more than one VM with a modern desktop OS you may well end up using swap. 8GB ought to be OK for the near future and leave you with room to get more RAM should yo feel the need.
4-Gigs is ok, depends on the load you're going to put on it.
What type of system are you using now, how much ram, how much of a load do you put on it. Maybe that will help.
I myself only use 8 of the 10 gigs of ram I have & run & test different OS'es in VM's.
About Asus I like them for their warranty on the Mobo, it's 3yrs. & they don't have a problem doing an RMA.
I just did an RMA on my mobo & hopefully they upgrade it. Also the new mobo's are 32Gig.
4-Gigs is ok, depends on the load you're going to put on it.
What type of system are you using now, how much ram, how much of a load do you put on it. Maybe that will help.
At the moment I have a single-core Pentium 4 running at 2.8GHz, integrated i915 graphics and a mere 1GB of RAM. Suffice to say, it runs pretty slow for Linux with more than a couple of general purpose applications / couple of browser tabs open. To my recollection, it takes about 3 hours to compile the Linux kernel. I've stated my general usage habits and current RAM usage above.
It takes more time to do makemenuconfig than the approx 10 mins for the actual kernel compile.
The machine I'm on now my acer aspire 3620 2Gigs ram i915 is slow also. I run 1 VM & everything slows down even more & maxes out cpu & overheats.
Buy it with 4, try it. If later you think you need it then buy more.
Use linux tools to decide on how much or any in use.
Not sure this use is considered general use. " it takes about 3 hours to compile the Linux kernel. " It has taken me days on old systems way back when.
Distribution: Debian Sid AMD64, Raspbian Wheezy, various VMs
Posts: 7,680
Rep:
Ah, I forgot, in some setups the RAM speed goes down when you use more RAM slots so it's probably worth buying one decent-sized module if you're after some raw performance at times.
Ah, I forgot, in some setups the RAM speed goes down when you use more RAM slots so it's probably worth buying one decent-sized module if you're after some raw performance at times.
Did you mean because of the strain on the memory controller? Apparently any consequent performance drop is only very slight.
Thank you for the views, going to have a look at exactly what's available at what prices before making a final decision.
Distribution: Debian Sid AMD64, Raspbian Wheezy, various VMs
Posts: 7,680
Rep:
Quote:
Originally Posted by makeyourself
Did you mean because of the strain on the memory controller? Apparently any consequent performance drop is only very slight.
No, I did mean that the RAM speed goes down. The performance drop is probably low but, at least for my AMD CPU setup, the RAM speed clocks down for every module you add. It may not apply to Intel boards at all.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.