RAM: It’s Not Just a Pickup Truck

Darcy used to tell me that the single biggest boost you can give your computer is to add more RAM. Way back then (1996) I was fearful of opening my computer case and playing inside with the computer’s innards. But good ol’ EB, bent on impressing me with her vast computer knowledge, talked me through the installation on the phone – this before the cell phone age when long distance calls were expensive.

I was limping along on 250KB of RAM at that time (that’s KILOBYTES) and I installed one megabyte of RAM that day and my computer seemed to fly.

A lot has changed in 19 years, now computers have gigabytes of RAM, not kilobytes or megabytes, but one thing has not changed. If your computer is running poorly there are ways to speed it up – and we do this all the time with our Cloudeight Direct Service. If you’re using Windows XP you should have at least 1GB of RAM.  For later versions of Windows, if your computer only has 1 or 2 GB of RAM, there’s just no way your computer is ever going to be very fast or that you’re going to be doing much multi-tasking. And we have seen many computers with only 1 and 2 GB of RAM.

This applies to desktops and laptops, not tablets or smart phones.

If you have a 32-bit version of Windows, regardless of what version, your computer can only use a little less than 4GB – so if you have a 32-bit version of Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8x, or Windows 10, installing more than 4GB of RAM is a waste – but you should have no less than 4GB – no matter what Microsoft tells you the minimum requirements are.

If you have a 64-bit version of Windows you can, theoretically, use almost an unlimited amount of RAM – theoretically that is. Your computer is limited by the motherboard’s specifications. Some allow you to install 16GB of RAM, 32GB of RAM, 64GB of RAM, and even more. Some are limited to 8GB or 16GB of RAM.  Your computer manufacturer can tell you how many RAM slots your motherboard has and what the maximum amount of RAM you can install.

There are quite a few system info tools you can download, but as far as we know, none of them focus on RAM. We found one that does tell you a lot about the RAM installed in your computer, how many RAM slots there are and what brand and model motherboard you have. And best of all it’s free.

Here take a gander:

Below: See slot one has 4096 MB of RAM (4 GB).

     

And slot two also has 4096 MB of RAM (4 GB).

The little freeware program that can tell you a lot about your RAM and motherboard is called CPU-Z, and the author describes it this way:

CPU-Z is a freeware that gathers information on some of the main devices of your system :

1. Processor name and number, codename, process, package, cache levels.

2. Mainboard and chipset.

3. Memory type, size, timings, and module specifications (SPD).

4. Real time measurement of each core’s internal frequency, memory frequency.

CPU-Z is freeware for home and personal use. And it comes in two versions – one is a portable version – i.e. does notg install, you just download, unzip it and run it. If you don’t want it any more, just delete it. No installation or un-installation needed. And this is the version we recommend.

If you feel more comfortable with the installer there is a version with a Windows installer. You just download and install the program. This installs the software on your computer – but if you decide you don’t want it anymore you’ll have to uninstall it.

Below (from the author’s site), you can see the downloads are clearly marked – no games. We assume you speak English and not Chinese 🙂

We recommend the Zip (portable) version, but the install (Setup * English) is clean and free from malware should you feel more comfortable with installing the software.

If you’re using Windows 7 or 8x and  you’re going to be upgrading to Windows 10, no is a good time for you to go and get this little freeware gem and see how you’re fixed for RAM. RAM right now is very inexpensive. You can add 2GB of RAM for less than $35 in most cases.

You can read more about and/or download CPU-Z from this page.