Rofl, Rofl. no such thing as 248 MB RAM... maybe 256 MB? Yeah, 256 isn't suficent now-a-days, need at least 512 mb, but preferably 1 GB.
ok, w/e the last guy told you to do to find your memory amount, dont do that If you have a 'My Computer' icon on your desktop and it's not a shortcut, Right Click it -> Properties. That will give you your Processor type, speed, and RAM amount. once again, no such thing as 2000 MB RAM. maybe 2048, no?
8mb out of the 256mb is being reserved for use with his onboard graphics most likely(or other addon card which shares system ram) again though, 256mb isn't sufficient when windows XP itself uses around 200mb alone... edit: FYI all ram amounts are based on powers of 2... 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024(aka 1GB) 2048(aka 2GB) 4096(aka 4GB) and so on... though you can combine diferent size strips(256mb+512mb=768mb) again.. toss the 30-40$ at the ram you will notice a HUGE diference. I'd rather run a system with a crapy 1.2Ghz celeron and 2GB ram than one with an overclocked conroe and 128mb of ram...
There is such things as like 518 instead of 512 sometimes its around 512 and its advertised as 512! Merged Post: seeeeeeee
go to a store such as best buy or comp usa, or go to www.newegg.com and buy some, MAKE SURE TO GET THE RIGHT TYPE OF RAM
I would highly doubt that you would find a computer with 518mb of ram available, such a number is highly unlikely. it would require quite a weird combination of components... again they make ram in strips with a quantity of a power of 2 base... 2 4 8 16etc. any amount of available ram is a combination of these amounts with any appropriate subtractions added in. While you can mix and match a quantity(512mb+256mb for example), most vendors tend to either use one single stick, or two of the same type, also note that a 1024mb strip litterally costs about as much to make as a 512mb strip and even a 16mb strip so it would be uneconomical for a company to "save" a dollar by using a smaller quantity when they could purchase more ram and better market their product(this also applies to system builders, I'de never cheap out by1% when there's a HUGE performance diference) any for the record, ram essentially acts as high speed storage, when you are low on ram, your computer starts to use your harddrive temporarily - at a HUGE performance cost.
dont forget above the three CPU Memory Caches . Those are as much as x17 faster . so basicly the comparision between Memory Cache and RAM is like the comparision with RAM and Hard Drives. Isnt much more we can say except what kind of RAM to get...
you also have to note the efficiency of a system bus, all cache does is temporarily hold data on it's way ot your ram, if you had a 100% efficient system bus and low memory latencies the point of cache will greatly be diminished, furthermore, the amount l1 cache affects performance moreso than amount of l2 cache
i was replying to this.... to show that there can be different amounts of ram, like in my picture less than 512
