Random RAM Question

I realize this is kind of a ridiculous question but I've always wondered. Is there a program that consumers can get their hands on on the face of the planet that would require the 8 possible gigs of RAM? For that matter, is there an app that would even use 4 gigs of RAM? I understand that you can expand it so much so that you can run multiple apps at a time, but I was just wondering if 1 app would use it all. Thanks

No consumer programs even use more than 1 gb of memory

Could you immagine what kind of program would use all 8gigs, WOW THATS ALOT

PS CS 20.5. It takes up 50 screens (in 2500 ofcourse) :mac: .

maybe that would be more than 8GB...

WasabiTaylor said:

I realize this is kind of a ridiculous question but I've always wondered. Is there a program that consumers can get their hands on on the face of the planet that would require the 8 possible gigs of RAM? For that matter, is there an app that would even use 4 gigs of RAM? I understand that you can expand it so much so that you can run multiple apps at a time, but I was just wondering if 1 app would use it all. Thanks

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I reckon Word would have a petty good go at using it all.

Amen-Moses

I use lots of video editing software on my Mac and I have used all my 4 Gigs of ram on a project once. Soo 8 Gigs is a lil out there. But it can be nessecary to use it. :black:

What about those extremely complex science programs? The ones that have to calculate chemical reactions with thousands of molecular structures in real time and render the results in 3D also in real time? I guess they'd take up a fair bit of memory (not quite 8GB's though!)

Silly people with your eight gigabytes of memory. I loaded 640K in my Apple IIGS and that ought to be enough for anybody.

Okay, so maybe nobody ever said that. But the point is, it may seem outrageous now, but it won't in a decade or so. By then, games and other software might be using high-resolution 3D graphics whose models require that kind of memory. You may even end up with an 8GB video card.

I think it's more for running multiple programs at once. Start running the entire creative suite at once and you could get a cpl. gigs used, and thats photo and layout software. Look at audio and video editing/rendering software, sure, 8 GB is perfectly usable.

yea, no one program yet is gonna use all 8gb.

The only time one program would come close to using the better part of 8gbs is more than likely when rendering intense animations with figures with extremely high quality textures. I'm not too sure if I'm making much sense, but think of rendering something that nears Star Wars in quality.

My mini = 1gig max. lol.

Tel said:

What about those extremely complex science programs? The ones that have to calculate chemical reactions with thousands of molecular structures in real time and render the results in 3D also in real time? I guess they'd take up a fair bit of memory (not quite 8GB's though!)

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Most of those (in my chemistry department at least) run on clusters anyhoo. Also anything on the market was written under the paradigm of 512MB being more memory than most people put in their boxes. Now that memory is getting cheaper the paradigm will shift to greater memory use (as it has been doing since RAM was invented). This will continue indefinitely until the technology of memory manufacture hits some technical brickwall or people get tired of playing HALO.

Halo rules...

People will never get tired of playing halo. I also doubt that technology will hit a brick wall people probuably thought that when the car was invented, "imagine when they have cars that can go 20mph" they probuably thought to themselves.... now we have ferrari's my point is, there is always bigger and better and we will always find a way to get past brick walls that might face us in the way of technolgy.

It is totally just the kind of user that you are that turns to how you look at ram. If you are a typical computer user, you will rarely use more than 512mb to 1GB, so 8GB seems incredibly outrageous. When you are a "poweruser" and you use much more advanced software, 8GB can seem small at times. My specialty is print and web design, and at times I will have numerous programs open. Just yesterday, I had
Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, Acrobat CS2, Acrobat 7.0, and Flash MX 2004 all open at the same time, constantly switching between them, and using all of them to their full potential, doing filters in photoshop, 3D rendering in Illustrator, etc. This completely maxed out the 4GB of ram that the powermac I was on had. And those are print and web programs! I dabble some in video editing, and those programs use even more ram. I'd imagine to those that do it a fair amount, 8GB could seem small. But, if all you do is M$ Office, iChat, web browsing, etc. that may seem incredible.