help to Understanding RAM?

Question

I'm having a hard time understanding how RAM works. Can someone give me an example of it works?

Answer 1

RAM.. to easily understand it.. just imagine how many things you can do in a second.. if your ram is higher... your cpu can process so many things.. if your ram is low, you can only do few things.. or computer will freez for a while..

Answer 2

When you run an Application(software program), then the temporary components required are stored as a virtual memory in RAM.

Depending on the amount of RAM you have, allows you to do Multitasking.



For general a purpose a 2GB Ram is enough. But if you are into Gaming, Video Editing or other 3D Animation Package...you might consider going up than 2GB.



Anyway the System Requirement(or RAM requirement) is clearly mentioned in any Software Package available. You just need to calculate if you need to run programs simultaneously.



1GB=1024Mb

1MB=1024Kb



Gb=Gigabyte>Mb=Megabyte>Kb=Kilobyte



One more thing Before considering an upgrade, know which one would go with your Hardware. Like the different Generations(DDR I or DDR II or DDR III)...and how much Mhz(speed) would your mother board support. And most importantly do you have available slots on your Mother Board.



Hope this gives you an Idea.



FOr more Depth Info you can always do a wikipedia search

Answer 3

Random Access Memory is made up of millions of small things, called capacitors. You can think of these things as buckets, that can either be filled or empty. When your computer stores information on ram, it fills these buckets, or capacitors, with a charge, or water. This information stands for 1 bit of computer data. So data consists of all of these ram buckets filled with binary code that gives you information of what the computer is currently doing. But there's a problem, these buckets have holes in them, and they leak the water after a certain amount of time. So, to solve this problem, the computer has to be on and running so it remembers what it is doing. The CPU is constantly refreshing what is on your ram, by refilling all the used buckets or changing what buckets are filled or not. That's what makes this memory go away, is when theres no power there's no more data on it. They're better for storing what your computer is doing at a certain time because of the speed and how easy they can be read, so that's why we use it for that. Other devices, such as hard drives that use magnetic heads to write bits onto a disk, require moving parts and are a lot slower than electric charges in capacitors. The more ram you have, the more things that you can do at once, or have open on your computer. When older computers run out of RAM, it will start storing this temporary data on your hard drive in something called a PAGE file and this slows down your computer drastically. I hopes this helps your understanding, I'm glad I could help explain this!

Answer 4

It stores Random Access Memory. For example if you open adobe photoshop, certain elements of it need to be "installed" and that uses ram instead of the hard drive. The more ram you have the faster the computer will run. If you have multiple tabs open in chrome, internet explorer, firefox, etc. that will use RAM. Basically running software on there uses the Random Access Memory. Even the windows operating system or mac os x by itself uses ram. Ram is used for temporary use instead of the hard drive or ssd itself.

Answer 5

Heyy, if you're a dummy like me, check out this article :P It simplifies terms and makes it easier to understand what Random Access Memory is.



I'll try to give you a brief description to peak your interests. It's basically like a medium for data to be transfered. For example, if you do tasks on your computer it takes up the computer's processing power, and most of it needs to be written somewhere, all the bits and pieces of information pertaining to what you're currently doing right now, and it writes that into the RAM. It's faster to store all this in something apart from your disk because it takes too long to read from your disk, so that's where RAM comes into play. Basically, all you need to know is it helps the computer distribute the load and makes things run faster, simultaneously :P

Answer 6

Ram Memory, Random Access Memory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random-access_memory



How RAM Works: http://www.howstuffworks.com/ram.htm

Answer 7

RAM (Random Access Memory) stores data that goes between components. Like when your CPU spits out data it goes into RAM then from RAM goes to your hard disk drive or display.



Biggest thing about having too little ram is that your computer will use "Virtual RAM" to compensate which is your hard disk drive. Hard disk drives are 100X slower then real RAM.

Answer 8

RAM is temporary memory that the processor uses while your on the computer. when you shut the PC down the RAM is vacant again. The more RAM you have the faster the processor works while your PC is on.

Answer 9

I believe.. a higher volume of ram would make your computer operate quicker.