Is 2GB ram enough to work on C language and matlab

[Caglar Yildiz]

Hello everyone I am going to buy a computer soon. And because I don't have much money, computer s ram can be 4 GB at most and which will cause me some trouble. My question is that will 2gb ram be enough to work on MATLAB and learning to code.

 

[economy]

Yeah absolutely!

 

[Caglar Yildiz]

Yeah absolutely!

Thank you for reply

 

[Borg]

2GB isn't that much these days. Half of that will be used by the operating system. If you can get 4GB, you should.

 

[meBigGuy]

I can't imagine getting good performance from a laptop with 2GB unless you are running Linux.

The system will work, but it will be swapping a lot.

 

[billy_joule]

Hello everyone I am going to buy a computer soon. And because I don't have much money, computer s ram can be 4 GB at most and which will cause me some trouble. My question is that will 2gb ram be enough to work on MATLAB and learning to code.

Do they even still sell computers with 2GB ram? Are you buying second hand? What's your budget?

A stick of 2GB DDR3 is less than $15 USD these days, so upgrading to 4GB is cheap as chips.

 

[Svein]

If you are going to run a 32-bit operating system, 2Gbyte is almost the maximum amount the OS can handle (at least that is so for Windows 32bit). No, I do not know why.

 

[phinds]

If you are going to run a 32-bit operating system, 2Gbyte is almost the maximum amount the OS can handle (at least that is so for Windows 32bit). No, I do not know why.

Not true. It will handle 4Gigs total (including video ram)

 

[glappkaeft]

And after all the reserved parts (OS, Drivers, twice mapped graphics memory , etc) of the virtual memory space has been accounted for you have between (less than) 1 and 3 GB available for applications which is what Svein is referring to.

As for the OP question, today I personally wouldn't buy a machine with less than 12 GB of memory if I wanted it to last. I work as a programmer and my current home and work machines have 6-8 GB of memory but they are all about to be rebuilt, upgraded or replaced with machines with at least 16 GB since I run into memory limits pretty often. Even if you are on a budget I wouldn't recommend less than 8 GB of memory since memory is cheap. If you are buying a laptop see if you can buy memory on the open market instead of buying the overpriced premium options with more memory. This also goes doubly for the (few) Apple models that still can be upgraded.

 

[phinds]

And after all the reserved parts (OS, Drivers, twice mapped graphics memory , etc) of the virtual memory space has been accounted for you have between (less than) 1 and 3 GB available for applications which is what Svein is referring to.

I was not attempting to read his mind, I was responding to what he said. He said it can only handle about 2Gigs. It can handle 4.

As for the OP question, today I personally wouldn't buy a machine with less than 12 GB of memory if I wanted it to last.

I agree completely. I'm getting ready for a new build sometime soon and I'm going with 16GIGS.

I work as a programmer and my current home and work machines have 6-8 GB of memory but they are all about to be rebuilt, upgraded or replaced with machines with at least 16 GB since I run into memory limits pretty often. Even if you are on a budget I wouldn't recommend less than 8 GB of memory since memory is cheap. If you are buying a laptop see if you can buy memory on the open market instead of buying the overpriced premium options with more memory. This also goes doubly for the (few) Apple models that still can be upgraded.

Yeah, I have memory problems too, with my software development on my current 8Gig machine.

 

[Svein]

Not true. It will handle 4Gigs total (including video ram)

Well, a 32 bit address will cover 4 Gbyte. What I said is that 32-bit Windows for some reason does not handle that amount (at least XP did not).

On the other hand, I have done a considerable amount of SW development on machines with 2Gbyte or less on both Windows and Linux machines. That includes some full-size applications and a lot of systems programming.

 

[meBigGuy]

32 bit windows XP had problems with DATA FILES that were greater than 2MB. No problems with address space.

I don't think 2GB will work for squat with windows 7 or later. As mentioned previously, I doubt you can even buy a 2GB machine with windows loaded

Although, Microsoft doesn't require it.

From Microsoft:

If you want to run Windows 7 or 10 on your PC, here's what Microsoft requires:

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
  

 

[Svein]

Not true. It will handle 4Gigs total (including video ram)

Well. Some information is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_GB_barrier and some more here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx.

 

[DiracPool]

And because I don't have much money, computer s ram can be 4 GB at most and which will cause me some trouble.

Lol. Are you serious. Money is an issue? RAM is dirt cheap these days. I've heard that the cost of RAM is some sort of measured commodity, like pork bellies or wheat. The market price isn't going to vary much no matter where you look. If you want a real Halloween horror story... It's still Halloween in Seattle at 6:50 AM, cause the sun hasn't risen. In my book, it's only the next day when the sun rises

In any case, back to the horror story. I just did a new build but my previous build was in 2007. Guess how much 2 gigs of G-skill ddr2 ram cost me? Count it, $275. That's right. If that's not bad enough, 6 months after the build the computer kept capriciously restarting whenever it felt like it, as when I was in the middle of composing a paragraph. Turns out it was the $275 sticks of ram that I was bled for. In my new build I got 8 gigs of G-skill ddr3 RIPJAWS! for 40 bucks. So i'd recommend ponying up a few extra pennies now for fewer hassles down the line.

 

[newjerseyrunner]

Well, a 32 bit address will cover 4 Gbyte. What I said is that 32-bit Windows for some reason does not handle that amount (at least XP did not).

On the other hand, I have done a considerable amount of SW development on machines with 2Gbyte or less on both Windows and Linux machines. That includes some full-size applications and a lot of systems programming.

That has nothing to do with Windows, that has to do with not all addresses point to RAM. 32-bit Linux can also only use about 3.5GB.

Nobody has mentioned the real difference between Windows and *nix in terms of RAM yet. Windows uses something we call aggressive swapping, where Linux uses lazy swapping. The difference is that Linux loads things only when you tell it to, or when an application needs something. This saves RAM and allows it to run on less that powerful machines. Windows tries to make application loading faster, it loads things it thinks you might need in the future, so that when you need it, you don't have to wait for it. You trade RAM usage for startup time.

 

[harborsparrow]

RAM is typically very cheap on crucial.com, and for the really poor, maybe eBay. RAM upgrades are worth buying. I'd rather be without shoes than without enough RAM in my laptop. Priorities!

 

[phinds]

RAM is typically very cheap on crucial.com, and for the really poor, maybe eBay. RAM upgrades are worth buying. I'd rather be without shoes than without enough RAM in my laptop. Priorities!

Absolutely. I'm doing a new build and although 12GB 1600mhz would likely be plenty, I'm going with 16GB 24mhz since the i7 can make pretty good use of it.