Does adding RAM make a computer faster?

Adding random access memory -- or RAM -- to your computer can, to a degree, make the machine faster. Check out this podcast from HowStuffWorks to learn how RAM affects your computer.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Stuff happens, just don't let it happen to your photos, music,
and documents. Protect your important files with Mosey by e
m C, the most trusted name and cloud backup. Save
ten percent today with promo code brain Stuff at Mosey
dot com. That's m o z Y dot com. Welcome
to brain Stuff from how Stuff works dot com where
smart happens him Marshall Brain with today's question, does adding

(00:25):
RAM to your computer make it faster? Up to a point,
adding RAM or random access memory will cause your computer
to feel faster, sometimes a lot faster. RAM is important
because of an operating system component called the virtual memory manager,
or the VMM. Here's how it works. When you run
a program like a word processor or an Internet browser

(00:47):
on your computer, the microprocessor in your computer pulls a
file off the hard disk and loads it into RAM.
In the case of a big program like Microsoft word
this file is huge and it needs a lot of RAM.
Then the microprocessor loads in any data files that you
want to look at as well. So a big application
could easily take a hundred megabytes of RAM or more,

(01:09):
and most people normally open several programs at once. Plus
the operating system itself needs RAM two everything together may
need more RAM than your machine has. Where does all
the extra RAM space come from. The extra space is
created by the virtual Memory manager. The VMM looks at
the RAM you're using and find sections of it that

(01:31):
are not currently being used. It puts these sections of
RAM in a place called the swap file on the
hard disk. For example, even though I have my email
program open right now, I haven't looked at email for
an hour, so the whole thing maybe sitting in a
swap file on the hard disc. That's called swapping out
the program. The next time I click on the email program,

(01:53):
the VMM will swap in all of its bites from
the hard disk and probably swaps something else out in
the process. Because the hard disk is slow, the act
of swapping things in and out causes a noticeable delay,
sometimes several seconds. If you have a very small amount
of RAM in your computer, then the VMM is always
swapping things in and out to get anything done. In

(02:16):
that case, your computer feels like it's crawling. As you
add more RAM, you get to a point where you
only notice the swapping when you need to load a
new program or change Windows. If you were to put
four gigabytes of RAM and your computer you would never
see the VMM swapping anything. That's about as fast as
things can get. If you then added more RAM, it

(02:37):
wouldn't have any effect. Some applications like Photoshop or a
film editing package need tons of RAM to do their job.
If you run them on a machine with two little RAM,
they swapped constantly and run very slowly. You can get
a huge speed boost by adding enough RAM to eliminate
the swapping. Programs like these may run ten to fifty

(02:58):
times faster once they have enough rams. Do you have
any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please
send me an email at podcast at how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
go to how stuff works dot com. Your photos, music
and documents are irreplaceable. Protect them with Mosey by e

(03:20):
m C, the most trusted name and cloud backup. Back
up your files today and save ten percent with promo code.
Brain stuff at Mosey dot com m o z y
dot com