Why is RAM important?

RAM is a vital ingredient in every powerful machine discussion. Ask anyone what kind of laptop to buy and there is a guarantee that RAM will be among the first things they tell you to look out for. What is this RAM and why is it so important?

The playground

RAM stands for Random Access Memory. RAM is super important to your computer, perhaps as important as the processor itself. I always think of RAM as the playground. In your computer, you have the Internal memory. Think of this internal memory as the store where you can store you play toys, as many as you can store in there. RAM refers to the space that you can use to play with these toys. If your playground is small, it doesn’t matter how big your store is, you can’t play with all your toys at once.

Why is RAM important?

RAM works like that. The number of programs that you can run depends on the amount of RAM that you have. If a particular program requires more RAM (workspace) than you have, you can’t run that program. This is why it is very important to evaluate the kind of work you do and estimate the right amount of RAM you need. For example, if you’re a gamer, you can’t go and buy a machine that has 2Gb of RAM.

Some of your system software also require a minimum amount of RAM which if not available cause your machine to be painfully slow.

RAM is volatile which means that its content is lost during a power surge.

NB: The performance of your machine depends on other factors such as Processor, GPU (graphics card), Memory etc.

Originally published at Decode.