# Recommended RAM for PowerPivot



## d3struckt (Feb 2, 2012)

To the PowerPivot Elites:

How dependent is PowerPivot based on RAM/hardware?  Would there be a large performance gain in PowerPivot if I increased the available ram from 4gigs to the maximum my laptop can hold to 8gigs?   

I'm on a Dell E4310 Core I5 with 4 gigs of ram.  However, I noticed when I analyze over 2 million rows with multiple linked tables, the query time slowly increases and my Excel crashes every once in a while.  What do you think?


----------



## powerpivotpro (Feb 2, 2012)

Going to 8 GB RAM will help you a lot, but only if you also switch to 64-bit Excel and 64-bit PowerPivot.

I generally find 64-bit to be much more reliable than 32-bit. The downside of 64-bit is that many Office addons don't work on 64-bit.


----------



## d3struckt (Feb 2, 2012)

PowerPivotPro, thank you sensei.


----------

