Dracoro

How much benefit will I see by adding another 256MB ram?

Currently running a Packard Bell 1.5GHz P4 with 256MB ram and 2 HDD's (40+60GB).

What type of applications will the RAM show itself? Will XP really run any better? Mainly use my PC for music (playing MP3's) and the internet and a bit of excel and music/dvd copying to HDD (backup of my own stuff BTW before anyone gets shirty). Recording DVD's takes ages and I'm assuming it's because of the DVD read speed rather than RAM??

bluenose172

iTrader: (2)

Extra RAM usually manifests itself with heavy load applications taking the work away from your swap file, hence speeding up the process. So if you are doing a lot of big image manipulation, playing games etc you will notice a difference. Windows XP will perhaps load up quicker and be generally smoother while using it!

Dracoro

Thanks! Is there anyway to tell if the swap file is being used much?

class_A

Start up what you would normally run, go to Task Manager, if your RAM used exceeds physical RAM available, you're swapping to disc.

256Mb is probably the base for a "useable" WinXP system, you'll see the benefit from upping to 512Mb.

Check which RAM you need carefully. P4's can either use regular PC133 RAM or RAMBUS or DDR-RAM.

lightning

256 MB is not enough. You will see a significant improvement if you increase it to 512 MB. The reason why is related to the fact that the memory your PC requires probably exceeds the phyisical memory you have available. This means that the swap file is frequently used and there will be a significant degree of reading and writing from the hard drive to make up the difference. I have noted that typically my PC uses a minimum of 280 MB of physical memory at any one time. I have 512 MB therefore hard drive activity for memory caching is virtually non existent. Hope this helps.

kamikaze

i recently upgraded from 256 to 512
differences are minor
one of my games loads twice as quick though
another games is slightly less jerky

other games i noticed no differences
if you can afford it do
but its far from essentail
256 is fine

[Edited by kamikaze - 1/11/2004 3:19:54 PM]

man on the moon

Just to add my recent experience.

Due to the advice from this group I decided to add more RAM to my old P2 350MHz 64Mb machine before buying a CD writer. For a few quid I increased by 128MB RAM and a CD writer. The extra RAM definetely makes the machine run smoother and quicker. (Little)money well spent.

MOTM

mynickers

I would say if you put demands on your system resouces, to have a minimum of 512mb of decent quality ram (such as Kingston or crucial). I am persoanlly upgrading for 512mb to a 1gig (x2 512) dual channel pack, but I do a lot of image work, have dreamweaver, photoshop, illustrator open, as well as a few browsers, mail program and messign around in folders, and my PC does feel the strain and even crashes sometimes.

But for most people, using a PC for multimedia, and a bit of gaming 512mb is normally fine.

LeeMac

iTrader: (1)

run a prog to see how much memory you have with 256 then 512 like freemem, xp manages memory better than any previous windows but uses a lot of your 256 stick so if your running several programs it'll run slow, add another and it will run quite well, you might not see much difference unless you run mem demanding programs

pugoetru

Iput 512mb more memmory in was 256 to start with made a difference not huge but was noticeable

As said earlier xp swallows up most of your 256

StickyMicky

i jumped from 256 to 768 and saw a massive diffrence, then my 256 ram fooked up and i had to drop back to 512

not planning on buying anymore as im wanting a new m/board and cpu this year and im going to swap to ddr memory

EvilKyote

Just as another point that hasn't been mentioned, you can see how much virtual memory programs might be using from the task manager.

If you open the taskmanager and select the processes tab, from the menu click on 'view' then 'select columns' then tick the tickbox for 'virtual memory size' (right hand row, 2nd down from top). see image below




EK

LeeMac

iTrader: (1)

soz, mistake

[Edited by LeeMac - 1/14/2004 9:39:08 PM]

Miles

Dracoro, look in Performance Monitor to check out how much is being paged to disk and hence to gain an idea of what your machine is doing.

64Mb->128Mb = Big Difference
256Mb -> 512Mb = Difference really depends on what you use your machine for.

If you have an Althon machine with an NForce2 mainboard, you will get the advantage of wider memory addressing with two sticks of RAM.