Advantage of increasing memory?

[Guest freecycle]

My works laptop is a Dell Latitude D630 running XP

Professional version 2002 with SP2. It comes with

1Gb of memory and has a spare slot. Crucial.co.uk

say I can go an extra 1Gb for £16

or throw away my 1Gb and go 2 x 2Gb for £64.

 

What increase in response times are we talking about

for these, or are these increases just for heavy cpu

processes that I won't be running?

TIA,

FC

[Guest Erwin Moller]

Re: Advantage of increasing memory?

 

freecycle schreef:

> My works laptop is a Dell Latitude D630 running XP

> Professional version 2002 with SP2. It comes with

> 1Gb of memory and has a spare slot. Crucial.co.uk

> say I can go an extra 1Gb for £16

> or throw away my 1Gb and go 2 x 2Gb for £64.

>

> What increase in response times are we talking about

> for these, or are these increases just for heavy cpu

> processes that I won't be running?

> TIA,

> FC

 

Hi freecycle,

 

Firstly: 16 pounds for a 1 gig extra memory isn't very much. Sounds like

a good deal to me.

 

Do you need it?

A simple, barely scientific test, is this:

1) Start the programs you use. Just open a bunch of them you typically

need when working on your computer.

2) Hit ctrl-Alt-Del and start Windows Task Manager.

3) Click on the performance tab

 

Now look at Physical memory (numbers expressed in Kilobytes).

It says:

Total: xxxx

Available: xxxx

System Cache: xxxx

 

If Available is resonably high, you have enough memory for your current

tasks.

If it is low, you better buy more memory.

(I consider low <100.000K, but that is very debatable)

 

In general, if your computer starts swapping: it is using the harddisk

for extra memory, which degrades performance a lot, then you need more

memory.

 

Just my 2 cent.

 

Regards,

Erwin Moller

[Guest John]

Re: Advantage of increasing memory?

 

Erwin Moller wrote:

> freecycle schreef:

>> My works laptop is a Dell Latitude D630 running XP

>> Professional version 2002 with SP2. It comes with

>> 1Gb of memory and has a spare slot. Crucial.co.uk

>> say I can go an extra 1Gb for £16

>> or throw away my 1Gb and go 2 x 2Gb for £64.

>>

>> What increase in response times are we talking about

>> for these, or are these increases just for heavy cpu

>> processes that I won't be running?

>> TIA,

>> FC

>

> Hi freecycle,

>

> Firstly: 16 pounds for a 1 gig extra memory isn't very much. Sounds like

> a good deal to me.

>

> Do you need it?

> A simple, barely scientific test, is this:

> 1) Start the programs you use. Just open a bunch of them you typically

> need when working on your computer.

> 2) Hit ctrl-Alt-Del and start Windows Task Manager.

> 3) Click on the performance tab

>

> Now look at Physical memory (numbers expressed in Kilobytes).

> It says:

> Total: xxxx

> Available: xxxx

> System Cache: xxxx

>

> If Available is resonably high, you have enough memory for your current

> tasks.

> If it is low, you better buy more memory.

> (I consider low <100.000K, but that is very debatable)

>

> In general, if your computer starts swapping: it is using the harddisk

> for extra memory, which degrades performance a lot, then you need more

> memory.

>

> Just my 2 cent.

>

> Regards,

> Erwin Moller

 

Very good advice from Erwin and I would just like to say that adding

more than 2Gb would be a waste, as 32 bit windows (which is probably

what you are running) can't address all of it, so it would be wasted.

1Gb is usually ample for every day use and I doubt if you would notice

much if any difference buy adding another 1Gb unless you are doing a lot

of video work.

 

Regards,

John.

[Guest Gerry]

Re: Advantage of increasing memory?

 

What programmes do you run on your Dell? 1 gb RAM memory is more than

enough for most computers.

 

Available RAM at any given time is less important than the extent to

which the system resorts to using the pagefile at any given time. You

can get some idea of pagefile usage by comparing the Peak entry under

Commit Charge to the total installed RAM. If the Peak is more than the

installed RAM, and this is a regular occurence, then you need to add

RAM. If the Peak is less than the installed RAM then the pagefile usage

is minimal. Some usage of the pagefile is inevitable because some

operations require pagefile memory.

 

You can get more accurate information on pagefile usage using

pagefilemon, a small freeware utility.

 

Use page file monitor to observe what is the peak usage. Start it to run

immediately after start-up and look at the log. Pagefilemon takes

snapshots. You need to run it at the beginning of the session at then

run it again at intervals throughout the sessions. The log is Pagefile

log.txt. If you right click on the file in Windows Explorer and select

Send to, Desktop (Create Shortcut). The same applies to

XP_PageFileMon.exe.

 

A small utility to monitor pagefile usage:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

 

Note that programs using undo features, particularly those associated

with graphics and photo editing, require large amounts of memory so if

you use this type of programme check these first observing how the page

usage increases when they start and whether the usage decreases when you

close the programme.

 

Think twice before installing 4 mb RAM? There are many threads

discussing this in these newsgroups.

http://snipurl.com/2b8x4 [groups_google_com]

 

--

 

 

 

Hope this helps.

 

Gerry

~~~~

FCA

Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

 

 

freecycle wrote:

> My works laptop is a Dell Latitude D630 running XP

> Professional version 2002 with SP2. It comes with

> 1Gb of memory and has a spare slot. Crucial.co.uk

> say I can go an extra 1Gb for £16

> or throw away my 1Gb and go 2 x 2Gb for £64.

>

> What increase in response times are we talking about

> for these, or are these increases just for heavy cpu

> processes that I won't be running?

> TIA,

> FC