RAM (not Aries)

[OFSO]

An academic question as I already have an extra 1 Gb of RAM on order for my ancient (i.e., three-year-old) PC.

But here's the question:

My PC, ASUS motherboard, AMD Athlon 64x2 dual, processor 3800, 2Ghz, has two DIMM slots with only one occupied by 1Gb RAM. I run WIN XP but have quite a lot of software running simultaneously over my broadband WiMax connection, plus local "stuff".

Rarely I get a warning from XP saying "out of memory, creating virtual memory" which as any fule kno means WIN is creating a bit of memory out of the hard drive.

OK, question, possibly silly, but this is PPRuNe: when I've plugged in the second (matching) 1Gb of RAM, other than NOT seeing the warning message out of memory, can I expect to see any other improvements ?

OFSO

[mixture]

In a plain, non-technical english nutshell :

Improved Performance.

Basically it allows your system to be more efficient. The more temporary stuff it can store in RAM rather than on the Hard Drive, the better.

(not massive... more RAM generally renders a "snappier" feel... assuming you haven't got a Celeron or other cheaper bottleneck processor and a relativley tidy system i.e. not too much fragmentation or rubbish running in the background)

For your average Joe, 2GB should be a good target value to have in your PC. If you're a gamer, like playing with photographs, complicated spreadsheets or other stuff.... then 4GB on Windows, will probably be just fine. If you're on a Mac and want to leave VMWare/Parallels running Windows in the background then your wallet and motherboard tech spec is the limit, because you'll need to consider the memory requirements of your Mac as well as any virtual machines you want to run. :cool:

Computer performance priorities (hardware, in order of preference) :
1. Processor (slow processor....forget anything else)
2. RAM
3. Graphics Card (only of concern if you are a gamer or graphics heavy)
4. Hard Drive (for most people, focusing on a tidy, defragged OS would be more worthwhile than messing around with Hard Drive upgrades)


For any more info.......

"extra ram benefits"

into your favourite search engine.

[A A Gruntpuddock]

My son continually bemoaned the speed of his ancient pc running XP on 3/4 mb of memory.

When mine caught fire after fitting a new video card, I gave him the 2mb memory which was now surplus to requirements. He used this to replace all his other bits'npieces of ram.

It now runs so much faster that he is no longer looking for a new computer!

You will notice the biggest difference when multi-tasking, either running more than one program or opening multiple windows in your browser.

Just doubled my old laptop ram from 256 to 512 kb and the difference is very noticeable. Faster and fewer lockups when the system temporarily runs out of memory.

[mixture]

AAG,

My son continually bemoaned the speed of his ancient pc running XP on 3/4 mb of memory.

and

Just doubled my old laptop ram from 256 to 512 kb .


Wow.....I think even Bill Gates would love to meet you and your son with those figures ! :ok:

Unfortunatley, I suspect your unit prefix might be off.