I remember when I was able to run multiple programs quite easily back when I was running windows XP with 512mb of RAM.... Now, my graphics card alone is 1 GB and my total RAM is 6 GB. I have an enormous hard disk drive with about 800 GB of unused space, and I'm running 64-bit Windows 7. I tend to basically just surf the web, view media (music/movies/photos) and I've recently gotten into some very amateur digital editing. For digital editing I use Microsoft Paint (a very low-memory utility) and I recently bought a cheap video editing software. I use iTunes for my music, I watch movies with Windows Media Player, and I use Google Chrome for surfing the web. The only windows gadget I have open all the time is the CPU meter.
My computer is 1 year old
Comp specs:
AMD Phenom II X4 processor @ 2.90 GHz
64-bit Windows 7
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB video card
6GB total RAM
1TB HDD
As I'm typing this right now my computer is using 3.8 GB of RAM and the only application I have open is my google chrome web browser. And no, I'm not running a bunch of programs in the background.
So my question is: what can I do to have my programs run smoother? Should I reinstall windows? Should I get an entire different operating system? Because I am completely baffled that I can barely surf the web, listen to music and run 1 other program without having something crash. Are computers really getting better or are they getting worse? Like I said, 10 years ago I had 512mb of RAM and I think 160GB of HDD and I think it ran with much less problems than I have now. Can anyone help me out?
EDIT: Other than a nice graphics card and a lot of RAM, are there any other important features I should look for if I were to upgrade, or perhaps buy all new computer that is geared towards video editing? I'm becoming more involved with editing and I fear I won't be able to do much at all if I can barely use my computer for simple programming.
My computer is 1 year old
Comp specs:
AMD Phenom II X4 processor @ 2.90 GHz
64-bit Windows 7
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB video card
6GB total RAM
1TB HDD
As I'm typing this right now my computer is using 3.8 GB of RAM and the only application I have open is my google chrome web browser. And no, I'm not running a bunch of programs in the background.
So my question is: what can I do to have my programs run smoother? Should I reinstall windows? Should I get an entire different operating system? Because I am completely baffled that I can barely surf the web, listen to music and run 1 other program without having something crash. Are computers really getting better or are they getting worse? Like I said, 10 years ago I had 512mb of RAM and I think 160GB of HDD and I think it ran with much less problems than I have now. Can anyone help me out?
EDIT: Other than a nice graphics card and a lot of RAM, are there any other important features I should look for if I were to upgrade, or perhaps buy all new computer that is geared towards video editing? I'm becoming more involved with editing and I fear I won't be able to do much at all if I can barely use my computer for simple programming.
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