how do you know when you need more ram?

[draiken]

this computer im working at is slow as hell and i dont know whats wrong with it. I thought it might need more ram as it only has 256 right now...it has a 1.8ghz p4 cpu.

 

[lynx6200]

512mb certainly woulnt hurt. Can you give us your total computer specs, and what kind of stuff you do with it? That can make a big difference.

 

[draiken]

1.8 ghz p4 with 256 ram and 30 gig hard drive. running xp. Is that what you need ?

 

[The_Other_One]

As lynx said, more certainlly wouldn't hurt anything. He probably wanted more specs, but that helps

A good way I tell people to see if they need more RAM is to watch how active the hard drive is. Not always the best method, but when you don't have enough RAM, your system uses a swap file, ore basically a portion of your hard drive as RAM. Your hard drive is MUCH slower than RAM, so this really slows a computer down. If you have around 1GB of RAM, you can disable the swap file(well, you could now, but you'll run out of RAM...and sometimes even 1G isn't enough...) But anyway, people usally see a HUGE increase in performace.

Just to clearify, you will not see things running faster as much as loading more quickly.

 

[draiken]

what other specs should I post? and would my pc really use a gig of ram all we do is spreadsheets and internet.

 

[Emperor_nero]

then you most likey have spyware or some other form of malware that is hoging resources.

 

[draiken]

Yeah i figured as much, what would be the best approch to rid my computer of these problems?

 

[Shane]

A good way I tell people to see if they need more RAM is to watch how active the hard drive is. Not always the best method, but when you don't have enough RAM, your system uses a swap file, ore basically a portion of your hard drive as RAM. Your hard drive is MUCH slower than RAM, so this really slows a computer down.

Yes my hard drive goes like crazy when loading games and stuff.

Thats why i need more ram and i have 512mb of ram at the moment so i would hate to immagine whats its like with you having 256Mb mate.

I say definatly get more ram.

 

[draiken]

Yes my hard drive goes like crazy when loading games and stuff.

Thats why i need more ram and i have 512mb of ram at the moment so i would hate to immagine whats its like with you having 256Mb mate.

I say definatly get more ram.

I agree but i dont need that much RAM when i am just using the computer for word processing and spreadsheets...

If there a application that is able to let me know if i need more RAM? If thats the case..

 

[Impr3ssiv3]

u know u need more ram when u keep gettings "windows is low on virtual memory"

 

[Sacrinyellow5]

It might be XP.. I'm actually on a comp with the same specs and it runs preet good with win2000 on it.

 

[flash527]

i just had the same problem on recent customers computer. She had 256mb, and told me it was slow and to fix it. i started by adding 1GBof ram as her CPU was a P4, so not bad. I saw absolutely no performance gain. There was so much spyware and virus' and other crap i ended up just reformatting, and tada, her machine was 100 X faster. if you do reformat be sure to get some kind of antivirus program ( i like norton internet security becasue its easy ) any thoughts?

 

[XFs]

Your PC specs are not that bad.
I have an XP PC with specs that are similar.
The "tune", however, is excellent.

You might have too many programs running in the background.
Factory installs for XP gave me huge performance problems and
very frequent crashes.

I then tried a clean XP install, and I couldn't have been happier since.

 

[Cromewell]

Turning off the flashy interface will help as well. As others have said a little more RAM, at worst wont hurt anything. I'd suggest going to 512MB, but disabling some of the unneeded programs may work well enough for what you do.