More RAM?

S

sc_1004

New Member
When do you know when you NEED more RAM (as opposed to just wanting more)? I'm running Vista 32 with only 1GB of RAM, but I only use the machine to surf the net, do some wordprocessing, and maybe play the occasional non-demanding game (like chess, or some old arcade game).

I don't notice that my machine is particularly slow. I can run several windows at the same time and switch between them instantly.

At what point will I need more RAM? And how will I know this?
 
You seem to be doing ok with the 1gb you have now while seeing a good 2gb even with XP tends to smooth things out in both versions of Windows. Vista would load faster and run smoother since the new version sees a higher minimum requirement memory wise accounting for the gap of several years seen between the two.

Besides memory if you were seeing everything running rather slow then moving upto a faster cpu would be part of an inplace upgrade for overall system tweaking as well as a better video and maybe sound card as well. When the system bogs down when loading programs for multiple tasks then you consider an upgrade of some type whether simply adding more memory, a faster model cpu, or the eventual total move into a new system.
 
PC eye said:
You seem to be doing ok with the 1gb you have now while seeing a good 2gb even with XP tends to smooth things out in both versions of Windows. Vista would load faster and run smoother since the new version sees a higher minimum requirement memory wise accounting for the gap of several years seen between the two.

Besides memory if you were seeing everything running rather slow then moving upto a faster cpu would be part of an inplace upgrade for overall system tweaking as well as a better video and maybe sound card as well. When the system bogs down when loading programs for multiple tasks then you consider an upgrade of some type whether simply adding more memory, a faster model cpu, or the eventual total move into a new system.
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One thing that is noticeably slower is some games I play. Would more RAM fix that, or would I need a faster/bigger graphics card? And is that upgrade possible for a laptop?
 
What make and model is the laptop there. A look at the specifications will show how far you can upgrade memory and whether or not you can add in a separate card to replace the onboard graphics. A newer model should allow more flexibility to see improvement in both video and memory which will effect performance.
 
GET RAM UPGRADE NOW! It won't make your games faster but it will keep your computer from freezing like it normally does. Your ram should NEVER go above 50% in my opinion. I got 4 gigs for like 60 bux new. Upgrade 1 gig is not enough for xp even.
 
When Windows is running smoother due to an increase in memory to have some surplus ram available games won't lag for various reasons like background services or apps running at the same time. The actual need for 4gb of memory while 3gb for Vista is often a thought still isn't there unless you are running CAD or some other memory hungry designer or engineering software.

2gb however works well for smoothing XP out quite well and is generally adequate for Vista on most recent systems(no P IIs or AMD K5s obviously). Some report being satisfied running Vista with only 1gb installed while a good 2gb works for both XP and Vista alike here covering all needs. 2gb will work out for you there as well.
 
PC eye said:
When Windows is running smoother due to an increase in memory to have some surplus ram available games won't lag for various reasons like background services or apps running at the same time. The actual need for 4gb of memory while 3gb for Vista is often a thought still isn't there unless you are running CAD or some other memory hungry designer or engineering software.

2gb however works well for smoothing XP out quite well and is generally adequate for Vista on most recent systems(no P IIs or AMD K5s obviously). Some report being satisfied running Vista with only 1gb installed while a good 2gb works for both XP and Vista alike here covering all needs. 2gb will work out for you there as well.
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Yeah the only reason I say 4 gb is to run 2*2gb in dual mode for performance, also I use 50 percent(2gb) often so if I did not have 4 gb I would be maxing out. And you can't have 3 gb while utilizing the dual blah performance increase.
 
With 3gb of memory you see 512mb added on each channel with the smaller dimm being placed in the second slot for each there rather then off setting 2gb on one and 1gb on the other. With SP1 Vista will now report all 4gb of memory on the 32bit editions unlike what has been the previous 3-3.12gb barrier.
 
sc_1004 said:
When do you know when you NEED more RAM (as opposed to just wanting more)? I'm running Vista 32 with only 1GB of RAM, but I only use the machine to surf the net, do some wordprocessing, and maybe play the occasional non-demanding game (like chess, or some old arcade game).

I don't notice that my machine is particularly slow. I can run several windows at the same time and switch between them instantly.

At what point will I need more RAM? And how will I know this?
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You're fine. I'd be worried if you're running Vista Ultimate though :D
 
Depending on your other specs (cpu and graphics) the games may be non-ram orientated (if it's chess, don't worry about graphics, but, what games do you play?)...
for vista i'd suggest 2gb regardless of other apps... i ran with 1 gb and then 2, and it's a noticeable difference, especially if you have sidebar or the defender on..
 
Mr. Johanssen said:
Depending on your other specs (cpu and graphics) the games may be non-ram orientated (if it's chess, don't worry about graphics, but, what games do you play?)...
for vista i'd suggest 2gb regardless of other apps... i ran with 1 gb and then 2, and it's a noticeable difference, especially if you have sidebar or the defender on..
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What differences did you notice with 2GB?

I play the games that came with the PC. Bricks of Egypt is an arcade game that sometimes runs a little slow - sometimes (not always) on startup, you can see the mouse pointer drag a little bit, and the graphics in the game are not totally smooth. Another game that you notice is a race car simulation game calle "Nitro something or other".

Isn't the graphics cpu and memory more important for games than RAM? Will 2GB smooth out the things I see in these games?
 
PC eye said:
What make and model is the laptop there. A look at the specifications will show how far you can upgrade memory and whether or not you can add in a separate card to replace the onboard graphics. A newer model should allow more flexibility to see improvement in both video and memory which will effect performance.
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It's a Compaq Presario. The salesguy said it can go up to 3GB. I don't know if the graphics chips can be replaced. I thought that was only for desktops.

One thing I tried is I played with some other laptops in the store that had 2 and 3GB and ran the same programs I do on my machine. I didn't notice a big difference. And the tskmgr said those machines were only using 25-30% of RAM. So it seems like adding more RAM wouldn't make that much difference since the extra wouldn't be used anyway.

Otoh, those machines weren't configured to take advantage of the RAM. For example, I know that you can keep part of IE in RAM so it starts faster. If you do this for all the programs you normally run, then it should speed up how quickly those programs load and close.

Does anyone do this? Can you keep any program in memory? And do you notice the difference?
 
The move from 1gb upto 2gb is where you would notice the immediate difference in a variety of ways while simply going from 2 to 3gb wouldn't. You would simply be seeing more available ram for one specific program or game when having a large number of startup items loading along with Windows.

With tuner cards and other addon devices having the softwares start along with Windows automatically over manually starting them when disabled in the msconfig utility speeds up that type of process to some degree. With device drivers already loaded into memory the addon device is immediately available for use over the slight delay seen with a manual startup there.
 
I went ahead and got 2GB of RAM (Kinsgston for $35) and it does appear to speed up the start up of the PC and programs in general. Now the tskmgr says about 1GB of memory are used for all the processes when no apps are loaded. This is up from about 600MB. So looks like the move up to 2.5GB removed some bottlenecks.

Question: I put the 2GB card into the top slot, which is not the primary one. Does that make any difference so far as how the PC accesses the memory? Are all 2.5GB read and written to at the same speed, or is there a region that is particularly fast that system reserves for some uses? I ask because I notice tskmgr says that most of my memory is "cache" while only a small amount is "free". What is the diff between these two?
 
While you are not running a program there will items loading up along with Windows being loaded into ram memory there like background services for any antivirus, firewall, IE protection, and other software types. Cache memory is cpu memory used to store instructions not the same as system memory being a part of the cpu itself.

The advice earlier was referring to a pair of 1gb dimms(or pair of 2gb for some) not a single 2gb dimm mixed with a 512. A pair of dimms populates a dimm slot on each channel for the dual channel mode. Each channel collectively totals the memory installed there.
 
PC eye said:
While you are not running a program there will items loading up along with Windows being loaded into ram memory there like background services for any antivirus, firewall, IE protection, and other software types. Cache memory is cpu memory used to store instructions not the same as system memory being a part of the cpu itself.

The advice earlier was referring to a pair of 1gb dimms(or pair of 2gb for some) not a single 2gb dimm mixed with a 512. A pair of dimms populates a dimm slot on each channel for the dual channel mode. Each channel collectively totals the memory installed there.
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What is the penalty for not running in dual-channel mode? How much slower (in %) will the system run?

BTW, the manuf says the max RAM for my motherboard is 2GB, but my machine seems to be having no probs with 2.5! Am I running any risks by going over the recomm limit?
 
Cleric7x9 said:
why would ultimate take more RAM to run than any other version of Vista?
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The Ultimate edition is loaded with not only more features being a premium edition but offers networking support not seen with the Home Premium and Basic editions. The memory usage however isn't that much more despite that.

sc_1004 said:
What is the penalty for not running in dual-channel mode? How much slower (in %) will the system run?

BTW, the manuf says the max RAM for my motherboard is 2GB, but my machine seems to be having no probs with 2.5! Am I running any risks by going over the recomm limit?
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What model is the Compaq laptop there? An actual look at specifications in the front of the manual as well as in the product information at HP will show if it takes 4gb in two dimm slots(2x2gb dimms) which it sounds like it does.

A pair of matched sized and speed dimms is always the ideal amount while it will still run in single not dual channel mode. You simply lose out on the full benefits and performance when limiting the board's capacity. In the full dual channel mode you would see the large noticable difference right away over simply tossing in one large dimm.
 
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