Will another 1gb of RAM make a difference

Discussion in 'CPU, Motherboards and Memory' started by blade, Aug 13, 2006.

  1. blade

    blade GEEK 2.0

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    I don't know if I should upgrade my memory from 1gb to 2gb by buying a 1gb stick
    My computer can be slow at times and it delays a little bit when opening IE, even with the specs I have...believe it or not
    <----(Click on "My Computer")
    Will upgrading to a 2gb memory system greatly improve performance and speed?
     
  2. max12590

    max12590 Masterful Geek

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  3. blade

    blade GEEK 2.0

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    by how much % wise,
    Want to make sure if I really need it...don't want to throw my money away if it'll only improve a system just a little bit
     
  4. pelvis_3

    pelvis_3 HWF Member For Life

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    Unless you doing any hardcore Audio, Video or Picture editing, on the desktop, it won't make much difference at all. Game wise, 1Gb or RAM is usually pretty good these days. With 2Gb, you'll definately see a difference with games like F.E.A.R and BF2 though!
     
  5. donkey42

    donkey42 plank

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    that just depends, if you mainly use the system for gameing of severe number cruching (a lot of spreasheet work) or anything grfx intensive (like video editing or playing up to date games) you would see a difference

    but if you mainly do browseing and stuff then you won't see a difference
     
  6. blade

    blade GEEK 2.0

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    I always have alot of stuff running in the background, like object desktop, icon manager(windows customization software), 2 spyware watchers, virus watcher, e-mail client, wma etc. etc.
    I also play alot of games, and also use microsoft office, adobe dreamweaver stuff, stuff like that
    ...so I guess it will make a difference...hopefully
     
  7. Addis

    Addis The King

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    As was already said, it depends on what you do with it.

    However, make sure that you've maintained your PC properly, get [google]Diskeeper lite[/google] and run it regularly. Its probably the fastest and best defrag software available, and if you're disk is badly fragmented you'll see a noticable difference.
     
  8. Willz

    Willz MiCrO$oFt $uK$ :D

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    Diskeeper seems crap, i used it yesterday, i defrag a HDD, 2 mins later its uber fragmented again!
     
  9. zeus

    zeus out of date

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    I thought XP performed slower with more than 1gb of RAM. That was the consensus a couple of years ago anyway.

    Does your system use more than 1gb now?
     
  10. Willz

    Willz MiCrO$oFt $uK$ :D

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    mine? no it uses 1gb
     
  11. zeus

    zeus out of date

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    I meant the guy whos thinking about 2gb.

    What a computer has got and what it uses is different. I think this one has 640mb but is using 250mb at the moment.
    I should have said "does it use all the 1gb you've got now"

    Its good to have extra RAM but having 1gb spare probably wont do you much good over having 512mb spare.

    I dont know what games use nowadays, maybe they do go over 1gb if you have got that much.
     
  12. Willz

    Willz MiCrO$oFt $uK$ :D

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    F.E.AR, BF2, Oblivion etc.. they take advantage of 2GB.
     
  13. blade

    blade GEEK 2.0

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    Yea, I have Diskeeper 10, and run it regularly
     
  14. blade

    blade GEEK 2.0

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    how do I check if its using more than 1gb, is it that PF file usage thing in ctrl alt and del
     
  15. Willz

    Willz MiCrO$oFt $uK$ :D

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    In task manager on performance, it is Available in the Physical Memory box. If you want to know how much memory each app is using, go to processes then look at mem usage, page file is Space on your hard disk that windows treats uses as more ram i think.

    [ot] I think its better to have Page File on another hard disk or on another seperate partition to your windows partition on your hard disk, and i mean a partition on your hard disk dedicated to page file, it's supposed to make windows run a little faster, well i dunno if its true, but read about it on a guide.[/ot]
     
  16. blade

    blade GEEK 2.0

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    [​IMG]

    this is my comp. when I first turn it on, and after it loads
     
  17. max12590

    max12590 Masterful Geek

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    This was a fairly simple question, but somehow it got off topic.

    In this case, yes, it will make a difference. You can run more background apps, games and productivity apps will load MUCH faster, and many times you can disable the page file, which will lead to a considerable speed increase.
     
  18. blade

    blade GEEK 2.0

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    how do you disable the page file, and what does a page file do
     
  19. max12590

    max12590 Masterful Geek

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    The page file is a file on a hard drive that behaves as RAM. It is a great solution for the computer because it allows the system to run on very little physical RAM. For example, many parts of the OS load into the page file. The drawback to the page file is that by the physical nature of the hard drive it is far, far slower than physical RAM. So, if you force everything to load into the high-speed physical RAM then you get a performance boost. If the page file were a speedy way to store information then nobody would have RAM.
     
  20. blade

    blade GEEK 2.0

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    thanks for explaining; how would you disable it
     

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