Will upgrading RAM from 512MB to 1GB make my computer run faster?

R

Royston Tin

Hi,

I run WinXP Pro SP2, on an Abit NF7S-v2 Motherboard, with Barton
processer and 512MB of fast Dual DDR memory. FSB is 400MHZ. I have a
permanently-on broadband connection to the Internet. Graphics card is
based on an ATI 9800 Pro chip.

My present configuration shows that there are usually 39 processes
running at startup. These include Spam preventers, Spyware preventers,
Virus preventers, Firewall, Microsoft Intellitype, Microsoft
Intellipoint, and so on.

As a result I find that the computer takes quite a while to start-up,
and runs slower than the relatively high specification components would
suggest.

Will you please advise whether in your opinion, based on your
experience, upgrading the RAM to 1GB would help the computer to start-up
faster and to run faster?

Many thanks

Royston tin.
 
S

Steven M (remove wax and invalid to reply)

Hi,

I run WinXP Pro SP2, on an Abit NF7S-v2 Motherboard, with Barton
processer and 512MB of fast Dual DDR memory. FSB is 400MHZ. I have a
permanently-on broadband connection to the Internet. Graphics card is
based on an ATI 9800 Pro chip.

My present configuration shows that there are usually 39 processes
running at startup. These include Spam preventers, Spyware preventers,
Virus preventers, Firewall, Microsoft Intellitype, Microsoft
Intellipoint, and so on.

As a result I find that the computer takes quite a while to start-up,
and runs slower than the relatively high specification components would
suggest.

Will you please advise whether in your opinion, based on your
experience, upgrading the RAM to 1GB would help the computer to start-up
faster and to run faster?
Click to expand...

First of all, this is not a group for computer configuration
questions.

But anyway: In your case, maybe, but it depends.

There's a point of diminishing returns. More memory is almost always
better, but you can have so much memory that you're not using it all.

I'm not sure that increasing the memory would the startup time. The
biggest effect in my experience is when you switch programs, or when
you're running a program with a large amount of data (like a 300 page
Word document).

My computer came with 128 MB of RAM. Soon afterwards I upgraded to
256, and a year later to 512. I got a big improvement the first time,
but the second time, I hardly noticed anything different.

You have a lot of processes, but some of them don't take up much
memory. If you have space on your board and memory is cheap, then go
ahead, but it's possible that you might want to analyze the memory
usage and maybe tweak some other settings. Do a search for memory
utilities, the first page I came across was this one:

http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintasksstd/tutorials/tutorial5/
 
B

Brian Tillman

Royston Tin said:
Will you please advise whether in your opinion, based on your
experience, upgrading the RAM to 1GB would help the computer to
start-up faster and to run faster?
Click to expand...

How is this in any way appropriate to an Outlook group?
 
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