should I buy more RAM?

spud17

I've just added 1gb to a PC that had XP Home and 256mb.Flies now, left the 256mb in place.
DDR PC2700 (Play.com.£16.99)
However I see that Crucial have knocked a couple of ££ off.

john_s_2

Thanks for all the above replies. Sorry for taking time replying - I was out celebrating my friend's 40th yesterday :-)

OK, I'm inclined to go with the two gig option (more is more!) And the reformat of the OS is good advice. I'll certainly consider that (deep down, I know I should...).

Just one last teeny question. Why would it be a good idea to limit my pagefile or turn it off? What's wrong with letting Windows do its thing?

bazzlad

If you can have DDR2 in it - this is an absolute bargain:

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/3433968/OCZ-4GB-DDR2-PC2-6400-800MHz-Enhanced-Latency-Gold-Gamer-eXtreme-XTC-Edition-Memory/Product.html?P36=78ZLYM

It's 4gb - massive overkill, but at that price, and add the fact that should you upgrade your machine you can carry it over (as long as your motherboard(s) take DDR2) - and before anyone jumps in with the 3gb 32bit xp limit I'd agree with this - (Note that the precipitate drop in RAM prices, particularly DDR2 memory, means that you might as well buy 4Gb for a DDR2 PC these days; the price difference is likely to be trivial, even if you buy a pair of 2Gb modules. Just don't expect most of the fourth gigabyte to be accessible.)

Consider it, IF your pc can use it.

john_s_2

Just a quicky to say that I went for the two one gig sticks from Crucial in the end. They arrived today and I'm now up and running with four times the RAM.

Everything definitely feels a bit faster! (The OS could definitely do with reinstalling but...)

So I'm very pleased (not least cos I always get a bit nervous probing inside computers) but a couple of observations that may (or may not) be of interest:

I've been a bit obsessed with Task Manager these last few days, seeing which applications take up the memory. Interestingly Thunderbird has gone up from around 20 megs to around 40! And AVG has grown as well, I'm sure. I guess these things pad out to fill what's available. Firefox seems around the same (100MB) - and I know that definitely swells to take what's available cos I read it in an article on Mozillazine.

But I'm only using around 35% of available memory instead of 90+ so that's fine with me! (Things have obviously grown cos anything more than 25% of 2 gigs wouldn't have been possible with 512MB.)

Link to article on Mozillazine

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_memory_usage_(Firefox)

esbo

john_s wrote: »

My heart says yes, my brain says no. I've had a few glasses of wine and my heart is winning. So I thought I should leave it overnight and see what you guys say :-)

I run XP Home and do nothing more demanding than email/browsing and the odd bit of Excel and Word. Very basic image editing for a website I run. I have 512MB RAM.

I have just installed the Google gadgets thingy and added the System Monitor gadget. It reports that I'm using around 75% of my physical memory, but it occasionally peaks into the 90s.

Crucial reports that I should upgrade to 2 gigs. Well, they would, wouldn't they? But it's only 40 sobs (2 x £20).

Will I notice much difference if I increase my RAM? My hard disk spends a lot of time chewing but I don't know if that's cos it's using the page file or not.

Or should I just spend the forty quid on more wine?

No surprise that a memory retailer advised you to buy more memory??:rotfl:

Do you think a double glazing salesman would recommend double glazing?
Or new car saleman would recommend you getting a new car?

I have 1.25 gig in my machine and it recommened I buy a further 2 gig to give me a whooping 3.24 gig in total!! The google gadget things shows I am using 67%, it seems like GG added 100kb to the total in use when I installed it.

I think you could have managed just as easilly on an extra 1 gig. I always seem to have around 1/2 a gig free whatever I am doing. I have managed fine without a swop file in the past, anyway mmine has dropped to 61% now. I have the browser open, OE open, an online poker game running and an an editor package open, and I just stuck a video for good measure, not to mention that google gadgets thing, and still now 62%, I can't really think of what more to run!! My first PC had a 2 gig *hard drive*. Anyway it has dropped back to 60% which is a typical value and that leaves 1/2 a gig free, which is what you used to run in!
Still the memory is there should you even need it, maybe NASA might want to borrow it to run their space program one day

Leopard

I think that you were extremely wise to get the two matching sticks of 1 GB and I applaud you for not being churlish about forking out the small amount of extra money involved. :T

This was a good moment to buy it from Crucial, too, with a summer sale discount of 15% and a further 7% rebate from Quidco. :money:

Enjoy!

Stompa

Strangely, the Crucial utility tells me that upgrading from 0.5GB to 1.5GB would not result in any perfomance improvement, though going to 2.5GB would - is this some sort of marketing ploy to try and sell me more memory?

bazzlad

john_s wrote: »

Just a quicky to say that I went for the two one gig sticks from Crucial in the end. They arrived today and I'm now up and running with four times the RAM.

Everything definitely feels a bit faster! (The OS could definitely do with reinstalling but...)

Hey John, if your machine is feeling a bit sluggish OS wise, run through my guide here:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=900331

That should help speed it up a bit

john_s_2

Thanks Bazzlad, that's a useful article.

Oh, and Esbo, thanks for your comments. I'm a huge fan of sarcasm and think it's under rated. I'm sure I read somewhere that the computers used for the Lunar Landings had the power of a modern pocket calculator. But if NASA should come knocking I'll happily offer my help.

Leopard

Maybe you should kindly offer to send the two 250 MB sticks you took out of it to NASA.

I mean, if they could land on the moon with the computing power of a pocket calculator, just think what they could do with a whole 512 MB of RAM. :rotfl: