Will more memory increase speed?

choccyface

ive got a wireless laptop on bt broadband. i use avg (free), ccleaner and defraggler. ive followed all the malware thread and it still isnt much quicker. i use IE7, XP service pack 3.

ive got 512 memory - do i need more for windows xp,microsoft office etc? i used to have norton and uninstalled it which made it go quicker for a bit.

my dad is having his pc tuned up and memory increased from 256 to 1000. am debating whether to take mine or not. (hopeless at diy or anthing technical so would rather someone put memory in not me!)

any advice appreciated!

PROLIANT

Yes, you will benefit from extra RAM, 512 is the minimum that XP should run on, give it at least 1GB for noticeable improvement.

iviv

With ram as cheap as it is, if you have a little money free then you will see a speed boost going to 1Gb. Check with the Crucial scanner to see what ram you currently have, how many slots your laptop has, and how much ram it can handle. Take note of what specs the crucial website gives you, but remember to shop around, you may be able to get a better deal for the same memory if you buy from a retailer such as overclockers.co.uk or ebuyer.com

davetrousers

It's not difficult to fit new RAM yourself.

samhale

davetrousers wrote: »

It's not difficult to fit new RAM yourself.

Indeed, it's just a case of buying it (ebuyer.com's very good), than pulling out a draw, slotting it in, pressing in a couple of tabs and pushing it in again.

Cat695

go as much as you can afford as it really is the cheapest and best upgrade for a laptop

Bob63

1GB or 2GB of RAM will make a huge difference to your PC's performance. At 512MB it is spending most of its time swapping bits of memory out to disk-based virtual memory so that it can fit in all the programs you are trying to run.

To get an easy idea of how much memory you really need, start up all the programs and typical documents that you would normally have running then do CTRL-ALT-DEL to launch task manager. At the bottom right of the window it will show something like "Commit Charge: 700M / 1500M". The former number is how much memory you are using. If this is greater than the actual amount of memory in your PC then you would benefit from a RAM upgrade. If the commit charge is greater than 1024MB then 2GB RAM is what you want to buy, otherwise 1GB is probably fine.

fwor

That's a useful explanation.

If I test it on my laptop - which has 512Mb installed - and open five "typical" apps at the same time (Firefox with 4 tabs, Word, Autoroute, Omnipage and IE6 - plus zonealarm and AVG in the background) and Commit Charge never goes above 330Mb, so that suggests that I don't need more RAM.

It probably also suggests that the OP doesn't need more than 512Mb unless they have ~lots~ of applications open at the same time - though they can of course test that for themselves.

choccyface

Ive run the task manager and these are the figures given. 482/1435. will i still benefit from more memory? only had one window open when running it.

other than that, any ideas for speeding it up? am supposed to get up to 8 bt broadband (my parents a few streets away can only get half that) so i guess i live fairly near the exchange. the bt hub box is in the room next door.

esbo

choccyface wrote: »

Ive run the task manager and these are the figures given. 482/1435. will i still benefit from more memory? only had one window open when running it.

other than that, any ideas for speeding it up? am supposed to get up to 8 bt broadband (my parents a few streets away can only get half that) so i guess i live fairly near the exchange. the bt hub box is in the room next door.

Sounds like you could do with an extra 250MB at least, but I think you would be better off getting an extra 512MB or 1GB memoty stick, you need to have a look at the prices to help you decide, you might find there is not much difference. Also you only have so many memory slots, so it makes sense to get the largest memory size a slot will hold, leaving room for upgrade without being left with smaller memory sticks.
I can see some very cheap memory on ebay, do you know what memory type it uses and it's capacity? Laptop make?

fwor

That does seem high if you're just running one application. Mine shows just 248/1248 when running only IE, but this is a fairly recent installation of XP so maybe it's not yet had a chance to pick up any of the stuff that seems to adhere to Windows over time.

The figure of 482 suggests that you are close to needing to page to disk with only 512 available.

So... maybe more memory would help, though I've found in the past that the thing that has most effect in speeding up a sluggish PC seems to be a fresh install of Windows...