Hey everyone, Before I go out and do something stupid, I figured I would ask you guys if it is worth doing. I currently have a P4 3.4Ghz machine with 1 GB of ram. I have been thinking that I might like to throw another 1 GB of ram into it, to try and milk a bit more performance out of the machine and postpone buying a new machine as long as possible. So my question is, will I notice any performance gains? More often than not, I have two instances of Visual Studio open (plus documentation), Windows Explorer, MSN Messenger, Windows Media Player, and at least half a dozen to a dozen IE7 tabs. I don't notice too much hard drive thrashing, so I don't think I am yet at the point where I am running out of available memory. So... is it worth dropping $100 now on another GB of ram, or should I just put that $100 toward a new machine in a year or two?

Quote: Original post by Moe
Hey everyone,

Before I go out and do something stupid, I figured I would ask you guys if it is worth doing. I currently have a P4 3.4Ghz machine with 1 GB of ram. I have been thinking that I might like to throw another 1 GB of ram into it, to try and milk a bit more performance out of the machine and postpone buying a new machine as long as possible. So my question is, will I notice any performance gains? More often than not, I have two instances of Visual Studio open (plus documentation), Windows Explorer, MSN Messenger, Windows Media Player, and at least half a dozen to a dozen IE7 tabs. I don't notice too much hard drive thrashing, so I don't think I am yet at the point where I am running out of available memory.

So... is it worth dropping $100 now on another GB of ram, or should I just put that $100 toward a new machine in a year or two?

Hm.

If you have a P4, then I'm 95% sure you're limited to DDR1. Get DDR1 now, and when you DO get a new comp you'll be getting DDR2 (or even DDR3, if it's that "far off"). Know what I'm getting at? No reusability.

Unless you're dieing for some kind of speed upgrade (as in, you have some serious slowness going on), don't get more ram. Save it for a new machine.

Besides, it's not just side. Speed is a factor, too (latency and MHz).

I don't think adding another gig would make much of a difference. I'd pay attention to your pagefile usage. If it's not very high (50% of physical memory) then I wouldn't worry too much about it. The VS IDE is just slow by itself, copious amounts of memory or not.

I don't think it would cost you 100$. I recently put another gig into my machine for 50$. Check Crucial and run their scanner tool. It should tell you recommended options for your computer. I always buy from them because they guarantee that the memory will work for your system.

agi_shi: I know what you mean. What I meant is if I should buy some RAM for my current machine (and spend the $100 now) or save my $100 to put towards a new machine some time down the road.

smr: I think my page file is set to 1.5 GB. I think I have had it happen twice where Windows has warned me that my usuage is way too high. It's been a while since it has happened, so I guess whatever I was doing I must have stopped doing. :P

Mike.Popoloski: I appreciate the link. I haven't heard anything bad about Crucial. The thing is, I am running dual-channel with the two half-gig sticks that I do have. I have another two slots open and I figure I might as well do dual-channel with them as well. Is it possible to do it otherwise? (I mean, if I am running one set of dual-channel sticks, can I simply pop in one more 1 Gig stick, and have half my RAM running dual-channel and half not?)

EDIT: I guess one of the big reason I see myself adding more ram is the BattleField 2 demo. When I exit the demo there is some very heavy harddrive thrashing going on (or even when loading the in-game menu after playing for a bit). I did a ctrl-alt-del and saw that it was using 600+ MB of ram. I get a bit of the same sort of thing after closing Visual Studio if I have had it open for a while. If I use another application, then go to close Visual Studio it takes a while to open it back up so that I can close it.

Quote: Original post by agi_shi
If you have a P4, then I'm 95% sure you're limited to DDR1.

I have a P4 and run DDR2.

I ran CPU-z, which told me which kind of ram I am running. I can't remember the result off the top of my head though. I will have to run it again when I get home (either that, or the Crucial link).

EDIT: I just checked out the Crucual link. Yes, it is considerably cheaper (around $50 US for a pair of 512 MB sticks), and it does look like I have to install them in pairs as it is dual-channel. (I guess you learn something new every day!)

For anyone who is interested: linky

Yes, I know, it's a Dell. It has been a nice and reliable machine for the past two and a half years though, and I don't really have any complaints about it.

Quote: Original post by Moe
I ran CPU-z, which told me which kind of ram I am running. I can't remember the result off the top of my head though. I will have to run it again when I get home (either that, or the Crucial link).

EDIT: I just checked out the Crucual link. Yes, it is considerably cheaper (around $50 US for a pair of 512 MB sticks), and it does look like I have to install them in pairs as it is dual-channel. (I guess you learn something new every day!)

For anyone who is interested: linky

Yes, I know, it's a Dell. It has been a nice and reliable machine for the past two and a half years though, and I don't really have any complaints about it.

You don't have to install two modules, you could just get one 1gig module, but there is an improved performance benefit by having them dual channel. I am not sure how noticeable an improvement it is, but everyone agrees there is one.

Well, if you look on the Q&A just below the three recommended sticks of ram, it says that I would have to put in matching pairs. Mind you, that is coming from a company that makes RAM, but from what reading I have done, they do have to be in pairs.

Oh. I guess I just read the first part:

Quote:
Although the memory can be installed one module at a time, the best performance comes from using matched pairs of modules.

And didn't bother to read the rest:

Quote:
Q: Do I have to install matching pairs?
A: Yes.
Your system requires that you install memory in pairs.