Compile speed affected by amount of machine ram?

[_DD]

I know that going from 512M to 1GB of RAM will generally benefit
system speed, especially when running ram-hungry compilers, etc. Just
curious if the additional jump up to 1.5GB will offer any advantage,
or if it's overkill. This is presuming that there is little else
running except for VS2005. Yeah, I know it's a bit arbitrary, so feel
free to offer wild speculation. <g>

 

[Code Monkey]

Well I went from 512 to 2Gb in one step and the performance increase
was nice - not outstanding though. However, when I switched to SATA 2
harddrives from standard drives....now that WAS impressive. If you can
afford it, you may find it beneficial to get a dual-core machine. I've
got 2 machines of similar spec, and the dual-core machine outperforms
the other machine by a mile in everything I throw at it.

 

[Code Monkey]

Almost forgot - if you do go for a RAM upgrade, make sure the sticks of
RAM match each other - ie; if you do a 2Gb upgrade, try to get either 4
x 512Mb sticks or 2 x 1Gb sticks - you'll run into less problems with
memory interlacing and hence, you should (in theory at least) get
better performance.

 

[Ignacio Machin \( .NET/ C# MVP \)]

Hi,

Frankly I think you will see no change.

My office machine has 1 GB and my home machine has 2 GB , I cannot note any
difference at compile time, nor at runtime unless you load a lot of data in
memory.

In fact the second GB of ram is almost entirely devoted to two running
virtual PC I have from time to time to test distributed apps.
Otherwise it's not used.

 

[Code Monkey]

There are certain registry tweaks you can apply that will load the core
of Windows into the RAM, thus cutting down paging to the HDD. In this
instance, more memory will help.

Having said that, on my 2Gb machine, and using VS2005, Enterprise
manager, etc, most of the time I've got 1Gb of RAM free....unless I
decide to open Photochop to do some icons or buttons for the web apps I
build.

 

[_DD]

There are certain registry tweaks you can apply that will load the core
of Windows into the RAM, thus cutting down paging to the HDD. In this
instance, more memory will help.

Thanks to all for the info. Sounds like 1GB is the practical amount.
I'll spend the rest on more drive space.

CM, Do you know where I can find info on the registry tweaks you spoke
of?

 

[_DD]

Almost forgot - if you do go for a RAM upgrade, make sure the sticks of
RAM match each other - ie; if you do a 2Gb upgrade, try to get either 4
x 512Mb sticks or 2 x 1Gb sticks - you'll run into less problems with
memory interlacing and hence, you should (in theory at least) get
better performance.

This is mainly a factor in DDR2, right? Or do you find a speed
increase by matching older normal DDR as well?

 

[Code Monkey]

AFAIK, this works on ALL RAM