Increase Ram?

[bpcrutch]

Ladies/Gentlemen:

I recently installed Windows XP Home Edition to replace Widows 98 on my HP
Pavilion, equipped with
1.) 126.48 Ram
2.) 28.61 GB Total Capacity of Local Disk
3.) Intel Pentium III Processor (Version x86 Family 6 Model 8, Stepping 1)
4.) Speed 605 MHz

Do you advise that I increase the Ram?

If so, by how much?

Thank you,
Bryan P. Crutcher
Charlotte, NC

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Ladies/Gentlemen:

I recently installed Windows XP Home Edition to replace Widows 98 on
my HP Pavilion, equipped with
1.) 126.48 Ram
2.) 28.61 GB Total Capacity of Local Disk
3.) Intel Pentium III Processor (Version x86 Family 6 Model 8,
Stepping 1) 4.) Speed 605 MHz

Do you advise that I increase the Ram?

If so, by how much?

I assume you mean you have 128MB of RAM. Yes, you should increase the RAM.
128MB is too little to run XP with decent performance. How much to add is a
more difficult question. Read my standard reply on this subject, below:

This is *not* a one-size-fits-all situation. You get good performance if the
amount of RAM you have keeps you from using the page file, and that depends
on what apps you run. Most people running a typical range of business
applications find that somewhere around 256-384MB works well, others need
512MB. Almost anyone will see poor performance with less than 256MB. Some
people, particularly those doing things like editing large photographic
images, can see a performance boost by adding even more than
512MB--sometimes much more.

If you are currently using the page file significantly, more memory will
decrease or eliminate that usage, and improve your performance. If you are
not using the page file significantly, more memory will do nothing for you.
Go to http://billsway.com/notes_public/winxp_tweaks/ and download
WinXP-2K_Pagefile.zip and monitor your pagefile usage. That should give you
a good idea of whether more memory can help, and if so, how much more.

 

[msnews.microsoft.com]

Ladies/Gentlemen:

I recently installed Windows XP Home Edition to replace Widows 98 on my HP
Pavilion, equipped with
1.) 126.48 Ram
2.) 28.61 GB Total Capacity of Local Disk
3.) Intel Pentium III Processor (Version x86 Family 6 Model 8, Stepping 1)
4.) Speed 605 MHz

Do you advise that I increase the Ram?

If so, by how much?

Thank you,
Bryan P. Crutcher

Increase it to 512MB of RAM. You still won't have a speed demon, but things
like office applications, mail, and Internet browsing will be pretty speedy
if you limit your TSR programs, such as real-time virus scanners, instant
messengers, popup alerters, spyware scanners, weather buggers, etc and so
on.

I have a laptop running XP Pro with a PIII-500 and 384MB of RAM (1x128MB,
1x256MB) and disk compression enabled for the entire volume. As you can
imagine, booting is a little slow, but it runs MS Office 2003 applications
and Visual Studio .NET 2003 without too much delay.

carl

 

[Steve N.]

Ladies/Gentlemen:

I recently installed Windows XP Home Edition to replace Widows 98 on my HP
Pavilion, equipped with
1.) 126.48 Ram
2.) 28.61 GB Total Capacity of Local Disk
3.) Intel Pentium III Processor (Version x86 Family 6 Model 8, Stepping 1)
4.) Speed 605 MHz

Do you advise that I increase the Ram?

If so, by how much?

Thank you,
Bryan P. Crutcher
Charlotte, NC

Yes, go at least up to 256MB if not 512MB.

Steve N.

 

[paul]

Yes, go at least up to 256MB if not 512MB.

Steve N.

If you can install 1GB of RAM you should.
I have done so here and XP zooms along without hesistation.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

If you can install 1GB of RAM you should.
I have done so here and XP zooms along without hesistation.

1GB may be needed for the apps *you* run, but for the great majority of
people it's way overkill, and the computer will run no faster with 1GB than
with 512MB. Even 512MB is overkill for many people.

 

[Vagabond Software]

1GB may be needed for the apps *you* run, but for the great majority of
people it's way overkill, and the computer will run no faster with 1GB
than with 512MB. Even 512MB is overkill for many people.

--

If it is an older laptop running a PIII-600, it may not support a memory
configuration of 1GB. In fact, some older laptops, like Sony Vaios, have
128MB built onto the motherboard and present only one memory expansion slot
supporting modules up to 512MB. My old laptop is probably older than his
old laptop becaue mine only came with a 6GB hard drive, and it support a
maximum of 512MB of RAM.

carl

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

If it is an older laptop running a PIII-600, it may not support a
memory configuration of 1GB.

Yes, that's also true. The same is also true for older desktops.

 

[Alan]

And on some motherboards not all of the RAM is cacheable. Go over that limit
and you won't see improvement in speed either- possibly a decrease!

 

[paul]

And on some motherboards not all of the RAM is cacheable. Go over that
limit and you won't see improvement in speed either- possibly a decrease!

let me revise my advice about adding RAM up to 1GB
you better not do it, sounds like it was bad advice
your old laptop will likely not benefit at all
i stand corrected!