Increased RAM but see no or little speed difference

[Sandeep Kulkarni]

Hello All,
I am running a WinXP SP2 on 1.9GHz CPU. When Windows was installed,
there was 256MB RAM available. Recently I added 512MB RAM to the
computer. So now there is total 768 MB running at 266MHz FSB. That is
the max FSB my motherboard (845 GVAD2) and CPU combination can
support.
But then I don't see much difference in performance. So what may be
the reason for this? Do I need to reinstall Windows to take effect of
hardware change or there may be some other solution?
Thank you,
Sandeep

 

[CreateWindow]

Hi Sandeep,

You're right, you should have seen a speed leap. XP barely gets by with
256MB. 768 should be nice.

Try increasing your pagefile to 1 Gig. Defrag your drive.

CreateWindow
http://mymessagetaker.com

 

[BillW50]

I don't know, I am running a lot and my swapfile is at 690MB and I still
have 102MB free on my 512MB of physical RAM on this machine. Most of
that 690MB is probably memory leaks that my TweakRAM probably dumped
there.

So I don't know if everyone would see a big speed improvement.
Especially if you don't use a lot of memory hungry programs. Although
another idea maybe your computer isn't seeing the added RAM. How much
does it say when you run Control Panel -> System?

 

[Sandeep Kulkarni]

Thank you for your replies.
Windows detected the RAM correctly as 760 MB ( 8MB shared for video).
So now I will try to increase the page file to 1GB.
and also will defrag the drive.
I mostly use the PC for net surfing and programming.
No memory intesive applications as such.
Thank you all,
Sandeep

 

[Tom Porterfield]

Hello All,
I am running a WinXP SP2 on 1.9GHz CPU. When Windows was installed,
there was 256MB RAM available. Recently I added 512MB RAM to the
computer. So now there is total 768 MB running at 266MHz FSB. That is
the max FSB my motherboard (845 GVAD2) and CPU combination can
support.
But then I don't see much difference in performance. So what may be
the reason for this? Do I need to reinstall Windows to take effect of
hardware change or there may be some other solution?
Thank you,
Sandeep

Whether or not you see a speed difference depends on how you use your
PC. If you do not use a lot of memory intensive applications, and you
were not seeing a lot of extra page file usage with 256 MB, then there
is little reason to think that adding more RAM would increase
performance by a significant amount.

 

[Sandeep Kulkarni]

Whether or not you see a speed difference depends on how you use your
PC. If you do not use a lot of memory intensive applications, and you
were not seeing a lot of extra page file usage with 256 MB, then there
is little reason to think that adding more RAM would increase
performance by a significant amount.

Tom,
Though I don't use memory intensive applications, but I felt the
performance for that amount of RAM to be lower than expected.
Also according to several posts in newsgroup, it is better to run
WinXP with 512MB of memory. So I added the memory expecting a increase
in performance.
Even while using Windows Explorer for browsing folders/files without
running any other application there was noticeable delay. Only thing
running in background is AVG Antivirus Free 7. Now after adding the
memory still there is delay. As this computer is not connected to
network, so there should have been noticeable difference in browsing.
But I am unable to see that.
I will try to follow suggestions give by earlier posters. And will
post back my comments.
Thank you,
Sandeep

 

[DL]

The only improvement you are likely to notice is win & apps starting
quicker.
I believe you stated you had onboard video, this may be a bottleneck on
anything that requires a screen refresh

 

[HeyBub]

Tom,
Though I don't use memory intensive applications, but I felt the
performance for that amount of RAM to be lower than expected.
Also according to several posts in newsgroup, it is better to run
WinXP with 512MB of memory. So I added the memory expecting a increase
in performance.
Even while using Windows Explorer for browsing folders/files without
running any other application there was noticeable delay. Only thing
running in background is AVG Antivirus Free 7. Now after adding the
memory still there is delay. As this computer is not connected to
network, so there should have been noticeable difference in browsing.
But I am unable to see that.
I will try to follow suggestions give by earlier posters. And will
post back my comments.
Thank you,

You won't see a speed improvement if the problem is latency in your network
connection. Try calculating the inverse of a 1000x1000 matrix...

A computer is only as fast as its slowest part - you may be confining
yourself to activities that are not RAM dependent.

Kinda like using a Porche to drive to the 7-11. Through a school zone.

 

[Sandeep Kulkarni]

You won't see a speed improvement if the problem is latency in your network
connection. Try calculating the inverse of a 1000x1000 matrix...

A computer is only as fast as its slowest part - you may be confining
yourself to activities that are not RAM dependent.

Kinda like using a Porche to drive to the 7-11. Through a school zone.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

My computer is not conncted to network. I connect to internet using
DSL line.
Also watching DVD is I think a RAM & CPU dependent task. I see nearly
no difference there too.
As per my knowledge WinXP adjust itself during installation according
to the hardware at the time of installation. So when I installed
WinXP, it took into account then available configuration. So it may be
happening due to that reason. Can anybody give the answer to above
speculation? That above statement is right or wrong? It yes then do I
need to install WinXP again to make use of the current hardware
configuration?
Thank you,
Sandeep

 

[Miske]

In my experience it is better to install XP with less ram and then add
rest, so system configure itself to use less. Difference between 256
and 512 is not noticable. XP uses arround 200mb for itself. Jump from
512 to 1024 is something. But, if you have video that uses general
ram, there is bottleneck.

 

[Bob I]

My computer is not conncted to network. I connect to internet using
DSL line.
Also watching DVD is I think a RAM & CPU dependent task. I see nearly
no difference there too.
As per my knowledge WinXP adjust itself during installation according
to the hardware at the time of installation. So when I installed
WinXP, it took into account then available configuration. So it may be
happening due to that reason. Can anybody give the answer to above
speculation? That above statement is right or wrong? It yes then do I
need to install WinXP again to make use of the current hardware
configuration?
Thank you,
Sandeep

You were not using enough memory for applications to force the system to
start swapping stuff out to the page file. If you had been hitting the
swap file you would have noticed a significant boost in performance with
the memory addition. So now you can "preload" more programs you use and
boost your "performance" that way, instead of closing and reopening,
just minimize them between uses.

 

[Haggis]

My computer is not conncted to network. I connect to internet using
DSL line.
Also watching DVD is I think a RAM & CPU dependent task. I see nearly
no difference there too.
As per my knowledge WinXP adjust itself during installation according
to the hardware at the time of installation. So when I installed
WinXP, it took into account then available configuration. So it may be
happening due to that reason. Can anybody give the answer to above
speculation? That above statement is right or wrong? It yes then do I
need to install WinXP again to make use of the current hardware
configuration?
Thank you,
Sandeep

I would suggest increasing your shared video RAM to at least 32m

 

[E. Barry Bruyea]

Whether or not you see a speed difference depends on how you use your
PC. If you do not use a lot of memory intensive applications, and you
were not seeing a lot of extra page file usage with 256 MB, then there
is little reason to think that adding more RAM would increase
performance by a significant amount.

When I added more RAM, the only significant difference I noticed was
in Photoshop while processing digital photos and in those programs
used for processing video files. No other apps showed any noticeable
speed difference.

 

[Paul Alda]

Hi E. Barry Bruyea,

When I added more RAM, the only significant difference I noticed was
in Photoshop while processing digital photos and in those programs
used for processing video files.

Adding RAM doesn't improve true computing speed but better overall performance.
That's what you have noticed. In order to gain speed you need faster components,
including uP, HDs, RAM, and so on. Now, try to run several large programs
at full memory, then reduce your memory and compare performance.

No other apps showed any noticeable speed difference.

That's why

 

[Ed Metcalfe]

Try increasing your pagefile to 1 Gig. Defrag your drive.

Why on earth would increasing his pagefile size improve the computer's
speed?

Also why do you think the pagefile size should be increased when physical
RAM has been increased?

Sandeep - Leave "virtual memory" settings as Windows-managed.

Ed Metcalfe.

 

[Poprivet]

Hello All,
I am running a WinXP SP2 on 1.9GHz CPU. When Windows was installed,
there was 256MB RAM available. Recently I added 512MB RAM to the
computer. So now there is total 768 MB running at 266MHz FSB. That is
the max FSB my motherboard (845 GVAD2) and CPU combination can
support.
But then I don't see much difference in performance. So what may be
the reason for this? Do I need to reinstall Windows to take effect of
hardware change or there may be some other solution?
Thank you,
Sandeep

How much you'll notice your increased RAM depends on a lot of things. For
instance, it -might- make IE open a tad faster but probably not noticeably
so, and as far as surfing, email etc. goes, there will be no difference
since those require no power of any kind to speak of, RAM in particular.
The internet is the bottleneck there.
Running one program at a time, probably also little noticecable
difference.
But, any video work or several programs open and working all at the same
time, you should see a pretty fair improvement. Excel with a lot of
formulae and macros would be much improved, but not normal excel displays of
a few cells at a time. Moving around in large Word documents would
considerably improved, but normal document of a ten or so pages; probably
little noticeable difference.
So, little to no speed difference may indeed be entirely to be expected.
For now; but not necessarily later when you have more need of more RAM.

Don't despair, because if/when you need that extra RAM, it'll be there for
you and you'll probably have avoided going thru the aggravation down the
road.

Now, all that said, there are a LOT of other things that can make XP run
slowly. That's another subject on its own, but I'm sure if you want, you'll
be able to get lots of suggestions for that too by just asking.

HTH
Pop`

 

[Poprivet]

Thank you for your replies.
Windows detected the RAM correctly as 760 MB ( 8MB shared for video).
So now I will try to increase the page file to 1GB.

I'm afraid that won't make any difference in anything. Much better to let
the system manage it in your case.

and also will defrag the drive.
I mostly use the PC for net surfing and programming.
No memory intesive applications as such.

There: That is why you aren't noticeing much difference.

Pop`

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

But then I don't see much difference in performance. So what may be
the reason for this?

I did the same recently... never noticed a change at all.

THEN I built myself a brand new computer with a GIG of RAM.

I think all this talk of "speed" has led folks to think that an
"increase" in speed will be significant, when in most cases the
"increase" is only measurable in benchmark testing.

If all that you do is cruise the 'net, and do some normal stuff, you
can't expect to see any real change, because what you are doing isn't
taxing your computer.

 

[Sandeep Kulkarni]

Thank you all for your replies.
What I did after reading all these replies is set the page file
setting to Windows-managed.
But as many of you posted that I may not experiance the speed
difference because I am running non-memory intensive applications, I
think I will let the things as they were.
Anyways thank you all,
Sandeep