Memory supported by XP

  • Thread starter Thread starter Vijay Krishnamoorthy
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Vijay Krishnamoorthy

I recently bought a laptop which runs XP Home Edition.The
computer came with 256MB RAM,I added another 512MB RAM to
it,so totalling 768MB(2 Dimm).My question is my friend
says that although I can expand the memory upto
2GB ,Windows Xp is not very good in supporting the
memory ,in other words anything after 512MB is not that
effective.Is that right?
 
Win XP will support 4Gb just fine. The problem is: Will your motherboard?

I'm running XP Pro with 2Gb with no problems.
 
The question is not will XP will handle up to 4 GB of RAM,
do you need that much to do what you do? XP will only
benefit from more RAM if you are opening several large
spreadsheets, running a database and doing photo/video
editing at the same time.

For most "normal" uses 512 MB is more than adequate RAM when
paired with a proper VM setting.

More RAM will help a laptop conserve battery, since the hard
drive will run less.


--
The people think the Constitution protects their rights;
But government sees it as an obstacle to be overcome.


| I recently bought a laptop which runs XP Home Edition.The
| computer came with 256MB RAM,I added another 512MB RAM to
| it,so totalling 768MB(2 Dimm).My question is my friend
| says that although I can expand the memory upto
| 2GB ,Windows Xp is not very good in supporting the
| memory ,in other words anything after 512MB is not that
| effective.Is that right?
 
How much memory will your MB support?
It depends on what you plan to do with your computer, 768mb for normal use
is plenty, a lot of gamers like to have as much Ram as possible.
The Ram dictates as to how many and how fast your open programs respond.
Windows XP is very Ram friendly and will respond better the more installed.
 
Vijay Krishnamoorthy said:
I recently bought a laptop which runs XP Home Edition.The
computer came with 256MB RAM,I added another 512MB RAM to
it,so totalling 768MB(2 Dimm).My question is my friend
says that although I can expand the memory upto
2GB ,Windows Xp is not very good in supporting the
memory ,in other words anything after 512MB is not that
effective.Is that right?
Click to expand...

Windows XP can support up to 4 gb of RAM, and there are a number of
people using it with that much.

There can be some issues once you go beyond 3 gb of total RAM, and I
therefore do not suggest that you go beyond that amount at least until
the situation with more than 3 gb of RAM is better understood.

However adding more memory can noticeably improve performance only if
the added memory results in reduced usage of the virtual memory paging
file. Therefore if the paging file is not currently being used to any
significant extent then adding more memory will not provide a
significant improvement.

Unfortunately there is no ready way of determing actual paging file
usage provided with Windows XP - it does not have an equivalent to the
'Memory Manager - Swap File In Use" reporting provided by the System
Monitor utility in Windows 95/98/Me.

There is a free utility that you can download and run which will
provide this information for you. It was written by MVP Bill James and
you can get if from
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm or from
http://billsway.com/notes_public/WinXP_Tweaks/

If that utility shows actual page file usage of 50 mb or more on a
regular basis then that is indicative of fairly significant paging
file activity. Adding more RAM will reduce or even eliminate entirely
this activity thereby improving performance.

This apples regardless of how much or how little RAM is currently
installed in the computer, at least up to the 4 gb RAM maximum for
Windows XP.

Hope this clarifies the situation.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."
 
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