Memory was the culprit for the low experience scores

[Lakesidezx]

Im not all that suprised but.....

My computer had a experience score of 4.6 being that memory operations was
the lowest factor.

I had two 1GB sticks of memory in the computer as well as two 512MB sticks
for a total of 3GB. Both appeared to be the same "type" of memory, being
DDR2 433 memory

So I decided to remove the two 512MB sticks of memory and started up the
computer and now my memory scores are a 5.9 so it went from 4.6 to 5.9 and
my cpu score bumped up from 4.9 to 5

I'll have to see if this makes any real difference in the performance of the
computer or if it's all just pretty numbers.

AMD 64x2 4600+
2GB ram
ATi X1900GT

CPU SCORE 5.0
MEMORY 5.9
GRAPHICS 5.9
GAMING 5.7
DISK DRIVE 5.3 (I've got a sata2 drive so Im not sure why it wouldnt be a
5.9 unless only scsi ultra fast spinning disks can score 5.9)

 

[Frankster]

Although I don't doubt that your "score" increased as you say, I don't
believe going from 3GB of memory to 2GB of memory will result in better
performance.

More memory is way more beneficial to overall performance than the small
*difference* in memory speed between two modules.

Just a case of using a less-than-perfect measurement tool and obtaining
results that require some interpretation, rather than blind faith. Just my
opinion.

-Frank

 

[Lakesidezx]

Probably. Although I seem to remember that my wifes computer used to come
up with messages about mismatched memory in her sony desktop. We replaced
the memory with all of the same type and the messages from the bios stopped
appearing.

But Im rather doubtfull that I'll notice any improvement but I certainly
havn't noticed any degredation in performance either.

Maybe later I'll go and buy two more 1gb sticks and put them in for a total
of 4gb. If I ever actually need it .

 

[Guest]

I did the same thing- had two sticks of 1 GB memory and added 2 512 MB sticks
of RAM. My score went down too. In my case, my PC began using a cycle time
of 2T instead of 1T once I populated all four slots. That's what did it.

I ignore the score. When I'm using Photoshop CS2, my computer often goes
over 2 GB of memory (although never less than 3, which is why I didn't
purchase 2 more 1 GB sticks.)

AL

 

[BSchnur]

With the other hardware, if the two DDR2 533 (not 433 -- they should be
400, 533, 667, 800). with 667 or (assuming the motherboard can tweak
the voltage to the memory modules to 1.9 or 2.0 volts) 800.

There is an interesting thing about that experience score, some folks
will say that more memory will increase the memory score automatically.
In your case it didn't. But the other point is that the memory score
may be less significant to performance than some might think, as Vista
will definitely take advantage of more memory -- though I *suspect*
that with Vista 32, this might be something of a case of diminishing
returns after 2G. I'd expect the move from 1G to 2G to provide real
world performance gains (regardless of the modest change one might
encounter with the Microsoft derived index). I'd expect a lot less of
a real world performance bump (for most folks anyway) going from 2G to
3G.

That the CPU score was changed suggests to me that the 512M modules
might either have some timing problem or in fact a mismatch of some
other form -- perhaps more wait states on the 512M modules compared to
the 1G modules.

One interesting test would be two matched pairs from the same
manufacturer with all the same specs (not just being 533's) aside from
being 512M and 1G each module.