RAM increase

[Scott]

I recently increased my desktop pc to 4GB RAM from 2GB but do not discover
any marked improvement. Do I need to do any configuration in order to
optimize the performance? Your advice is highly appreciated.

Thanks,

Scott

 

[Spirit]

Unless you run several RAM intensive programs at the same time you probably
will
not notice an improvement from more than 2 Gig. However if you do open a lot
of programs you will probably see the difference though its often hard to
gauge.

 

[Andre Da Costa[ActiveWin]]

What type of performance boost were you looking for? Application launch time
shorter, boot time shorter, sleep/resume shorter, rendering video content
faster, backup faster, antivirus scanning faster, able to multi-task more,
have more applications open without seeing a decrease in performance?

 

[Dustin Harper]

It really depends on what you are doing. If you do a lot of RAM intensive
work, then you would notice more of a difference than just normal everyday
use. If you do any photo editing with large files, or video editing, it can
make a big difference. Also, some games go more smoothly with more RAM.

 

[philo]

I recently increased my desktop pc to 4GB RAM from 2GB but do not discover
any marked improvement. Do I need to do any configuration in order to
optimize the performance? Your advice is highly appreciated.

Thanks,

Scott

By adding 2 more gigs of RAM you would notice no difference in general
usage...
but try (ie) working with a 1 gig Publisher document...and you *will* see a
nice improvement

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I recently increased my desktop pc to 4GB RAM from 2GB but do not discover
any marked improvement. Do I need to do any configuration in order to
optimize the performance? Your advice is highly appreciated.

Despite the number of people who repeat "the more RAM, the better,"
that statement is *not" literally true. More RAM helps you only up to
a point, and for most people 2GB is at (or sometimes even past) that
point.

Beyond that point, more memory doesn't hurt, but it doesn't help
either. More memory helps only when what you are running causes you to
use the page file instead of RAM. If you're in that situation, adding
RAM reduces (or eliminates) page file use, and speeds up performance.
If you're not in that situation, the RAM does next to nothing for you.
Unless you use particularly memory-hungry applications, for example,
applications that do video- or photo-editing, 2GB is enough for almost
everyone running Vista. Sorry to tell you that you probably wasted
your money by upgrading the RAM.

 

[David]

Unless you are using Vista 64 bit, 2 Gigabytes of ram is all the system can
use. The 64 bit can use up to 8 Gigabytes.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Unless you are using Vista 64 bit, 2 Gigabytes of ram is all the system can
use.

Sorry, that's not correct. 32-bit Vista has a 4GB address space, but
the amount of RAM that can be mapped to it (and therefore the amount
of RAM you can use) varies, depending on what hardware is installed,
but is usually somewhere between 3.1 and 3.5GB.

The 64 bit can use up to 8 Gigabytes.

Once again, incorrect. The amount 64-bit Vista can use depends on what
edition of Vista it is. Here are the correct numbers:

Vista Home Basic 8GB
Vista Home Premium 16GB
Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate 128GB