On Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:31:39 -0500,
HELP!?!?!??!?!
I would suggest you to buy a new processor and
RAM.
Higher processing power and RAM leads to better performance.
You could try Core 2 Duo with 2-4 GB of RAM.
Not at all a good suggestion. Five points:
1. A faster processor means better performance, but whether someone
can install a faster processor depends on what motherboard he has.
Your recommendation of a specific processor is not a good one, since
he may be able to install it on his motherboard. Moreover, he may
already have such a processor.
2. How much RAM you need for good performance 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 significantly, and
that depends on what apps you run. Most people running a typical range
of business applications find that somewhere around 512MB works well,
others need more. 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 page file usage. That should
give you a good idea of whether more memory can help, and if so, how
much more.
So a recommendation that he have 2-4GB of RAM is a poor one if you
don't even know what apps he runs.
3. All 32-bit client versions of Windows (not just Vista/XP) have a
4GB address space (64-bit versions can use much more). That's the
theoretical upper limit beyond which you can not go.
But you can't use the entire 4GB of address space. Even though you
have a 4GB address space, you can only use *around* 3.1GB of RAM.
That's because some of that space is used by hardware and is not
available to the operating system and applications. The amount you can
use varies, depending on what hardware you have installed, but can
range from as little as 2GB to as much as 3.5GB. It's usually around
3.1GB.
Note that the hardware is using the address *space*, not the actual
RAM itself. If you have a greater amount of RAM, the rest of the RAM
goes unused because there is no address space to map it to.
So recommending that he install as much as 4GB when he can't use it
all is a poor one, since if he installs that much he will waste money.
4. It isn't entirely clear from his message, but my guess as to what
he means is that his performance has recently degraded. If that's the
case, his solution is *not* upgrading his hardware, and no
recommendation to upgrade hardware should be made without first
ascertaining whether performance has degraded for no apparent reason.
5. It's of course not *always* true, but the great majority of time,
when someone experiences performance degradation these days, it's the
result of malware infection.
