WinXP/Office 2003 Memory Requirement

[gus]

I have a PentiumIII 450 MHz running WinXP and Office 2003. It
previously
had 128 MB memory, and was very slow, the performance monitor showing
paging almost constantly. I upped it to 256 MB memory and it's
definitely
faster, but still a fair amount of paging. Questions:

1) The Microsoft system requirements say you need 128MB for WinXP and
8MB per Office application. Is that adequate, or in practice what is
the required
memory to run well?

2) Are there tuning changes or things to turn off that will improve
performance.
The basic requirement for this system is to run Office applications.

3) Do Windows or Office Service Packs (which?) or other patches
significantly
impact performance?

 

[David]

I have a PentiumIII 450 MHz running WinXP and Office 2003. It
previously
had 128 MB memory, and was very slow, the performance monitor showing
paging almost constantly. I upped it to 256 MB memory and it's
definitely
faster, but still a fair amount of paging. Questions:

1) The Microsoft system requirements say you need 128MB for WinXP and
8MB per Office application. Is that adequate, or in practice what is
the required
memory to run well?

2) Are there tuning changes or things to turn off that will improve
performance.
The basic requirement for this system is to run Office applications.

3) Do Windows or Office Service Packs (which?) or other patches
significantly
impact performance?

I can't say for sure how much memory is required.

My XP workstation has 2GB of ram. That's how much came with the
machine. If I run my diagnostics, I see about 540MB being used whien
I have Word, Excel, and Firefox applications running. Virus scanner,
etc. apps are running in the background.

David

 

[Engin Tarhan]

In principle, what Microsoft says about the memory requirements should be
multiplied by 2, in order to become acceptable. Therefore, 256 MB is the
bare minimum for WinXP. The memory requirement for office depends on which
Office application you're using, and the size of your work file, etc. I
would suggest not less than 512 in your case, maybe more if you're using
networking, Internet, antivirus, etc at the same time.
I used to crawl miserably with my old celeron 1.7 computer which had 256MB.
It started to run beautifully when I added a second 256, and its breath
became regular with a second 512.

Good Luck
Engin Tarhan

 

[Peter]

In principle, what Microsoft says about the memory requirements should be
multiplied by 2, in order to become acceptable. Therefore, 256 MB is the
bare minimum for WinXP. The memory requirement for office depends on which
Office application you're using, and the size of your work file, etc. I
would suggest not less than 512 in your case, maybe more if you're using
networking, Internet, antivirus, etc at the same time.
I used to crawl miserably with my old celeron 1.7 computer which had 256MB.
It started to run beautifully when I added a second 256, and its breath
became regular with a second 512.

Good Luck
Engin Tarhan

Add another 512 and you'll never get out of breath.

Peter

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have a PentiumIII 450 MHz running WinXP and Office 2003. It
previously
had 128 MB memory, and was very slow, the performance monitor showing
paging almost constantly. I upped it to 256 MB memory and it's
definitely
faster, but still a fair amount of paging. Questions:

1) The Microsoft system requirements say you need 128MB for WinXP and
8MB per Office application. Is that adequate,

No, it is not adequate for anyone.

or in practice what is
the required
memory to run well?

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, 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 pagefile usage. That should
give you a good idea of whether more memory can help, and if so, how
much more.

Note that when you say "still a fair amount of paging," you may be
confusing page file allocation with page file *use*. It's a common
point of confusion, since Windows preallocates virtual memory in
anticipation of a possible need for it, even though that allocated
virtual memory may never be used. It's the page file *use* that hurts
performance, not page file allocation.

 

[db ´¯`·.. >]

consult with your computers
doctor or user manual, but
adding a 1 gig stick of ram
would be like giving your
limpy pc V-I-A-G-R-A.

--

db·´¯`·...¸><)))º>
DatabaseBen, Retired Professional
- Systems Analyst
- Database Developer
- Accountancy
- Veteran of the Armed Forces

 

[Bill in Co.]

Bring the RAM up to 512 MB (or even 1 GB, if you want to afford it). (128
MB or even 256 MB is too low). A 450 MHz CPU is on the low side, but
you're stuck with that. But the RAM increase should definitely help you!