Worth getting extra 1GB memory for Athlon 3400 running XP?

[Sandi]

I am in the UK. Is it worth upgrading the memory in my old WinXP PC? It's
an Athlon 3400+ (socket 939) with 1GB PC3200.

It has an empty memory slot, I can add 1GB to make the total 2GB.

Is the performance improvement worthwhile or is it likely to be very
modest?

1GB PC3200 costs about £30. Alternatively would it be better to save the
£30 towards a new system unit? (I can afford about £250 to £300.)

 

[Chris Whelan]

I am in the UK. Is it worth upgrading the memory in my old WinXP PC?
It's an Athlon 3400+ (socket 939) with 1GB PC3200.

It has an empty memory slot, I can add 1GB to make the total 2GB.

Is the performance improvement worthwhile or is it likely to be very
modest?

1GB PC3200 costs about £30. Alternatively would it be better to save the
£30 towards a new system unit? (I can afford about £250 to £300.)

To some degree, it depends what you use the system for.

If it's just web-browsing, Office type apps ect, you won't see a
significant difference going from 1 to 2GB; certainly nothing like the
difference between 512MB and 1GB.

OTOH, if you regularly manipulate large files, for example using
Photoshop with RAW files, it will make a small difference.

If it was my money, I'd be putting it towards the new system...

Chris

 

[Rob Morley]

I am in the UK. Is it worth upgrading the memory in my old WinXP PC?
It's an Athlon 3400+ (socket 939) with 1GB PC3200.

It has an empty memory slot, I can add 1GB to make the total 2GB.

Is the performance improvement worthwhile or is it likely to be very
modest?

Monitor your memory usage - if you're swapping much then it will
probably help, if not it probably won't, unless the times when it does
occasionally swap a significant amount impairs the usability i.e. those
are the times you find yourself wishing it would hurry up, so it may
make a significant qualitative difference even though quantitatively
it's fairly trivial. Having said that, removing one bottleneck usually
serves only to reveal another one somewhere else.

 

[Rob]

I am in the UK. Is it worth upgrading the memory in my old WinXP PC?
It's
an Athlon 3400+ (socket 939) with 1GB PC3200.

It has an empty memory slot, I can add 1GB to make the total 2GB.

Is the performance improvement worthwhile or is it likely to be very
modest?

1GB PC3200 costs about £30. Alternatively would it be better to save
the
£30 towards a new system unit? (I can afford about £250 to £300.)

As others have said, what applications do you want to speed-up?
If you like having several applications open at the same time, having
2GB rather than 1 will help.
One alternative to extra RAM is to replace the system drive with
an SSD, if it is SATA. Not cheap, but that would make everything
that isn't processor-bound much faster and you could later transfer
the SSD into a new system.
HTH

 

[Paul]

I am in the UK. Is it worth upgrading the memory in my old WinXP PC? It's
an Athlon 3400+ (socket 939) with 1GB PC3200.

It has an empty memory slot, I can add 1GB to make the total 2GB.

Is the performance improvement worthwhile or is it likely to be very
modest?

1GB PC3200 costs about £30. Alternatively would it be better to save the
£30 towards a new system unit? (I can afford about £250 to £300.)

For £300, you could probably do a motherboard-CPU-ram upgrade.

About a year ago, I did a motherboard-CPU-ram change-out for about
$300 CDN. And you should be able to come up with something to
match that. These two examples, cost a bit more than my upgrade,
but also give more than twice the performance of my system.

Both of these examples have built-in video, so that, if your
current video card doesn't fit the slots, the motherboard will
provide the video for you.

*******

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz LGA1155 6MB £179.98
http://www.dabs.com/products/intel-core-i5-2500k-3-30ghz-lga1155-6mb-79Q8.html?refs=4294947370

I selected a microATX board, because I don't know the size of your current motherboard.

"Gigabyte GA-H67MA-D2H LGA1155 Intel H67 DDR3 uATX" £84.99
http://www.dabs.com/products/gigaby...intel-h67-ddr3-uatx-79M1.html?refs=4294947373

And two of these, for 2GB total memory KVR1333D3N9/1G.

Kingston ValueRAM 1GB DDR3 1333MHz / PC3-10600 Non-ECC CL9 DIMM £11.38 each
http://www.dabs.com/products/kingst...333mhz---pc3-10600-non-ecc-cl9-dimm-72K6.html

179.98+84.99+11.38+11.38= £287.73

That would be many times faster than your current system. Probably
double the speed in single threaded code. And many times more in
multithreaded code, due to the additional cores.

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=52210&processor=i5-2500K&spec-codes=SR008

Note - I tried to keep the price of the motherboard and RAM low enough,
so I could afford a real nice processor.

*******

Now, if I wanted to put together a modern AMD system, it might save
a bit of money, and be a hair slower. And you probably wouldn't notice.
I say that, because when I compare two fast systems here, one faster than
the other, if I was blindfolded, I couldn't tell the systems apart. At
some point, the behavior of the OS tends to hide the differences, and
they feel about the same.

AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4GHz 8MB cache AM3 socket £132.75
http://www.dabs.com/products/amd-phenom-ii-x4-965-3-4-8mb-am3-65BH.html?refs=4294951761

microATX motherboard with a good selection of interface types

Gigabyte AM3 AMD 880G DDR3 ATX GA-880GMA-UD2H £77.76
http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyte-am3-amd-880g-ddr3-atx-6ZXK.html

http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/13-128-445-Z03?$S640W$

http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/13-128-445-Z02?$S640W$

http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/cpu-support-popup.aspx?pid=3632

Just for kicks, switch to 2x2GB of RAM. About double the price of the
other two, separate sticks. This comes as a kit with two sticks in it.

KVR1333D3N9K24G 2x2GB DDR3-1333 CL9 £49.99
http://www.dabs.com/products/kingst...33mhz-ddr3-non-ecc-cl9-dimm-240-pin-5KNM.html

132.75+77.76+49.99= £260.50

There is plenty of adjustment room on the price, but of course, if you go
with the cheapest AMD processor, it won't be as much of an upgrade.

This would be socket AM3, and might be faster than your 3400+. In AMD
parlance, this might be equivalent to a 6000+ or so. They've changed
their scheme yet again, making it harder to compare old and new. But
this would be roughly a 6000+. The speed of the £132.75 processor above,
is mostly evident when you're shrinking DVD movies, and probably
when running Photoshop. But if all you do is surf the web, this
might be a good enough upgrade. (I use a dual core here, and no
complaints. I don't process enough video, to be annoyed when
rendering a movie file takes longer than I'd like.)

AMD Athlon II X2 250 3.0GHz 2MB AM3 65W Processor £44.98
http://www.dabs.com/products/amd-at...b-am3-65w-processor-74NH.html?refs=4294951761

Now, if I switch to 2GB of memory, and use the cheap processor, my cost is

44.98+77.76+11.38+11.38= £145.50

and it's still an upgrade.

*******

If you have a retail installer CD for your current WinXP install, then
moving the install to the new motherboard shouldn't be a problem.

*******

I've run my current generation of system, with 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB of RAM.
(I had 6GB in it a few days ago, but dropped back to 4GB again.)

1GB - my favorite game just fits into available memory. No room for
multitasking, such as alt-tab out of the 3D game, and read USENET posts.
It might swap to the page file, if I try to do too much.
2GB - now I can game and do other things. On a 32 bit OS, this is the best
bang for the buck upgrade, when buying RAM. If you don't play 3D games,
then 1GB might be plenty. 2GB covers just about everything.
4GB - allows me to run VirtualPC 2007, and have up to three other OSes
running on the computer, at the same time as WinXP. I can run a
copy of Gentoo, Ubuntu, and Windows 98, while WinXP is running.
All at the same time. Windows 98 is my "file server"
6GB - Using WinXP x32 OS, plus the dataram.com free ramdisk software, I can
move the C: drive pagefile, to utilize the 2GB of ram above the 4GB mark.
It allows the 4GB of regular RAM, to be used with fewer hesitations.
Since the system behavior wasn't "perfect enough", I've since switched
back to 4GB RAM, and having the pagefile on C: again. This is the only
example I know of, where WinXP 32 bit edition, can use RAM above 4GB.
It's possible, because the dataram.com ramdisk runs as a driver, at
the kernel level, and can "fool around", unlike a regular application.

2GB is the sweet spot, unless you have money to waste. I can game
and run one virtual machine with that. I get to play with 6GB of
RAM, by ripping the memory out of a second computer

Paul

 

[Adrian C]

I am in the UK. Is it worth upgrading the memory in my old WinXP PC? It's
an Athlon 3400+ (socket 939) with 1GB PC3200.

It has an empty memory slot, I can add 1GB to make the total 2GB.

Is the performance improvement worthwhile or is it likely to be very
modest?

Very modest I think.

Try this.

Load up your normal selection of programs, and play with it a while.
Then bring up task manager (right-click task bar) and look at the
performance tab. In the 'Commit Charge' box, look at the peak value. If
that is hovering near or is more than the amount of memory in the box
(minus any reserved for built-in graphics) then splashing out on more
memory might improve that one - though in that case on XP, I'd ask
questions on all bits of software why they are consuming that much and
can't they cut back?

A faster hard drive might bring more benefit, and prices of those have
fallen.

--
Adrian C

 

[VanguardLH]

Note to Chris: Your reply was after the sigdash delimiter line that you
left in your quoted content Wouldn't be a problem with a functional
newsreader that would prefix ">" to the quoted content. Proper quoting
was lost in v15 of Windows Live Mail (i.e., it got even worse).
Because you are using a defective newsreader, and when replying, make
sure your reply is NOT after a sigdash delimiter line ("-- \n") that is
no longer quoted. Trim and edit the quoted content in your reply.
Also, if you continue using WLM v15 then show some delineation between
your reply and the quoted content, like separating them with a
dash-line or do the ">" prefixing that WLM v15 no longer provides.

Rob wrote ...


I buy and sell SSD's whole sale and depending on the system they are
fitted to they will and don't make any real world difference from a
fast SATA drive as the the disks capabilities far out pace what the
chipset can deliver,

You sure the problem isn't with misalignment of the sectors on the
device? SSDs use 4KB blocks instead of the old 512KB blocks; however,
pre-Vista versions of Windows created partitions starting at sector 63,
not 64. The result is instead of doing just a write that a
read-modify- write cycle must be used. With AFD (Advanced Format
Drives) that use 4KB blocks (but the interface translates to 512KB
blocks for compatibility), there is a jumper setting to translate
sectors by +1 (so addressing sector 63 at the interface ends up
addressing sector 64 on the platters). Alternatively, you use
something like Western Digitals alignment program. For example, users
sticking in a Western Digital "Green" AFD drive in a USB case find they
get poor write performance unless they do the jumpering or
re-alignment.

Using SSDs requires thinking about alignment problems. I'm not an
expert on this but have read enough to know that I put one in my
Windows system that it would be something I'd have to do more research
to make sure the setup was correct.

http://www.storagereview.com/impact_misalignment
http://support.wdc.com/product/downloadsw.asp?sid=123

SSDs aren't just something you shove into your box and expect it work
as-is. You need to plan that hardware configuration.

OCZ, crucial and intel drives tested on older systems using single
core CPU showed less than 5% gain and the drives were not running any
where like what they were capable of.

It's not likely that SSDs would get installed in old computers stuck
with 1-core CPUs. Doesn't seem a fair test for the typical deployment
of SSDs. Processes that are CPU bound in a 1-core setup are going to be
just as CPU bound no matter what mass storage subsystem you add to your
computer.

The Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB 10000RPM SATA-II 16MB Cache

More RPM = more noise. Performance is nice but not everyone gets to
hide their system case inside a closet.

or the Seagate Momentus XT 250GB Hybrid SATA-II 2.5" 7200RPM 32MB
offered the same performance in older systems at a vastly reduced
cost.

7200 RPM platters paired with NAND memory.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops/laptop-hdd

Interesting but remember that, like with SSDs, that use is destructive
due to oxide stress. Solid-state drives will catastrophically fail when
they run out of reserve memory used to map (mask out) the bad blocks,
and with more mapping over time the slower the device. Using SSDs or
hybrids with flash memory means you really need to employ a recovery
scheme, like mirroring or, at least, daily image backups (or at shorter
intervals depending on how critical is your loss of data).

PC3200 is currently going up in price as DDR 3 is coming down as
manufacturers switch production as DDR 3 is becoming more common.
Personally I would take a peek round some car boot sales and see if
you can pick up a stick of memory really cheap.

In addition, even for an old motherboard, pairing up with another
memory module may enable dual-channel mode for an addition 5-17%
performance boost. This is likely an increase you'll see in a
benchmark but doesn't necessary map to real-world use.

Then if your not happy with the result, sell the system on for £50 and
buy a newer one.

Assuming the OP can afford a whole new computer system versus the much
cheaper cost of adding a stick of memory.

 

[Rob]

I buy and sell SSD's whole sale and depending on the system they are
fitted to they will and don't make any real world difference from a
fast SATA drive as the the disks capabilities far out pace what the
chipset can deliver, OCZ, crucial and intel drives tested on older
systems using single core CPU showed less than 5% gain and the drives
were not running any where like what they were capable of. The Western
Digital VelociRaptor 150GB 10000RPM SATA-II 16MB Cache or the Seagate <
Momentus XT 250GB Hybrid SATA-II 2.5" 7200RPM 32MB offered the same
performance in older systems at a vastly reduced cost.
PC3200 is currently going up in price as DDR 3 is coming down as
manufacturers switch production as DDR 3 is becoming more common.
Personally I would take a peek round some car boot sales and see if
you can pick up a stick of memory really cheap. Then if your not happy
with the result, sell the system on for £50 and buy a newer one."

Chris, I had to manually quote your message as your newsreader
screwed-up after the sig-separator. I've just moved to Thunderbird
as I was sick of mine (OE) screwing-up various things, but it was a
bitch to configure as I didn't want it saving stuff to its' default
locations (I have limited space on a network roaming profile.) I
recommend TB though and it would be a cinch on a standalone PC.
This reply is therefore a bit of a test as much as anything else..

A lot depends on usage. If a fast boot is important, an SSD I recently
fitted to an old fully-defragmented P4 system (cloned original drive)
improved that from ~3m30s to ~30s. Starting large applications such as
photoshop is now virtually instantaneous. The advantage of SSDs over
spinning metal is that there is virtually no latency.
I've built and support hundreds of systems and in every case replacing a
boot HD with an SSD has massively improved responsiveness. First choice
is always to increase RAM of course, but IME that has diminishing
returns (for XP and other 32-bit OS) once you reach the 'sweet-spot' of
~1.5GB.
If customer has the money, my normal system has 2GB RAM, a 64GB SSD as
boot drive and 2TB Hitachi for data. Those who need data redundancy get
RAID options and/or external storage of course. One of my own systems
(used for astro number-crunching and image manipulation) has 2x64GB SSD
in RAID 0 as system drive and 4x2TB in RAID 10 for data (plus another 4
x 2TB in external e-sata RAID10 box.) That i7-based Win7-x64 system
with 16GB RAM, flies (but cost a bloody fortune!) Sometimes things open
so fast that I actually miss them and open a second instance by mistake..

Cheers,

 

[Mike Easter]

Chris wrote:
X-Newsreader: Microsoft Windows Live Mail 15.4.3508.1109

I agree with VanguardLH and Rob; your current v. of WLM is not a
satisfactory/compliant news agent and you should change to some agent
which is compliant. Some examples of alternatives are Thunderbird and
Windows Mail.

Many if not most previous users of OE went to Tbird when they discovered
that MS didn't include an agent with Win7.

A few of them went to the trouble to enable Windows Mail (not Live Mail)
to work with Win7. Windows Mail is the agent which came operational with
Vista but not Win7. It is very similar to OE.

TBird is easier to install in Win7 than WM; other agents have some
advantages over Tbird. I am an OE and WM and Tbird user.

 

[Flasherly]

I am in the UK. Is it worth upgrading the memory in my old WinXP PC? It's
an Athlon 3400+ (socket 939) with 1GB PC3200.

It has an empty memory slot, I can add 1GB to make the total 2GB.

Is the performance improvement worthwhile or is it likely to be very
modest?

1GB PC3200 costs about £30. Alternatively would it be better to save the
£30 towards a new system unit? (I can afford about £250 to £300.)

I've the one before, an AMD Hammer 754. Not gaming, so perhaps modest
would be usual. Also a Gig that at least at 7 years would seem
forever. So modest, I haven't much respect for pricing memory beyond a
keychain gizmo fitted for a USB flash drive, directly marketed off a
boat for Singapore currency. Nor in theory a SSD. What I do respect
about quids is factoring manufacturing specifications to an applicable
hardware platform at something less over manufacturing
advertisements. For instance, take that keychain USB and fit it for a
SDD, at $8US on a 8G drive, instead of $200 at something over 32G. I
keep an XP partition under 3G in order for binary boot-to-backup
restorations under 2 minutes final write-time. 8-16G should work for
separate program install and OS partitions. A buck a Gig in solid
state, I could do. Someday. The rest is between $50-100US, past a CPU/
MB in discounting advertising or factoring cannibalizing parts
migration. Milage of course well may vary in proportion to shoe-
horning older parts anomalies into industrial alliances for
operational characteristics within an approved infrastructure of
hardware support. Informally known as hair-pulling at the farside of
a build from the bleedin' edge, it's the same old geek joke: The new
PC winderzs advances to postulate his build for comparable to a
Mercedes Benz 300 Sports Model, whereas for a *NIX "roller" to step up
to the same query, in not such a disconcerted sense, to announce he
doesn't actually own a car.

 

[Man-wai Chang]

I am in the UK. Is it worth upgrading the memory in my old WinXP PC? It's

an Athlon 3400+ (socket 939) with 1GB PC3200.
It has an empty memory slot, I can add 1GB to make the total 2GB.

That should enable dual-channel if your motherboard supports it.

--
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