Thinkpads Forum

ive heard "the best and cheapest way to make your computer faster is to add RAM" a million times.

im wondering- if out of my 512MB, i never have less than 150MB available, is adding RAM going to make a difference? I mean, if im not out of RAM, why add more?

get what im saying?

Really depends what operations you're doing. If you're just web surfing and doing some word documents, I doubt it.

However, if you run demanding programs, my god, load it full already . I just put my T42p to 2gB today. Its gaming performance in a newer game skyrocketed from the 512mB.

Also, allows for a lot less access of the hard drive, increasing battery life. (I'm hoping that the 2gB of ram itself doesn't require so much power that it'll negate that effect)

less access of the hard drive? that sounds like good enough reason to bump it up to 1 gig. thanks!

Went out yesterday and bought a Kingston Value Ram 1 GB (PC2-4200 533 MHz) stick for my T43. Paid $200 (inclusive of tax) at Circuit City. I checked on the web, and this is not out of line with what others are charging. Then I found the same-sized stick on Crucial for $125. Returned the Kingston. This is both a testimonial to Crucial's great prices and a question: why in the world is ram so oddly priced? Why is higher-quality Crucial memory cheaper than Kingston Value Ram (which, one supposes, is a budget line). Is there some strange but interesting story behind the economics of ram pricing?

i dont have the detailed answer youre looking for, but i have seen the same thing from office superstores, and best buy-ish places.

a couple years ago i needed a pcmcia 56k modem with dongle- best buy wanted $90, while elsewhere they were about $20. they seem to want to get rich off of each sale.

dsigma6 wrote:ive heard "the best and cheapest way to make your computer faster is to add RAM" a million times.

im wondering- if out of my 512MB, i never have less than 150MB available, is adding RAM going to make a difference? I mean, if im not out of RAM, why add more?

get what im saying?

In my LIMITED experience with a desktop machine running WIN2K, provided that you are never using up all the RAM (as viewable via task manager) then adding more RAM will not speed up your machine. I almost always have 300MB of RAM "free" and going from 512MB to 1,024MB made no difference.

yea but didnt it make you feel like a million bucks? haha.

leoblob wrote:

dsigma6 wrote:ive heard "the best and cheapest way to make your computer faster is to add RAM" a million times.

im wondering- if out of my 512MB, i never have less than 150MB available, is adding RAM going to make a difference? I mean, if im not out of RAM, why add more?

get what im saying?

In my LIMITED experience with a desktop machine running WIN2K, provided that you are never using up all the RAM (as viewable via task manager) then adding more RAM will not speed up your machine. I almost always have 300MB of RAM "free" and going from 512MB to 1,024MB made no difference.

I'm running eCS (ne OS/2) on T23 with 512MB RAM. I have a little app that tells me the current size of the swap file (default size set at boot and not modified since) and how much RAM is free (221,800KB at the moment). If I only had 256MB RAM, I would be running much slower. More wouldn't make any difference. If you can have such an app on your system, it will quickly tell you if and when more would help.

Ted

im ordering 512mb, and will swap it with one of the 256 i have installed. 768 sounds fine to me, 1GB just seemed brag worthy (in my circle anyhow)

dsigma6 wrote:yea but didnt it make you feel like a million bucks? haha.

Actually, that's pretty much the reason why I did it!

dsigma6 wrote:ive heard "the best and cheapest way to make your computer faster is to add RAM" a million times.

im wondering- if out of my 512MB, i never have less than 150MB available, is adding RAM going to make a difference? I mean, if im not out of RAM, why add more?

get what im saying?

For what might be the easiest quickest fix ever, if you are running Windows XP, you can turn off virtual memory on the system and see what effect that has. Do this in system tab of the computer system panel.

smugiri wrote:

dsigma6 wrote:ive heard "the best and cheapest way to make your computer faster is to add RAM" a million times.

im wondering- if out of my 512MB, i never have less than 150MB available, is adding RAM going to make a difference? I mean, if im not out of RAM, why add more?

get what im saying?

For what might be the easiest quickest fix ever, if you are running Windows XP, you can turn off virtual memory on the system and see what effect that has. Do this in system tab of the computer system panel.

Hi! Smugiri, will the turning off virtual memory thingy... slow down the performance?

ambientscape wrote:

smugiri wrote: For what might be the easiest quickest fix ever, if you are running Windows XP, you can turn off virtual memory on the system and see what effect that has. Do this in system tab of the computer system panel.

Hi! Smugiri, will the turning off virtual memory thingy... slow down the performance?

If you are certain that you always have atleast 150MB of RAM free on your PC and you have more than 512MB installed then it might.

It will definitely slow things down if you try to run lots of applications at once (like video editting and a "newish" game and a word processor while browsing all at the same time).

Like I said, it costs nothing and is easy to try. If you find that it is not effective for you then just turn it back on.

Its all an experiment though.

newt43 wrote:Went out yesterday and bought a Kingston Value Ram 1 GB (PC2-4200 533 MHz) stick for my T43. Paid $200 (inclusive of tax) at Circuit City. I checked on the web, and this is not out of line with what others are charging. Then I found the same-sized stick on Crucial for $125. Returned the Kingston. This is both a testimonial to Crucial's great prices and a question: why in the world is ram so oddly priced? Why is higher-quality Crucial memory cheaper than Kingston Value Ram (which, one supposes, is a budget line). Is there some strange but interesting story behind the economics of ram pricing?

$200.00 for aftermarket RAM!!!!!

Christ, You must be either rich or dedicated to your IBM!

I'm certain IBM sells cheaper RAMs off their website.
I went the slick route...bought 2 1GB Elpida IBM FRU#ed RAM chips off eBay, one cost me $67.00 and the other $91.00, both were in open no reserve auctions and were brand new sealed in the IBM fru box...
I just bought my replacement Hitachi Travelstar IBM FRU#ed sealed in IBM box 100GB at 7200RPMs the same way off eBay from my trusted seller...for $156.00

IBM wanted $359.00 for the same drive and elsewhere wants $250 to $400 for the same drive.

Dude I felt guilty paying so much for a hard drive, since I just upgraded my dell XPS200 to a 250GB seagate and it cost me $90.00 and I bought an external back up 250GB WD Caviar drive for my homemade enclosure and it cost me $60.00