Benefits of More RAM

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kjarrett · #1 Post by **kjarrett** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 10:47 am

I seem to recall reading a while ago that the "sweet spot" for RAM in an XP system is 512mb. True?

That is what I have now in my T30. I am considering going to 1gb. I do tend to run a lot of apps simultaneously and edit large image files. To be totally honest I don't know if I've ever run out of physical RAM. My philosophy is to always have more rather than less.

Any downsides going to 1gb? I figure I can sell the 512mb I've got now to defray about half the cost of two new 512mb SODIMMs from Cruical.

Thanks, kj

s0larian · #2 Post by **s0larian** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 11:16 am

There is a tool called chachemanxp which shows you the free amount of Ram and the usage of the pagefile. I installed the tool and what I see is that, if you for example copy a large file from CD to the harddisk, XP begins to use the pagefile heavily. After the copy action XP is not able to release the pagefile, so if it's growing once, it almost never gets smaller again (in my case from intial 12 MB cache it grew to over 100MB after the copy action). And nothing slows the computer more down than the virtual memory.

I will upgrade to 1GB very soon.

Skywing · #3 Post by **Skywing** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 11:39 am

upgrading to one 1GB will be the first thing i do once i have money in my bank account again. My T42 almost wiped me clean.

Greg Gebhardt · #4 Post by **Greg Gebhardt** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 12:56 pm

I installed the 2 gb in my 2373KXU. I work on very large PhotoShop and AutoCad files. RAM is the cheapest and one of the only things you can do to improve performance of your TP.

2gb may be excessive but 1gb is the minimum

kjarrett · #5 Post by **kjarrett** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 3:40 pm

I just ordered two 512mb SODIMMs at Crucial for $106 each. Seemed like a reasonably good deal. Now, to unload my 256mb SODIMMs on ebay...

-kj-

Greg Gebhardt · #6 Post by **Greg Gebhardt** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 3:47 pm

You will notice the difference. Will give your hard drive a rest!

c888a · #7 Post by **c888a** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 10:43 pm

Should the memory in both banks be exactly matched, otherwise the computer may not work well? In other word, is it risky to mix memroy from both IBM and Crucial?

TREX · #8 Post by **TREX** » Sun Jul 18, 2004 2:13 am

I visited crucial.com and couldn't find my specific model. I have a T42p 2379-DYU. Any suggestions?

edelrc · #9 Post by **edelrc** » Sun Jul 18, 2004 3:19 am

It is the same as for the ThinkPad model 2378 that they list there.

http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts. ... &submit=Go

kjarrett · #10 Post by **kjarrett** » Sun Jul 18, 2004 7:07 am

c888a wrote:Should the memory in both banks be exactly matched, otherwise the computer may not work well? In other word, is it risky to mix memroy from both IBM and Crucial?

I did that with NO problems whatsoever on my T21 and had no issues. I think you'll be OK as long as the RAM is *exactly* the correct spec. Buying from Crucial or Kingston, you won't go wrong.

-kj-

Hostile · #11 Post by **Hostile** » Sun Jul 18, 2004 7:21 am

kjarrett wrote:I seem to recall reading a while ago that the "sweet spot" for RAM in an XP system is 512mb. True?

512MB is really the minimum for XP if you want it to run well.

I have a 2373-72U which came with 256MB and I immediately ordered another 512MB from Crucial. I have since moved the 512MB SODIMM to the internal RAM slot so when I get another 512MB SODIMM I can just replace the 256MB in the bottom slot.

The 768MB that I have seems to be sufficient but 1GB never killed anyone.

Moroner · #12 Post by **Moroner** » Sun Jul 18, 2004 9:51 am

The question: "How much RAM should my machine have?" really boils down to two things:
How do I know if I have enough RAM in my machine?
If running Windows XP, open up the task manager, switch to the Performance tab, and look up the Peak Commit Charge at the lower left corner. This is the maximum amount of RAM(and virtual RAM) used by Windows during the session. You typically want it to be at 80% of physical memory, so that Windows does not swap out to the page file, and still has a decent amount left to cache normal disk accesses.
How do I estimate how much RAM I need?
Rules of thumb are: 120 MB for the base XP installation, 20-40MB per major application, 256MB for a game, 400MB for a virtual machine, 10-20MB per megapixel for image editing. But of course you better measure on your existing system...

The prices for RAM are now so low that I would recommend 512MB as the minimum. When I expanded to 1GB, I was regularly running two virtual machines, but otherwise I rarely use up more than 400 MB.
Adding more memory than you need will, at most, come with a 2% performance cost due to different cache aligment, and often improve performance since you now have a larger disk cache.

astpaul · #13 Post by **astpaul** » Thu Jul 22, 2004 11:10 am

in that case (having 1GB) is it best to disable Windows VM?

Moroner · #14 Post by **Moroner** » Thu Jul 22, 2004 11:30 am

in that case (having 1GB) is it best to disable Windows VM?

Leave 256 to 512MB for the pagefile even in this case. There are several Windows programs out there which blindly allocate temporary storage in the pagefile, and would not run otherwise.

dperron · #15 Post by **dperron** » Thu Jul 22, 2004 11:46 am

The basic concept of VM is that it will be used if there's a lack of RAM.
Of course, some benchmark may show that having 1 GB is 1% slower than having 512 MB, but the truth is that waiting for VM to swap memory will always be slower.

So IMHO, 512 MB is the minimum for Win XP. I myself have 768 MB (added 512 to 256) and i can say that i'm really happy with it. However if i had to chose between 512 Mb and 1 GB, i would take 1 GB.

The only trick i can give to further reduce cache swapping is to set "Memory usage" to "system cache" in the system properties.

Benefits of More RAM

Benefits of More RAM

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