2GB vs 3GB?

[gmgfarrand]

Have you guys seen a performance increase in going from 2GB to 3GB?

[nxman]

Originally my machine came with 1 Gig i upgraded to 2 gigs and i haven't noticed any difference except its eating my battery power!

[sjhwilkes]

In everyday use, no. With VMware it makes a huge difference, which is why I spent the $$, I think it would make a noticeable difference with AutoCAD, Premier, Photoshop etc. too.

[pianowizard]

For everyday use and Win XP Pro, I don't see any improvement even when going from 512MB to 2GB.

[abu_sme]

I play pretty intensive games and 1 gb makes me scream a bit. One game I frequently play uses 800 MB of RAM!!

[ryengineer]

In everyday use, no. With VMware it makes a huge difference, which is why I spent the $$, I think it would make a noticeable difference with AutoCAD, Premier, Photoshop etc. too.

True.

My wife's an architect engineer and uses those stuff, her system's always slow on even 2GB of memory.

[PRGeno]

Have you guys seen a performance increase in going from 2GB to 3GB?

It should only make a difference if you consistently use up your installed 2GB of physical memory, which causes Windows to use the swap file on your hard disk more often. Windows seems to use some swap file space even when you have plenty of memory available. But it really starts using it when you get close to running out, or actually do run out of memory. It must, as there is no alternative. You've run out of physical memory, and it must find somewhere to store what it needs. So it swaps old stuff out to disk and reuses the freed up RAM for the new stuff. Swapping this stuff out to disk is much slower than simply using RAM.

If you normally run out of the physically installed 2GB of RAM in your machine, you will experience a very noticeable speed difference, and by all means go get more RAM.

If you never use close to the 2GB physically installed, then you will not notice anything different, except possibly shorter battery life, and a warmer ThinkPad sitting on your lap.

PRGeno