Big difference in performance if I go from 512MB -> 1GB?

[tbessie]

I have an X40 1.2Ghz (Banias), with 512MB of ram. I just ordered another 512MB from Crucial, since it was just another $100.

Performance is kind of sluggish on the machine, mostly I think because of the slow hard drive. I'm not doing anything too heavy-duty on it, and it *appears* that memory isn't being used up yet in my everyday usage. But I wonder if adding that extra 512MB will speed things up at all, and if Windows, like Linux, will take advantage of all that extra memory to do more buffering.

Any ideas?

- Tim

[stgreek]

I have an X40 1.2Ghz (Banias), with 512MB of ram. I just ordered another 512MB from Crucial, since it was just another $100.

Performance is kind of sluggish on the machine, mostly I think because of the slow hard drive. I'm not doing anything too heavy-duty on it, and it *appears* that memory isn't being used up yet in my everyday usage. But I wonder if adding that extra 512MB will speed things up at all, and if Windows, like Linux, will take advantage of all that extra memory to do more buffering.

Any ideas?

- Tim

Memory usage always depends on the type of software you run. If you do heavy image processing or run things like virtual machines the extra 512 will make a huge difference, in everyday desktop usage it should not be too obvious. However, as you correctly identified, the bottleneck in the X40 is the hard drive, and since it is an 1.8" one you'll have a hard -if not impossible- task to replace it with something faster.

Hope this helps
Stavros

[tbessie]

I have an A31 for my desktop machine, and this X40 to carry to cafe's and stuff. I'm sure I could run Eclipse on it and do Java development, although it would be pretty slow for that -- the memory would help in that case.

But mostly it's just an email/web browsing/movie-watching machine.

- Tim

[daeojkim]

I have an A31 for my desktop machine, and this X40 to carry to cafe's and stuff. I'm sure I could run Eclipse on it and do Java development, although it would be pretty slow for that -- the memory would help in that case.

But mostly it's just an email/web browsing/movie-watching machine.

- Tim

It's not gonna make any difference to do those tasks, unless you are opening 50 web browsers at the same time.

[LumberJack]

I have an A31 for my desktop machine, and this X40 to carry to cafe's and stuff. I'm sure I could run Eclipse on it and do Java development, although it would be pretty slow for that -- the memory would help in that case.

But mostly it's just an email/web browsing/movie-watching machine.

- Tim

Eclipse 3.0 or later requires considerable memroy, but you could probably develop a descent sized program using v2.53 or so. On my X31 though I run eclipse, visual studio, matlab, etc.. .sometimes at the same time and I have found tht upgrading from 256 to 768 was a great help! you probably won't notice much speed increase to 1 gig unless you are planning on getting rid of your page file.

LJ

[jeeva]

Allthrough I have not a X40 but a R51, I'm planning the same as you. My machine normaly uses 180 Megs of RAM with Xorg started, but I often use Virtual Machines so my RAM is nearly full, so it would make sense to me to upgrade to 1 Gigabyte.

[jdhurst]

Allthrough I have not a X40 but a R51, I'm planning the same as you. My machine normaly uses 180 Megs of RAM with Xorg started, but I often use Virtual Machines so my RAM is nearly full, so it would make sense to me to upgrade to 1 Gigabyte.

Probably. I have 768Mb on my Laptop and Desktop, and that allows me to run my XP host and two Virtual Machines without swapping. Otherwise, more memory makes things smoother, but not a whole lot faster. A very fast hard drive will make a more noticeable improvement.

... JD Hurst

[jeeva]

Ok, that was the other thing, I also thinking about, changing my HDD, but perhaps I take two if my budget allows it to me.