I get this question all the time…and found this to be the best way to just forward someone and get them out of your hair.
Now, it gets complicated when you factor in costs of memory and disk access. Generally, when a program needs to access information, it first loads it from the disk and then stores it in memory. From there, it fetches it again from memory until when you are finished, it saves it back to the disk. Fetching information from the disk is very slow, and from memory is still quite slow, when compared to the speed that the processor is running and doing work at. This is true even for your older CPU. If a program is running slow, it is very important to determine if it is slow because the CPU is busy doing work, or if it is slow and the CPU is idle waiting for information to load.
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I’ve had this problem… I think you just need a new INTERFACE CARD…hope that helps
Hmm. That’s a nice little article there, I’ll bare in mind the point of it. Thanks for bringing it to us
- PSM
XP can use at most 2 gigs of RAM. Vista can handle 3 gigs (it pretends to handle more, but it lies). IF you are using Linux (you probably won’t be asking anyone else this question but still), the usable RAM is limited by the BIOS more than by the OS. Mac OSX is essentially Linux.
Regardless, 2 gigs is enough for most users who aren’t running a custom OS and aren’t doing studio-quality CGI work.
If you have Windows XP and you have less than 1 gig of RAM, upgrade to 2 gigs *if* your PC can handle it. If not, get a new PC (and be sure to specify “Windows XP, or I shop elsewhere”).
If your computer came with Windows Vista, you don’t have enough memory – and you never will. Your PC is new enough, however, that it will perform well with WinXP (or Linux) and 2 gigs of RAM. Make sure you can get the necessary hardware drivers, and upgrade (yes, it *is* an upgrade) to Windows XP. Unless you use your PC exclusively for a very expensive Etch-A-Sketch, Vista is all bling and no guts.
And that’s the Idiot’s Guide to New PC vs. More Memory questions.
PS. Doubling the CPU clock speed with show 8% to 10% improvement in speed under Windows. If your RAM is under 1 gig now, doubling the RAM will show a 25% to 50% speed improvement. Doubling the clock speed *and* doubling the RAM will not add the 2 numbers together, however.
I came up with this analogy for my wife, and I really like it:
All a computer does is move information from one spot to another. Imagine a guy, a pile of dirt, and a bucket. The guy represents the Processor, the dirt the information, and the bucket the RAM. The clock speed is how fast the guy can run, and the more RAM you have, the bigger the bucket. He needs to move the pile of dirt from one place to another. The less RAM you have, the more trips he has to make. And of course as you increase the clock speed he will run faster. Of course he can only lift so much dirt, so at some point more RAM (bigger bucket) doesn’t matter because he can’t fill it up.
http://www.jibjab.com/starring_you/receipt/1317838
Holy crap that’s hilarious, Scott
Wow, the day you post this is the day I upgraded my RAM…
Love the photo in this blog entry… looks like it was doused in gas and lit ablaze…
I hope it was running ME.