2GB system memory Vs. SATA RAID

[Link]

With which will I see more performance boost?

 

[Matthias99]

If your application(s) need more than 1GB of RAM to fit into memory, having 2GB of RAM will make an enormous difference.

If your application(s) are completely disk-bound, moving to a faster disk subsystem (possibly including RAID) will make an enormous difference.

If your application(s) are completely CPU- or memory speed-bound, neither of these will help a bit.

Your question is impossible to answer in any sort of meaningful way without more information.

 

[Link]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
If your application(s) need more than 1GB of RAM to fit into memory, having 2GB of RAM will make an enormous difference.

If your application(s) are completely disk-bound, moving to a faster disk subsystem (possibly including RAID) will make an enormous difference.

If your application(s) are completely CPU- or memory speed-bound, neither of these will help a bit.

Your question is impossible to answer in any sort of meaningful way without more information.

What are the examples of RAM-bound and disk-bound applications?

 

[imported_Kensai]

Originally posted by: Link

Originally posted by: Matthias99
If your application(s) need more than 1GB of RAM to fit into memory, having 2GB of RAM will make an enormous difference.

If your application(s) are completely disk-bound, moving to a faster disk subsystem (possibly including RAID) will make an enormous difference.

If your application(s) are completely CPU- or memory speed-bound, neither of these will help a bit.

Your question is impossible to answer in any sort of meaningful way without more information.

What are the examples of RAM-bound and disk-bound applications?

RAM-bound = Game Playing
Disk bound = Game Loading.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Kensai

Originally posted by: Link

Originally posted by: Matthias99
If your application(s) need more than 1GB of RAM to fit into memory, having 2GB of RAM will make an enormous difference.

If your application(s) are completely disk-bound, moving to a faster disk subsystem (possibly including RAID) will make an enormous difference.

If your application(s) are completely CPU- or memory speed-bound, neither of these will help a bit.

Your question is impossible to answer in any sort of meaningful way without more information.

What are the examples of RAM-bound and disk-bound applications?

RAM-bound = Game Playing
Disk bound = Game Loading.

Most games these days can be either RAM-speed, RAM-size, CPU-speed, or video card-speed bound depending on settings. For instance, Quake3 at low resolution and with a modern CPU is essentially a memory bandwidth benchmark. 3DMark05 is almost completely bound by your GPU speed, even at very low resolution.

You are unlikely to run anything singificantly disk-bound in normal day-to-day computer use, unless you consistently edit very large audio or video files. Taking 10-20 seconds to load a program rather than 5-10 on a super-fast SCSI RAID setup is not 'running a disk-bound application'; if you are going to spend a lot of money on fast disks to make a game load faster, you're probably going to be disappointed with the results (especially considering how expensive really fast hard drives are).

OP, if you want advice on which upgrade to pursue, please give more information on what you are actually doing with the system in question. If your question is just theoretical, then the answer is "it depends on what you're running".