How is 512MB for Win2K?

[themadmonk]

I have 256 MB right now and with prices so cheap I might as well suck up some more, but would the jump to 512 make a difference?

 

[FOBSIDE]

yes it will make a difference. how much difference? well, unless youre doing some crazy rendering, you wont really feel it that much. 256 is kinda the sweet spot for win2k. after that i would say you dont get as much bang for your buck...but with ram prices this low, why not?

 

[IsOs]

Go for it. It's always better to have it just in case you need to run multiple graphics program at the same time - like Illustrator & Photoshop.

 

[setaanbomb]

I just tossed in another 128MB of RAM to my 256MB last night. Now with 384MB my gaming is considerably faster. I'm going to run 3dmark 2000 tonight and compare my scores.

 

[Strafe]

SB, if you upped from 256 to 384 and noticed ANY performance increase than something else is wrong. I'd check your swapfile and memory settings.

 

[lsd]

I hd 256 and got 64mb more for total of 320, I can tell you I felt no differnce while using 3d studio max or quake3.

 

[Supergax]

I went from 192 to 320, and only notice the difference when I have like 20 progs open. If it's normal day to day tasks then I don't notice to much, but when I have a copy of photoshop, illustrator, golive, ftp, a bunch of crt (telnet) windows and browser windows open I notice that it doesn't lag as much.

 

[zuffy]

There's no difference when I went 256MB to 448MB... but it makes me feel better knowing that I have more physical RAM remaining

 

[Looney]

I went from 256 to 384 too, and i didn't notice a difference either... thinking on making a 128mb RAM drive or something to put the memory to good use.

 

[themadmonk]

That's it zuffy, I am wondering if I will only be "feeling" the power and not actually experiencing it. Right now I encode movies like crazy, but for 256MB extra is more storage space. So I guess it is either a quicker job done or more jobs to do.

 

[Cyph3r]

I just upgraded from 256MB to 512MB because of the low prices..as far as performance increases, I didn't benchmark my machine with 256 MB and I haven't benchmarked it now. But I do have a Dual CPU machine..I do notice that I can now open a ton more applications than before..

I capture of a lot of stuff from my digital camera and before with 256 MB ram, after getting about a dozen or so images and saving them, the machine would be tend to slow down quite a bit..I don't notice that much lag right now..

In my opinion, you should just take the plunge and pick up the extra 256 MB so that you'll be set for a while to come..Regards

 

[zision]

I'm picking up 256, and I was thinking of getting another 128 for a total of 384MB since prices are so low, but I think I'll just stick with getting 256 now. Although it would be cool to say you have 384 or 512MB

 

[divinemartyr]

You pretty much have to judge what you do by how much RAM you need. Have copies of Bryce 3D, Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightwave, Maya, 3D Studio, or other intensive 3D graphics applications on your hard drive? If you have 2 or 3 of these then yeah having an extra 256 would be a great benefit to you. I have 256 megs of ram on the setup you see below but running 4-5 copies of IE, netscape. winamp, icq, aim, and few other things in my systray, no matter how much I have going on I ALWAYS have complete control of my system with no slowdown. I'd do some tweaking on your current system before you go and spend another $180 (I hope you spend at least this much to get QUALITY ram) on 256 megs of ram.

Make sure your ram is running at cas2-2-2. If it is, and you want to overclock, tweak your fsb to run as high as possible at these settings. What hard drive are you currently using? The two fastest drives on the market are the IBM Deskstar GXP series of drives and the Quantum Fireball Plus LM series, respectively. If you don't have 7200 rpm and at least ata/66 drives (the IBM's are ata/100) then make this upgrade first, I guarantee if you're running slower drives you will notice a difference in load times on your programs. I have the quantum drive myself and absolutely LOVE it. Benchmark runs at about 17000, where as the average ata/66 drive benchmarks around 13,100 so I am extremely happy with the performance of my drive.

Also try messing around with your swap file, since you already have 256 megs of ram, if you are using a flavor of win9x/me then set this in the [386Enh] section of C:\Windows\System.ini

ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

Then you will also want to set a permanent swap file size to 256mb of ram (increase this to how ever much ram you have) in case Windows does somehow manage to use your swap file. Generally this is unlikely, however, possible if you have crazy uptimes.

divinemartyr

 

[Gatsby]

I did the 256 --> 512 and I see absolutely no difference what so ever in my daily use of the computer. It may have better load capabilites but thats just a guess

Gatsby - 59

 

[kylef]

Regarding the CAS latency thing... does anyone know a way to test the CAS latency of generic memory that doesn't have a sticker on it?

Just curious...

I checked prices the other day, and I really noticed a HUGE difference for PC133 CAS 2 vs. PC133 CAS 3... I mean about a 100% price difference or something! Incredible!

Anyone know a good place to go to check prices on PC133 CAS 2 memory?

Thanks!

Kyle

 

[zision]

just wanted to point you guys to crucial.com, they have free 2-day shipping right now and great prices.

 

[ChrisIsBored]

kylef - You should be able to take that RAM to a good local computer shop and have them run i through a RAM tester...

;]

 

[superbaby]

I went from 256 -> 512 and I really didn't feel a difference. I have my pagefile locked at 90MB and I do some heavy multitasking. I have Apache, Apache JServ, G6 FTP Server, and a bunch of runtime environments running in the background. The only thing that kills my system is badly written newsgroup and download accelerator programs. Other than that I turn on my computer once a day and I leave it.