How to make my computer to use my 512mb?

[gredodenda]

I have 512mb PC133 memory and i'm using Windows XP Pro. For some reason, I don't feel much of improvement after I've upgrade from 256mb to 512mb. What tweaks to I need to make? virtual memory? etc,...

How can I use most of my memory so that it can work faster and better. it is Crucial CAS2.

thanks

 

[AndyHui]

You would need to observe your memory usage patterns. If you never actually used more than 256MB of RAM, then going to 512MB is obviously not going to bring about much benefit.

What about the rest of your system? CPU? Motherboard/chipset?

 

[jvang125]

you wont notice much speed improvements with XP itself but will notice a difference when you play games. they usually load up a lot quicker and there's less hard drive fetching. if you go with ddr memory that's PC2100 and above, you'll notice even a BIGGER speed improvement.

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: jvang125
you wont notice much speed improvements with XP itself but will notice a difference when you play games. they usually load up a lot quicker and there's less hard drive fetching.

Again like Andy said this is only true if your games/applications/etc + Windows use more than 256MB of RAM, if they use less there will still be a slight differance in that the system can casche more in RAM, but this will not yield a substantial (noticable) differance.

if you go with ddr memory that's PC2100 and above, you'll notice even a BIGGER speed improvement.

Faster memory will always give you an improvement, however it's likely that his mobo only supports PC133 (unless it's one of the dual RAM boards) so this probably isnt very applicable for this situation.

-Spy

 

[ProviaFan]

In many cases, 512MB of PC/133 will be better than 256MB of PC/2100 (DDR). However, you won't notice any difference when going to either more SDR SDRAM or the same amount of DDR SDRAM if you don't use any programs that take advantage of it.

 

[johnlog]

I have XP Pro with 512 megs RAM and checked memory / CPU usage and it was reporting 4% usage with IE6 and Anandtech on screen with WMP9 running in the background. Sounds like unless one is running a ram intensive game RAM and CPU usage remains quite low.

My guess is much of my 512 megs RAM is going unused most of the time even if several other programs are running at the same time.

 

[foxkm]

Originally posted by: gredodenda
I have 512mb PC133 memory and i'm using Windows XP Pro. For some reason, I don't feel much of improvement after I've upgrade from 256mb to 512mb. What tweaks to I need to make? virtual memory? etc,...

How can I use most of my memory so that it can work faster and better. it is Crucial CAS2.

With this linear theory, I can put 4 GB of ram in my computer, and it will be 8x faster than it was with 512mb. Check your ram usage in task manager. There is a BASE OS ram amount 256mb for XP, thats the amount you want to be at to prevent sluggishness performance. Unless you "ACTUALLY" use over 256 mb of ram, you will see ABSOUTLY 0 % increase in performance. The 257-512mb range is technically an OVERVFLOW area to prevent sluggishness.

-foxkm

 

[TheFro]

You could try turning off your PagingFile and seeing if there is any performance boost. 512 MB of ram should let you run things smoothly.

 

[BmXStuD]

Originally posted by: TheFro
You could try turning off your PagingFile and seeing if there is any performance boost. 512 MB of ram should let you run things smoothly.

dont your xp will be fuc*ed if u do that ;/ dont turn off the PG FILE. I would format and re0install b.c we know everyone pc gets slow after months.