HP Pavilion zd8000 RAM Upgrade

[Saint Nick]

I am interested in upgrading from 1GB of RAM to 2GB. I do a lot of audio recording on my laptop with a mobile interface, and sometimes playback gets choppy. I also do a lot of work in Photoshop.

I guess the bottom line question is will I experience a leap in performance?

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: NightDarker
I guess the bottom line question is will I experience a leap in performance?

Definitely yes if you're using Windows Vista, and it's likely depending on applications under XP as well.

I'll assume you're using XP since you didn't specifically mention Vista - IIRC, what you should be looking for is the "Commit Charge (Peak)" number under the Performance section of Task Manager. If, after running the computer and your usual applications for a while, this number exceeds 1GB (or even comes near it, really), then you'd benefit from more RAM. At least, this was the advice I read when I was about to upgrade to 2GB last year and it was a good indicator for me.

(The assumption being, if you regularly exceed 1GB, you'll be hitting the page file often. That would probably cause the choppy playback that you mention.)

Now, I haven't actually used XP regularly in months, so I'm sure someone will come along and correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Remedy]

I have it, and work with Sound Forge and Pro-tools. Maxing the memory capacity to 2GB is a MUST. Memory is very rock bottom price wise and shouldn't be neglected. I have the ZD8060 version. Noisy bastard, but it's performance is decent.