RAM performance

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by brizzoluk, Oct 5, 2008.

  1. brizzoluk

    brizzoluk Kilobyte Poster

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    I assume it is the same spec as the old ram, i bought it from crucial who advised me on what ram to buy.
    surely they wouldnt have sold me slower ram than i already had?
    How do i turn off windows vista indexer?
    I have just increased my page file size from 3675MB - 12000MB i have plenty of hard drive free so would this be about right?
     
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  2. greenbrucelee
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    Thats too much, its recommend what the minimun and maximum should be, if you have 4GB ram it should be set at something like 4072mb.

    I don't know how you turn indexing off on vista, I only use xp at the moment.
     
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  3. dmarsh
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    Pagefile should be roughly 1-1.5x times physical ram, you've set yours to 3x ! I'd put it down a bit or set it back to auto, windows does a decent job of managing it for you.

    Go to Administrative Tools\Services find "Windows Search" and set it to disabled.

    This will slow down searching as files won't be indexed, on the plus side it will stop a background program screwing with your disk reindexing every time a file changes.
     
  4. brizzoluk

    brizzoluk Kilobyte Poster

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    well i set it at that level after reading about it in windows help..

    "Windows sets the initial minimum size of the paging file at the amount of random access memory (RAM) installed on your computer plus 300 megabytes (MB), and the maximum size at 3 times the amount of RAM installed on your computer."
     
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  5. dmarsh
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    Normally you don't want to use virtual memory at all if you can avoid it, thats why you bought physical RAM !

    Whats the point in having loads of something you don't intend to use ? (Virtual Memory that is.)

    Does your system ever get anywhere near exhausting physical RAM ? If not how do you know you need 3x virtual ?

    In practice accessing even just the minimum 1x virtual memory will result in horrible performance, its there as an extra emergency buffer zone, like the hard shoulder on the motorway, you don't use it to drive on.
     
  6. greenbrucelee
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    just to add, if your newer ram is a faster speed than the ram you already had installed then it will only go the same speed as the slower ram. You may notice better performance if you take out the older ram and put the new ram in matching colured slots as this will enable dual channel mode.

    For example I have 2 2GB dimms and both my dimms are in the blue slots, thats the 1st slot & the 3rd slot.
     
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  7. greenbrucelee
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    BTW crucial doesn't take into account what you already have in when it recommends the different types of ram that are compatible.
     
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  8. brizzoluk

    brizzoluk Kilobyte Poster

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    well i thought by increasing the virtual memory it might make my pc quicker!
    as you have probably realised i am a complete novice, and was just trying to improve the performance of my pc, originally by installing more RAM but that doesnt seem to have worked, i only got involved in the page file size after GBL mentioned it and i didnt even know what it was so i looked it up in windows help and thats where it said it should be at the level i have just put it at.
    My RAM level is usually at around 30-40% when im using the internet.

    GBL..my pc only has 2 RAM slots, my old RAM was 2x1GB dimms which i have replaced with 2x2GB dimms.
     
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  9. greenbrucelee
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    Your PC wont go too much quicker with any amount of RAM in it, upgrading the CPU will help with that. What cpu do you have in it?
     
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  10. dmarsh
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    Virtual Memory is basically a file on the harddisk that is mapped into the OS's memory space.

    You are exchanging memory access for disk access when you use it, disk access is typically 100,000-1,000,000 times slower than memory access.

    So by using it you are making your computer 100,000's times slower ! Thats why people reccomend buying physical RAM to stop your computer from using virtual when it runs out of physical. However if you never fully used the original 2GB memory, you now just have extra headroom which you are not using.

    Good that eliminates a lot of potential confusion, I expect its all fine, you can check the speed rating of both types if you want to be sure if you've bought slower RAM.

    The internet and word processing doesn't use much RAM, video editing, games etc might use it.
     
  11. brizzoluk

    brizzoluk Kilobyte Poster

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    I have an intel core 2 duo 4500,
     
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  12. greenbrucelee
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    upgrading to a faster/newer cpu will help along with the ram to run faster. If you want to upgrade you need to find out what your motherboard is and look and manufacturers web site for compatible CPUs
     
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  13. brizzoluk

    brizzoluk Kilobyte Poster

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    well my pc is less than a year old and that is the original cpu but i will have a look around to see if i can get a faster one for a reasonable price.
     
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  14. greenbrucelee
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    are you needing it to go faster for a reason?

    You could speed things up by defragmenting the hard drive, clearing out temporary files and the like. Download a program called Ccleaner and use it.
     
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  15. The_Sorrow

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    If its 32bit then your system will only see 3.5GB ram. The remaining 0.5GB has to be mapped to OS/system/etc. I've read about this tool that maps the "whole" 4GB with vista, but i think thats just
    a ghosting technique. Im sure the system/buses needs that 0.5GB. So with 32bit os i find it unlikely
    that the full 4GB will be used even if the os says it is...
    I would try out 3DMark '06 rather than vantage also.

    And for what its worth, if you want to use all ram, upgrade to a 64bit os and save a headache and a waste of time 8)

    Sam.
     
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  16. The_Sorrow

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    [edit]
    As greenbrucelee said, ccleaner is a godsend if your slowing down. And it also has the capability to fix registery issues. Great little app. Ive been useing it for a long long time.
     
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  17. brizzoluk

    brizzoluk Kilobyte Poster

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    No not for any particular reason and i have defragged and run disc clean up and deleted any progs that i dont use, my main hang ups about the speed are waiting for progs to open, web pages to load and opening picture folders and having to wait for all the thumbnails to load, its not really slow but i just want to speed it up.
    going back to the windows base score, it is determined by the lowest subscore which in my case is the gaming graphics.
    would upgrading my graphics card increase the pc speed at all?
    my current graphics card is a NVIDIA Geforce 7300 LE.

    I will download that prog thanks for the heads up.
    Thanks for all the advice guys appreciate it.
     
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  18. greenbrucelee
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    upgrading the graphic card will make the processing of graphics faster but not the system.
     
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  19. dmarsh
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    Like any system the overall speed is comprised of many factors, Windows Vista is slooooooowwww.

    Try installing Ubuntu, get that nice new clean and fresh feeling.

    Windows will waste your life scanning directories for the 1001th time, thats why its called windoze :sleeping:

    These all involve disk access, loading programs from disk, reading directories, loading picture files from disk, saving web pages to the browser cache. You might have network I/O bandwidth issues with your ISP or Wireless router for the internet access also.

    To be sure you are spending the money in the right place monitor and benchmark your system, note whats happening when it goes slow. Its probably disk access caused by the Windows Search Indexer or an overzealous Anti-Virus product, or as mentioned occasionally windows forgets whats in control panel, or a system directory, or what explorer context menu add ins are loaded, etc. Less is definitely more, use msconfig, services, uninstaller, startup folder etc, to removed unwanted processes from loading.

    You're probably spending your time waiting for the hard drive, you could try a hardware RAID setup or 10,000 RPM drive, but installing Linux is cheaper !
     
  20. The_Sorrow

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    I agree there but.....

    For many, linux is arcane to the newbie.
     
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