Hi guys, running w-7 500gb hdd 4gb ram. By looking at the shot of performance in the windows task manager, computer is running ok but of course not as fast as when new because of the added files. Will adding another 4gb of memory show any real difference.
thanks Gary
If that snap is typical of your use, you already have plenty of RAM to spare. Check it at maximum usage if not. Otherwise the biggest performance increase would be a SSD, or at least a hybrid HDD. Poor man's solution would be to optimize the existing drive regularly. Also check the perf stats in control panel to see how various elements compare.
Thanks Paul, pix is with no applications running, but all services running. SSD would be nice but computer is not worth that much. It is great working laptop, but it was one of the cheapest new Dell with W-7 in it I could find. Got it for a little over $300. I just thought for $60 or so if it would speed it up a bit, it would be worth it.
Any tips on how to optimize the HHD
Also " Also check the perf stats in control panel to see how various elements compare" I have no idea what you are talking about, could you be more specific.
Thank you
Last edited by gary777; 22 Oct 2014 at 22:56. Reason: more info
YW, Gary. Also make sure the HDD has some empty space, otherwise fragging starts to take a big toll on speed.
You want to up the RAM only when you watch the RAM usage constantly get ahead of the CPU getting close to 100% when the CPU isn't anywhere near that.
I have 4 GB of RAM and very rarely use more than 3.
Take a look at the memory tab of Performance Monitor within Task Manager. You'll see a graph like the one below. This pic is my system right now, with the following applications running: Photoshop with 10 TIFF files open, Media Monkey playing mp3s, Windows Media Player playing a video, Audacity recording audio, Pale Moon browser, Word, and Excel.
As you can see from the graph, I am using less than 2 GB at the moment, with 2108 MB available--represented by the blue segment in the graph. That's typical for me. More RAM would be pointless. I originally intended to probably add more when I built this PC, but when I saw my typical usage was so low, I used the money set aside for RAM to fund an SSD.
Unless your graph typically shows very little available RAM, I'd say there's no reason to add more.
I upgraded from 4GB to 8GB of RAM at the beginning of last year.
I'm glad I did because the price is now roughly double what I paid.
My WEI RAM score went from 5.9 to 7.4.
However I can't say that I noticed any overall improvement in performance.
The one exception is running VMs (which is the reason I wanted to get more RAM).
Last edited by lehnerus2000; 23 Oct 2014 at 06:56. Reason: Layout
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