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#21
Wow, I've never had even close to that many tabs open, if that normal for you, yes, 16gb of RAM.
The about:config tweak will give you back some RAM when Firefox is minimized, not as much as you might be hoping for though!
Wow, I've never had even close to that many tabs open, if that normal for you, yes, 16gb of RAM.
The about:config tweak will give you back some RAM when Firefox is minimized, not as much as you might be hoping for though!
Do you turn off your computer, at least once a day, or it is always on or hibernates?
The memory can be also full with standby memory.
Too much memory on standby.....
right now, chrome has reddit, a forum, a chat tab, 5 youtube tabs, a couple of soundcloud tabs, a couple of ebay tabs, facebook, amazon, a couple of news sites, a couple of review sites, imdb, and some assorted. firefox has 7 tabs open. a few of chromes are 'suspended'. plus word and excel 2007. I definitely don't turn off once per day, maybe once per month (hibernate is disabled), I've got 10+ notepad.exe's open with various documents which I prefer not to have to re open after a boot
performance really isn't bad. I don't really do anything demanding with it, video editing or gaming. the issue really is this (inconsistent) once-every-50 saving pauses. I did try the firefox tweak, my used mem went below 7GB for the first time I've seen, didn't specifically notice any loss in performance
Bob, if there is 16GB (2x 8GB) of Samsung memory on ebay for around £50, and you say it's a reasonable price, buy it.
On Firefox you can pin a tab so the next time you open it it will be there.
My recommendation is to shutdown the computer at least once a day or when not in use.
I bought the 16GB, it wasn't a hard sell to be honest. had the end result of....my laptop apparently running slightly slower (the original save-as dialogue waiting time didn't manifest itself, but the overall feel of it)
Ran the windows experience index (first thing available), with the following
(excuse the formatting,,)
_________orig___upgrade_upgrade___orig_test______orig
_________spec__________2nd run___spec_1sodimm__spec
_________2x4___2x8_____2x8______2x4__1x8______2x4
cpu______7_____7_______7________7.1__7.1_______7.1
ram______7.4___7.4______7.4______7.4__7.1_______7.4
gfx_______6.3___5.7______5.9______6.3__6.3_______6.3
gaming___6.3___6.3______6.3______6.3__6.3_______6.3
hdd______7.9___7.9______7.9______7.9__7.9_______7.9
effectively, 16GB gave me a 10% hit on my graphics speed. changed back to 2x4GB, and got my original scores.
using a single 8GB stick rather than 2x4GB, gave me a slight hit on my RAM speed (1 stick wouldn't be running in dual channel mode?), then put it all back to normal, and I've got my original scores back.
16GB generally felt slower too.......predictably bulked up my swap file size to 16GB as well.
The only thing I can think, is that the cpu had to work harder at maintaining the twice size swap file?
I think I'll stick with 2x4GB config
just out of interest, in 2x4GB config, I have 7-7.5GB used out of 8GB
when I was running in 2x8GB config, it was using (exactly the same applic's open) about 12GB out of 16GB
windows 7 seems to eat up any RAM thrown at it? but in this case, it didn't actually improve it
I ran a site called UserBenchMark just in case,
(higher percentage is better)
_________2x4GB____2x8GB___1x8GB
CPU______40.5%____38.3%___39.9%
gfx_______2.39%____2.38%___2.25%
RAM______45%______43.6%___29.3%
2x4GB seems the best result. RAM *really* takes a hit in single mode?
Windows desktop environment usually takes 20-25% physical RAM, however much RAM you use. However you should see a performance increase when using more RAM, ie., when going from 2x4GB to 2x8GB.
You are not exactly seeing that, so I'd assume that the memory clock and memory latencies of the 2x4GB sticks are faster than the 2x8GB sticks.
As you have said yourself, you'd expect 1x8GB to be slower than 2x4GB because dual-channel RAM is faster than single channel RAM.
hi thanks
my 2x4 sticks are 1x crucial, and 1x samsung ram
the 2x8 sticks I bought were both samsung
using the speccy information program, both RAM's gave the following,
DRAM Frequency___________665.1 MHz
CAS# Latency (CL)_________9 clocks
RAS# to CAS# Delay (tRCD)__9 clocks
RAS# Precharge (tRP)_______9 clocks
Cycle Time (tRAS)__________24 clocks
Command Rate (CR)________1T
are there any other timings I should be checking? The BIOS in the Fujitsu A531 laptop I have has virtually no settings for the memory that I can see
They are probably DDR3 1333 Mhz. But they could be DDR3 1600Mhz running at 1333 Mhz. Check what the BIOS says, to be sure.
random input.....
- in your bios is (hopefully) a setting where you can dedicate video memory to graphics. Choose the largest setting.
- sometimes updating bios to the most current bios version will eliminate memory issues.
- we do not know your specs. It just says Fujitsu under system model. If I could change the world in only one way, I would change sevenforums so that it becomes impossible to even make a post without folks being forced to put in detailed specs. Me and the other geeks here draw way more insight on a problem when we know the full specs. Almost never does a new poster realize this. end of specs rant.
- you are in the top 1% of users when it comes to how many programs/windows/tabs you like to keep open. I agree with everyone who earlier said that 8GB is enough for most everyone. You are an exception.
- your slow "save as" issue might be a windows folder quirk that is unrelated to memory size or open programs.