Adding more RAM to Windows XP?
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From: Toni on 28 Jan 2010 18:23 Laptop with Windows XP Pro, 1.66GHz/Duo with 2G of RAM. If I upgrade to 4G RAM - is it always good to upgrade WinXP from 2G to 4G RAM? Can anyone tell me if there a noticeable hit to battery life? Any downside anyone can share? Thanks!!!
From: philo on 28 Jan 2010 18:30 Toni wrote: > Laptop with Windows XP Pro, 1.66GHz/Duo with 2G of RAM. > > If I upgrade to 4G RAM - is it always good to upgrade WinXP from 2G to 4G RAM? > > Can anyone tell me if there a noticeable hit to battery life? Any downside anyone can > share? > > Thanks!!! > > > The 32bit version of XP can use about 3.25 gigs of ram check your machine specs to see how much RAM the laptop can support
From: Shenan Stanley on 28 Jan 2010 18:31 Toni wrote: > Laptop with Windows XP Pro, 1.66GHz/Duo with 2G of RAM. > > If I upgrade to 4G RAM - is it always good to upgrade WinXP from 2G > to 4G RAM? > Can anyone tell me if there a noticeable hit to battery life? Any > downside anyone can share? Are you using the 2GB now? Do you often run out of memory? Adding more memory (that what you have now - 2GB - for your operating system - Windows XP, likely 32-bit) is not necessary for most people. Using AutoCAD? PhotoShop/Illustrator for some big drawings? Editing multi-track music? Generating animations or editing some heavy-duty videos? Heavy calculations of any sort? Intense database searches? If no - you likely are not even coming close to using 2GB. CTRL+SHIFT+ESC Performance Tab Although not the best reference - it is built in and gives you a quick enough overview to tell if you are running short. -- Shenan Stanley MS-MVP -- How To Ask Questions The Smart Way http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
From: Ken Blake, MVP on 28 Jan 2010 18:59 On Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:23:28 -0500, "Toni" <Toni24(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > Laptop with Windows XP Pro, 1.66GHz/Duo with 2G of RAM. > > If I upgrade to 4G RAM - is it always good to upgrade WinXP from 2G to 4G RAM? No, not at all. In fact for most people, even 2GB is more than you can make effective use of. How much RAM you need for good performance is *not* a one-size-fits-all situation. You get good performance if the amount of RAM you have keeps you from using the page file significantly, and that depends on what apps you run. Most people running a typical range of business applications under XP find that somewhere around 512MB works well, others need more. Almost anyone will see poor performance with less than 256MB. Some people, particularly those doing things like editing large photographic images, can see a performance boost by adding even more than 512MB--sometimes much more. If you are currently using the page file significantly, more memory will decrease or eliminate that usage, and improve your performance. If you are not using the page file significantly, more memory will do nothing for you. Go to http://billsway.com/notes%5Fpublic/winxp%5Ftweaks/ and download WinXP-2K_Pagefile.zip and monitor your page file usage. That should give you a good idea of whether more memory can help, and if so, how much more. -- Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP (Windows Desktop Experience) since 2003 Please Reply to the Newsgroup
From: (PeteCresswell) on 28 Jan 2010 19:45
Per Toni: >If I upgrade to 4G RAM - is it always good to upgrade WinXP from 2G to 4G RAM? I did that just on GPs. But now that I've done it and begun watching TaskMan, I'm hard pressed to find situations where I am using more than 1.5 gigs of memory. That *may* mean I don't know how to read TaskMan's numbers... but there it is.... -- PeteCresswell |