Simplify your laptop buying
PC hardware: Why all the hype for installing lots of RAM?
- 10/30/09 3:38 PM
Does anyone remember the Sinclair ZX80?
by TreknologyNet - 11/8/09 8:48 PM In reply to: It was even smaller than that by gjkezskiI had one that had been UPgraded to a massive 2k !!!
Not quite
by Jimmu411 - 10/30/09 5:59 PM In reply to: Original design by ejseccoThe original 640k limit came about because the original PC had a base register that you could set to an offset that would be added to the addresses in your program to move it up in memory to an unused area. That way you could load multiple processes in RAM and run them all as if they were loaded in the same place. I think you could specify the starting address down to 8 bytes, so you never wasted more than 7 bytes per process. I mean, who can afford to waste 8 bytes!
Actually no
by msgale - 11/8/09 9:32 PM In reply to: Not quite by Jimmu411The BX (Base)register had nothing to do with the 640 Kbyte limit. The BX register was sixteen bits long, so it could only cover 64 Kbytes of memory. Any address used was added to the appropriate segment register to compute the final address. The 8088 processor could address exactly 1,048,576 bytes of memory, however IBM chose to use certain address, for other uses i.e. The ROM, ROM Basic, and memory mapped I/O. Some address above 786,432 (0xC0000) were the screen buffer for the CGA or MDA . Writing to those address would cause a character or character attribute to display on the screen.
There was more allocation if I remember correctly.
by TreknologyNet - 11/10/09 12:23 AM In reply to: Actually no by msgaleThe upper memory "hole" between 640k and 1M was allocated in 64k blocks. This included
1: Mono
2: CGA
3: Cartridge 1 (a la Commodore 64)
4: Cartridge 2
5: Hard Drive Controller (BIOS code provided by the Controller Card)
6: Boot BIOS and ROM Basic
The architecture of the 286 was such that it could be split into separate "8086"s, the idea being that you could have programs running in their own 64k block independently of each other--That's what the System Request key was meant to control, but MS never implemented that functionality.
You would have had OS in Block 0
Then could have had
Word Processor in Block 1
Spread Sheet in Block 2
Data Base in Block 3
Your word processor could then have requested Spell Check which would have loaded into Block 4 and so on.
This would have introduced true multi-tasking in a much earlier era. That programmers often insisted on accessing hardware directly rather than through the OS, may well have contributed to the difficulty of creating the ultimate non-graphic office suite, in which case the history of modern computers could have significantly diverged in the 1980s from what we know now to something completely different.
Taking Advantage of Wasted RAM.
by philthee - 10/30/09 6:45 PM In reply to: Lots of RAM by mjb5406I rebuilt my PC recently, and put 8GB of RAM in it, to prepare it for an eventual move to Windows 7 (from 32-bit XP).
In the meantime, as you pointed out, the upper half of that RAM was being wasted since XP can't access it. So I spent a little more, and purchased two excellent programs.
The first is "RamDisk Plus" (superspeed.com), which gives access to memory beyond 4GB as a RAM drive, even under 32-bit Windows.
The second is eBoostr (eboostr.com), which lets you set up a system cache on that RAM drive (rather like ReadyBoost in Windows 7 and, I believe, Vista). This lets smaller, often-used files load from memory (or a USB stick) rather than hard drive.
Together they give me a 4GB cache and a 750MB swap-file, all in otherwise-wasted RAM, and the performance boost is huge.
Depends on -what- you are using your computer for!
by dog daddy - 10/30/09 7:26 PM In reply to: Lots of RAM by mjb5406if doing just Word docs, you need just 1 gb RAM,...but if photo editing [tweaking]images, you need at least 3 gb RAM and at least 50% free space, because images are huge files, especially if working in tiff or psd files [many layers],..and still, you shall run out of RAM and free space amazingly, very fast, in mere few minutes. *it's a major problem for those in photo editing business and very serious amateur photographers.
-Dog Daddy
Need?
by Stephen2217 - 10/31/09 12:21 AM In reply to: Depends on -what- you are using your computer for! by dog daddyDon't wish to argue and I'm no PC wiz by any means but, not sure what you mean that you "NEED" 3GB Ram to do photo editing, although I agree 3GB will make apps run faster than 1GB. Maybe just semantics, need vs prefer.?
I'm a pro photog and have run Corel PSP 10 since '06 with 1GB Ram, 160GB HD, 2.8GHz Pent D successfully. Don't think I've EVER "run out" of Ram -- what would happen when you do run out? "In a few minutes" means I should have regularly run out every time I edited in sessions lasting hours on hundreds of images. Sure, I agree tiffs and Camera Raw files are big, and layers-edits add to the bloat, but "major problem"?? Not sure I understand or agree with that. Please advise.
Adding sticks for 3GB total surely sped my conversion and processing quite a lot and I wouldn't want to return to the 1GB days, but I wouldn't say that 3GB is a "need". More is always better for photo and vid apps. I suppose one could say the 3GB figure is a "need" in relation to how cheap Ram sticks are, abt $20 a Gig, so my $40 purchase was well worth it.
In a word...
by Spectrewriter - 10/23/09 4:52 PM In reply to: Why all the hype for installing lots of RAM? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
... Headroom.
Computers run a lot faster when they have more RAM than they need. You may have developed habits that keep your consumption low. Let go, live a little! Go ahead and leave WoW open while you're working on that quarterly report!
How can you measure it?
by rje49 - 10/23/09 5:15 PM In reply to: In a word... by SpectrewriterIs there aa easy way to measure what you gain by adding more RAM? I ask because my son-in-law has a really low-end desktop running XP, and it's choking on 256mb RAM. It's got 2 slots, and I've ordered a 512mb stick. I told him he will see a marked improvement going to 768mb, but I'm not so sure a lot will be gained for the money by adding more on such a puny machine. I think the "Law of Diminishing Returns" applies here, but "how much improvement" may be hard to measure. I've tried this before on another computer by running a virus scan, but in that case saw no difference going from 512mb to 1.5gb. There's got to be a better way, no?
Meassuring Performance Gains by adding Ram
by GEO2003 - 10/23/09 5:26 PM In reply to: How can you measure it? by rje49It is a bit hard, you could find some free applications here at Cnet to bench mark your system with the increase RAM.
However, old pc's tend to have other slow hardware such as the hard drive, the Video card and the motheboard itself.
There are different kinds of RAM, some run Fast but the motherboard has to allow the tweaking of the front side bus which is used in conjuction with Ram to speed up the system.
For example PC-5200 runs at 533 megahertz front side bus, PC-6200 runs faster, but it won't matter if the motherboard does not support faster memory.
If your old system would benefit, you would immediately see an improvement on how the OS and applications work.
Going from 512 to 768 is not going to do anything. If anything going from 512 to 2 GB would make a big difference.
BUT you have to take into account other hardware issues.
Good luck,
Geo
It's 256 to 768
by rje49 - 10/23/09 7:25 PM In reply to: Meassuring Performance Gains by adding Ram by GEO2003I'm adding 512 to the current 256. I've seen great improvement doing that before. Several years ago I had a Dell that started out with 128mb. I brought it up to 768mb to get it out of the hole, but then added 1GB more, and didn't see any additional difference at all. Neither computer is a powerhouse, but the higher you go, the less you gain.
It's 256 to 68
by 3JGProductions - 10/27/09 12:13 PM In reply to: It's 256 to 768 by rje49To: rje49, Sounds like you talking about 2003 Dell. Bear in mind "The amount of RAM you have is an important factor in determining how many programs can be executed at one time, and how much data can be readily available to a program", futhermore, "the more RAM you have, the more programs you can run smoothly and simultaneuosly". Read the SPECS on your memory allocations and take it to the maximum.
You could never run my applications on your RAM
by Walter L. Johnson - 10/31/09 4:20 PM In reply to: It's 256 to 768 by rje49Right now I am running 83 separate process threads even without running any especially resource intensive applications. The newer versions of Windows all run multiple processes concurrently and that have to exist in memory to keep the system from crawling to a halt.
You can certainly run DOS and I assume Windows 3.1 with a minimal amount of memory, but you would not be able to run Windows 95, 98, 98SE, ME, XP, Vista or 7 32 bit or 64 bit versions, home or professional versions. Each version of Windows specifies the minimum amount of RAM it requires as a condition of the operating system. Versions of Windows like CE are only made possible by reducing the functions Windows can perform.
You must always have the minimum amount of RAM the operating system you want to run specifies and as a rule of thumb it would be best to have at least twice that to allow for multiple tasks running and multiple windows concurrently running. Right now for example I have four Firefox windows open and my email program with two emails open. With my 4 GB of RAM running under Windows Vista I would have no trouble also running Internet Explorer, and several other applications like TIVO Desktop.
It is true that the more RAM you add the less marginal benefit you might get from each additional GB, but without enough memory you will often feel like applications are freezing on you since they do so little while they are running in background.
Ram 256 > 512mbyte
by jrap30 - 11/1/09 8:26 AM In reply to: It's 256 to 768 by rje49You are correct on Windows XP...MS Spec it out as needing 128Mbyte of RAM. Industry nowing MS is being optimistic...sold machine with 128 MBytes back in 2002. Now we my office receive maching back in 2003 with 128 Mbyte....we felt these NEW P 4 were slower than out Pent 3 they replace. In a year or two we bump them up to 256 MByte.
When I brought my laptopn in 2005 it had only 256 Mbyte. Two weeks later I got a deal on another 256 Mbyte....and boot up and shut down were twice as fast. XP Runs great on 512 Mbyte of RAM.
Two years ago I up it to 764 Mbyte and could NOT tell any improvement. I DO not multitask and being an engineer, try to be efficient but shutting down programs once I am finished. When I ahd a memory tool from CNET, XP usually use from the upper 300's to just under 1/2 a GIF~~~~480 Mbytes.
RAM plus faster hard drive
by scleung - 10/24/09 4:22 PM In reply to: How can you measure it? by rje49I have a laptop that is about 7 years old. It has a Pentium running 1.2ghz on battery or 1.4ghz if plugged in. It was a slow machine until I upgraded the RAM to 768mb and the hard drive from 4200rpm to 7200rpm. I did both upgrades at the same time. There's an old saying, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. I'm sure just upgrading the RAM would help, but getting a faster hard drive at the same time made the speed that much better.
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