1GB to 2GB upgrade, worth it?

CyberGhost

Guys who have upgraded from 1GB to 2GB RAM is it worth it? did you notice an improvement? I'm talking about in desktop environment, not gaming.

I have a 2.8GHz Prescott with 1GB ram, thinking of upgrading to 2GB cause Firefox eats so much of memory.

astrofool

well firefox will use whatever memory is available regardless due to the way it caches.

It depends what you're doing (graphics apps, lots of multi-tasking), but its not worth the upgrade for firefox. You'd be better off saving it for a future larger upgrade.

nuttz

CyberGhost wrote:

Guys who have upgraded from 1GB to 2GB RAM is it worth it? did you notice an improvement? I'm talking about in desktop environment, not gaming.

I have a 2.8GHz Prescott with 1GB ram, thinking of upgrading to 2GB cause Firefox eats so much of memory.

Is it just firefox that is eating up the RAM? if so I wouldn't bother.
I never see firefox go beyond 200mb. I have two IDEs, two browsers, tv app, acrobat, word and excel and I'm only on 800mb RAM usage.

deckie27

CyberGhost wrote:

Firefox eats so much of memory.

i don't think it will help as firefox seems to crash at a point ( aound 300mb) even though there is plenty of unused memory

Random

I've only ever noticed the improvement in games like Battlefield with map loading times halfed.

I'm told it helps with things like video editing too.

Anything else, I doubt it'll make a huge difference - unless you frequently open all the programs on your hdd at the same time!

bishopLEN

nuttz wrote:

Is it just firefox that is eating up the RAM? if so I wouldn't bother.
I never see firefox go beyond 200mb. I have two IDEs, two browsers, tv app, acrobat, word and excel and I'm only on 800mb RAM usage.

I am about the same as this

This is an interesting read;

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2005/12/12/how_much_ram_do_you_really_needuk/

stevenmu

Opera manages it's memory much better than FF, you could try that when you find FF is eating too much.

CyberGhost

OK thanks guys, won't upgrade then, since yes, it's usually only FX that swallows my ram with out FX I usually use about 30-35% of it.

stevenmu wrote:

Opera manages it's memory much better than FF, you could try that when you find FF is eating too much.

Naah, I prefer just to restart it, extensions make it worth a little lag just thought 2GB would eliminate it.

Thanks again guys, thanks for the link bishopLEN, nice read!

bishopLEN

No bother, just might as well get this thought off my chest.

My opinion recently on performance is that a fast HDD can work bloody wonders!!

conzy

Yup, I had my system overclocked to 2.8ghz and it was still sluggish in windows.

Until i got a raptor;) Western Digital changed my life:D

CyberGhost

Can't get raptor, I have a laptop. I wish WD would release a mini raptor for laptops

nuttz

bishopLEN wrote:

My opinion recently on performance is that a fast HDD can work bloody wonders!!

I have to agree with that, because as we all know when windows runs out of RAM it uses the page file on the hard disk as RAM and because of access times, this results in your programs running a hell of a lot slower.

If I was in your position, I'd look at what extensions you have for firefox, there could be a memory leak in one of them.

So I'd back up your firefox profile in:

C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

Uninstall firefox, reinstall a fresh copy and install extensions one by one, verifing that you dont have a huge amount of memory usage with each extension installation.

You can always restore bookmarks etc. from the backup made.

bishopLEN

There are far more concise sites for this info but,

type about:config in the address bar in FF.

Type cache, and edit the values to see if it helps.

Stephen

I find that my system never goes over 1GB RAM usage except for when I'm playing games, which is pretty much why I installed 2GB. Azureus seems to be the most memory hungry desktop app i use, frequently using over 512MB of RAM, but that plus the memory used by whatever else I have open never peaks 1GB.

Auvers

Stephen wrote:

Azureus seems to be the most memory hungry desktop app i use, frequently using over 512MB of RAM,

Why dont you use uTorrent? I have 15 active torrents and its only using 17mb and the highest I have seen is in and around 30.

Stephen

uTorrent has 'issues' with nVidia firewall, which I use on my nforce 4 board.

frobisher

Opps, wrong place. *moved*

kippy

How to back up outlook files?
I have to give nack I computer I've been using and want to put all the emails onto a disc for my new computer. I've had a good look in outlook but just can't work out how to back up all my emails my contacts. Any tips?

Any chance you can start a new thread for it as it brings this one completely off topic.....Also have a read of the link in my sig so that you can provide more detail......

Back on topic....
I am running 1 gig ram in my desktop, dont do much gaming but use firefox....I never have any issues regarding memory so I think what someone suggested above about one of you extensions causing the trouble could be the issue....

art

CyberGhost wrote:

OK thanks guys, won't upgrade then, since yes, it's usually only FX that swallows my ram with out FX I usually use about 30-35% of it.

Naah, I prefer just to restart it, extensions make it worth a little lag just thought 2GB would eliminate it.

Thanks again guys, thanks for the link bishopLEN, nice read!

All you need to do is go "Tools -> Clear Private Data" (assuming cache is checked in the options here) to dramatically drop the RAM amount being used. You don't need a re-start.

DemonOfTheFall

CyberGhost wrote:

Can't get raptor, I have a laptop. I wish WD would release a mini raptor for laptops

There is one, or something similar. I think seagate might make it. Super expensive though...

transylman

A question relating to what you were saying.

I just went dual core but my 1gb of slow ram may be holding it back so i think I will upgrade. Money is limited so should I go for 1gb of the fastest ram or 2 gigs of a slower ram.

Thanks

nobodythere

It will only help with things that take up enormous amounts of memory. Firefox doesn't qualify, you could probably just do with cleaning up your system. For the love of god my first comp had 2mb ram and I was damn happy to have it at all!

The reasoning behind this is that windows uses memory paging which will use the hard drive as memory when it runs out. So memory-intensive things like gaming and video editing will eventually end up writing to the hard drive because there's no memory left. I personally don't think you'd notice much difference.

And transylman I think you should go for 1gb of the fastest. No point in having all that RAM if there's a major bottleneck between the CPU and memory.

art

I'd agree with "go with the fastest..." I've 1gb of fast memory - when winxp boots up it grabs up to 50% of that, which is no problem at all really. However, if I do consider the need to free memory, perhaps to play a particular game that I feel could use access to more memory, a good memory utility program can free up to 800MB for me... Then I go play the game in all that free memory space... no problem.

eg nice simple free one here: http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/system/maxmem.htm

projectmayhem

art wrote:

I'd agree with "go with the fastest..." I've 1gb of fast memory - when winxp boots up it grabs up to 50% of that, which is no problem at all really. However, if I do consider the need to free memory, perhaps to play a particular game that I feel could use access to more memory, a good memory utility program can free up to 800MB for me... Then I go play the game in all that free memory space... no problem.

eg nice simple free one here: http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/system/maxmem.htm

nifty little program there, i think it's a keeper

Sidane

I recently upgraded to 2 gigs and I have definitely noticed a performance increase, but I do fair amount of photoshop work and gaming so extra RAM was always going to give me a nice boost.

For day in day out desktop apps like Firefox I don't think an extra gig will make much, if any, difference to you.

Just a word of caution - some motherboards and/or cpus can have issues with running 4 DIMMS stable. I've an AMD 3500+ and had a lot of problems with this upgrade as the memory controller is on the cpu and is notorious for having problems with 4 DIMMS. Also, the RAM clock speed runs slower with 4.

I eventually got it working and although you're on an Intel system, it might be worth researching further to make sure you won't have similar issues. Search the memory forum on http://hardforum.com/ to see if other's with a similar system have had issues.

If it's 2x1gb DIMMS you'll be using then there won't be a problem.

CyberGhost

Thanks guys, will save me some money , SODimms cost a lot