How can I benchmark/compare ram

rubadub

My friend has a dell E521 with 2x512mb of ram running XP, the E521 has 4 ram slots and is a dual-channel system. We are looking to get more ram. I can get a loan of 2x1GB and 2x2GB sticks to try in it before buying. Dells site says 1GB is the limit on individual sticks but plenty of people online have put 2GB ones in.

We want to get it to at least 2GB and do not want to fork out more money if there is not going to be a noticeable improvement, its mainly only used for browsing the internet, and microsoft office.

The cheapest option is probably to get another 2x512mb or 1x1gb. If both were the same price which is usually faster? e.g. does the dual-channel mean the 2 are better? If we go for the 1GB it does mean we could get a 1GB again if needed, while if we get 2x512 we would have to ditch some later. Or I could try the 2x512 and single 2GB, similarly allowing another matching 2GB at a later date (I know 32bit XP is limited to 4GB, but we might change)

Is there software that could give a benchmark score of various combinations. Also an idea of improvement for the typical use. e.g. if 2GB got a score of 2,000 and 4GB got a score of 10,000 you might think 4GB is way ahead, but in daily use you might not even notice the difference.

marco_polo

No need to benchmark really, just monitor typical memory usage and then buy the appropriate amount of RAM. Things like Single or dual channel / RAM speed etc will have very little impact on performance during mundane everyday usage like office, internet etc.

If the typical memory usage amounts to somewhere between 1-2 GB then there will be no discernible difference between getting 2GB and 4GB, however if memory usage often exceeds 2GB then the 4 GB of RAM will perform much better.

This is because what really slows down a computer with low ram is that it cannot keep all the running programs in physical memory at once, and so has to keep swapping memory 'pages' between RAM and the pagefile (on the harddisk), depending on which programs are active. It is the slowness of copying something back into physical memory from the pagefile, when it is needed again that causes the massive performance dips.

For example if you are low on memory, minimize your browser and open up word, many of the memory pages the browser was using will get booted out to the page file. When you then go to maximise the browser window again it will take ages to load, because the computer will have to write other pages out to disk to make space first, and then then read some the browser pages back in from disk.

ED E

Think you're over thinking it.

First off DDR2 is expensive, very much so for last gen gear. Its also a low enough spec machine, so I wouldnt go throwing a lot of money into it.

I cant know how much background you have, so in case you dont know: When you run out of ram, your OS has to run on into a page file on the hard drive. Speed wise for random read/writes a hdd is to ram as a pedestrian is to a ferrari. This is what causes average joe a big slow down, not the speed of the ram itself.

What you really want to care about is having enough RAM for what you want to do, not fast ram(except for high end gaming/video editing, then it'd make a big difference).

If your mobo supports 4GB, get that as cheap as you can IMO.

EDIT: Marco got there first :P

rubadub

Cheers, is there any need for logging software to show usage over time or is task manager good enough?

This site is saying a rule of thumb is if your "total" physical ram is more than the pagefile "commit" or "peak" value then you are OK.

http://www.whiz-tech.com/blog/2012/01/04/how-to-check-ram-on-win7-vista-xp-2000/

marco_polo

rubadub wrote: »

Cheers, is there any need for logging software to show usage over time or is task manager good enough?

This site is saying a rule of thumb is if your "total" physical ram is more than the pagefile "commit" or "peak" value then you are OK.

http://www.whiz-tech.com/blog/2012/01/04/how-to-check-ram-on-win7-vista-xp-2000/

I can't remenber if the XP task manager shows usage over time like 7 does but if not something like memtriage from the Server 2003 resource pack would work with XP and log usage, although the output is quite detailed.

The commit charge is a certainly a pretty good ballpark figure as it tracks the total amount of memory reserved by all running processes . So if this can all fit into physical RAM then pagefile usage will be very low.

TerrorFirmer

ED E wrote: »

Think you're over thinking it.

First off DDR2 is expensive, very much so for last gen gear. Its also a low enough spec machine, so I wouldnt go throwing a lot of money into it.

I cant know how much background you have, so in case you dont know: When you run out of ram, your OS has to run on into a page file on the hard drive. Speed wise for random read/writes a hdd is to ram as a pedestrian is to a ferrari. This is what causes average joe a big slow down, not the speed of the ram itself.

What you really want to care about is having enough RAM for what you want to do, not fast ram(except for high end gaming/video editing, then it'd make a big difference).

If your mobo supports 4GB, get that as cheap as you can IMO.

EDIT: Marco got there first :P

DDR2 is not really expensive anymore, it was for awhile but it's levelled off again. PC World have 2GB for 19.99 in my local, MemoryC have 1GB for 12 euro.

I would say 2GB in total is fine for general use. I have a secondary machine with XP and although I have 3GB in there now, I had 2GB for ages and we were even using it for games and it was relatively OK. I got a dual channel 1gb kit for something like 18 euro off MemoryC, hardly what I'd call throwing money at, or wasting money on, and old computer! You are definitely overthinking it. Throw in a cheap extra gig of ram and you'll be sorted.

ED E

Hmm, I was looking at 2GB sticks about 4 months ago and it was a chunk more than that.

rubadub

The DDR2 ram is going for next to nothing on ebay.

Is there any way to force it to make better use of the ram? I checked the usage on an old P4 with 2GB of ram on XP and lots is not in use. I expect a older PC just cannot make as much use of the ram since it is so slow anyway

I know people usually use that msconfig command to turn off applications starting up when it boots. Could I force commonly used programs in there on purpose, so they are loaded into ram in the background so they start up quickly if called upon?

Or are there other tweaks to make better use of the ram somehow. I have been seeing mention of caches that web browsers could use.

marco_polo

Not really Xp just has a fairly unsophisticated memory manager, what you describe is pretty much superfetch which was only introduced with Vista to te best of my knowledge.

The caching you mention is something called a RAM disk, but I am not sold on the benefits personally, although if it was to be of any muc benefit it would be in an older OS like XP over later incarnations of windows that have much better memory managers. You'd still need quite alot of extra ram over and above what you actually need in day to day to make it worthwhile though.

AMD have a decent free utility if it is something you want to experiment with.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/radeon-memory/Pages/ramdisk-overview.aspx

rubadub

I will have a go of that cheers. I have read quite a few people running windows 7 on older PCs with good results, saying its faster than XP.

I have tried Lubuntu on an old PC too and it was good. I know Lubuntu is suited to older PCs and uses very little ram, but now I am wondering if the old PC has lots of RAM would another distro be better suited.