1 gig or 512 of memory?

[ajrettke]

I curently have one stick of 512 and was wondering if I would even notice adding another 512 stick. I am running win2k pro and don't plan on moving over to XP any time soon.

I'd like to hear from people who have used both 512 and 1 gig, thanks.

[JudgeDredd]

What do you do on your comp? Game, surf, image editing, etc?

[Emericana]

if you are a video editor or use photoshop a lot you will notice a difference. however if you are into entertainment stuff mostly like the majority of the people in this forum, with win2k you will not notice any differnece with the extra ram. in win xp you will though.

[ajrettke]

multitasking and gaming...I use photoshop once in a blue moon and it takes me longer to find out how to do stuff then for anything my computer needs to do....

[Henry Rollins II]

I read on one memory manufacturers homepage(don´t remember which one thou) that 768 Mb would be the ideal for W2000 systems. They had performance bars showing performance from 128 Mb up to 1 Gb. In these charts, systems with 1Gb performed worse than those with 768 Mb.

I have two memory setups that I am going to try out in my new system, a 512 Mb non-ecc and a 1 Gb reg-ecc. I will post the difference between the two options later.

regards,
Henry

[Nico3k]

ive used 256, 512, 768... seen my dads 1 gig and 3 gig.
i can tell you, you will notice alot if you go from 256>512, notice a very little bit from 512>768, but you wont notice anything from 768 UP

keep your 512 :D

[eletrium]

Um, this is not pertaining to his particular setup because he is not running on an nForce board, but with the nForce chipsets, because they are dual bank architecture, wouldn't it be in the users best interest to fill as many banks as possible?

For a person reading this, if you have an nForce board, I have been told to fill up the slots even with sicks of 128 if possible.

[Nico3k]

hmmmmm... i thought the chipset and the # of sticks wouldnt really play a major role.........

[popadel]

Windows XP has a memory dump so in gaming anything over 256 is useless. I have been using it since Sep 2001. For non video related it will use the whole memory available. And in case you think its crazy, get one of the software monitoring progs, to record mem activity and dump frequency.

[TheDS]

Memory for an nforce board should be bought in pairs so you can take advantage of the 128 bit transfers. If you get a board with only 3 slots, DO NOT put anything in the third slot; you'll slow it down; you'll turn off the 128 bit transfers, which are the whole point of getting nforce. I don't know if 4 sticks (identical is always best) would operate properly; supposedly nforce2 will let you do this, but wait for a REAL review, and not hype previews.

XP and W2k are both NT-based, so extra RAM should be useful, though if you're never running more than a few things at a time, it might never get used. There are studies that too much RAM will slow you down, but no one can agree on what the *best* amount is. Getting a little more than you need is fine. Getting a lot more than you need is just encouraging MS and everyone else to program even more sloppily than they do now.

[termight9]

I have XP with 512 MB of RAM and at any given moment when only a few programs are running, the system has about 38 or 390 MB free.

[Jerky]

Originally posted by ATC9001
I curently have one stick of 512 and was wondering if I would even notice adding another 512 stick. I am running win2k pro and don't plan on moving over to XP any time soon.

I'd like to hear from people who have used both 512 and 1 gig, thanks. personaly from my sexperience in this matter i'd say go for it. add the memory, as the saying goes.... "you can never have to much memory" i was running on a 900mhz t-bird and 256 sdram and found that when i went to play nolf the framerates would skip no matter how much i tweaked it. so i added ram until i got to 768 (like henry rollins II said) and poof! frames were silky smooth and nolf ran great.
i say go for it as long as its good quality ram and either compatible with, with the other ram sticks you have, or is the exact same type and brand.
there;s my 2 cents. :)

[HaywirE]

Well, 1gb is nice.. 512MB Of Sufficent

[jman999]

For most people 512 MB is fine. However if yopu see that what you are doing is consyming a lot of memory and your comp is slowing down, buy some more.

[HaywirE]

Yeah, i believe 512 is sufficent.

1Gb is kinda overkill, 768 Max.

[termight9]

I would upgrade to 1 GB eventually. But not right now, with memory prices so high and all.

[Random]

Well I've been following this thread and said what the hell so picked up another 256M stick of crucial. With a coupon at their site it came to $65! That's cheaper per stick than the first 512M (2x256) I bought when prices were just picking up off their lows.

So I'll see whether that extra 256 makes a difference. :)

[Matthew1001]

I am getting a little more memory 256 MBs and I am going to add it to my 512 MBs. I am getting into video editing.

[AZN]

i open photoshop once in awhile, but i game everyday. I noticed a big difference from 256 to 512. but adding 1 more 256 to make 768 made no difference for me. maybe if i opened up alot of stuff at once and never closed them sure. but for the most part i saw no difference. get the extra 512 if u want, use it for a ram drive.

[Southern]

NO1 brings me to an interesting question.Using a ram drive for page file.If by disableing page file in XP,would that have the same affect as directing page file to a ram drive.I tried disableing page file with 512 rdram but the hard drives could not keep up using raid 0 and they began to overheat and chatter.So i am considering 1024 and trying again.Any ideas?

[larva]

The swapfile is just using hard drive space to simulate more ram. If you have enough ram to operate without using virtual memory, the os won't use it. Adding more ram will lessen your reliance on virtual memory, providing all the performance boost possible. If you take some of your newfound ram and make a ram drive with it, you force the OS to dip into virtual memory because you have deprived it of the ram you used to make your ramdrive. Sure the virtual memory will be faster residing on the ramdrive, but you wouldn't need to be using the virtual memory if the OS had access to the full amount of ram.

regards,
larva

[Southern]

Sure larva, i know the principle of the page file.My question was,and is.Will disabling the page file to Xp have the same affect as directing to a ram drive?

[Southern]

Questions seeking answers!

[Random]

There are I think several lengthy and heated discussions of swap/paging file use and abuse mainly focused on win2k but applicable to XP over at 2CPU forums in the Windows 2000 forum.

Check it out.

http://forums.2cpu.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=1

Hope the link works but its easy to find there anyway.

[Southern]

tnx random.:beer: