Am I Memory Poor?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Xray
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Xray

Hello,
I have a 3 year old Dell Dimension 6400 with 512 mb of ram. I am running
a memory monitor that I just found on Yahoo Widgets. It often reports that I
have between 15% and 30% memory available. Am I in a position where things
are slowing down because of it? I know you computer savvy people know about
these things. I know I am running a lot of stuff, but except for the
Widgets, I am running things I feel that I want.

Thanks,

Xray
 
Xray said:
I have a 3 year old Dell Dimension 6400 with 512 mb of ram. I am
running a memory monitor that I just found on Yahoo Widgets. It often
reports that I have between 15% and 30% memory available. Am I in a
position where things are slowing down because of it?
Click to expand...


No. That's no problem at all.

Wanting to minimize the amount of memory Windows uses is a counterproductive
desire. Windows is designed to use all, or nearly all, of your memory, all
the time, and that's good not bad. Free memory is wasted memory. You paid
for it all and shouldn't want to see any of it wasted.

Windows works hard to find a use for all the memory you have all the time.
For example if your apps don't need some of it, it will use that part for
caching, then give it back when your apps later need it. In this way Windows
keeps all your memory working for you all the time.
 
Ken,
Thank you very much. Obviously I am learning as I go. I was imagining
having to upgrade to more memory. What would I expect to see reported if I
upgraded to 1 gb of memory?
Xray
 
Xray said:
Ken,
Thank you very much. Obviously I am learning as I go. I was
imagining having to upgrade to more memory. What would I expect to
see reported if I upgraded to 1 gb of memory?
Click to expand...


You're welcome. Glad to help. You'd probably see much the same--very little
free.

Do not expect more memory to automatically improve performance. That's true
only up to a point, and depending on what apps you run, you may already be
past that point with 512MB.

How much you can make effective use of 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, and that depends on what apps you run. Most people
running a typical range of business applications find that somewhere around
256-384MB works well, others need 512MB. 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_public/winxp_tweaks/ and download
WinXP-2K_Pagefile.zip and monitor your pagefile usage. That should give you
a good idea of whether more memory can help, and if so, how much more.
 
Ken,
Thank you again for your insight. Thanks for putting in so much time to
tell me about memory things. I hope that others may also read this thread,
as it is very useful.

Regards,

Xray
 
Xray said:
Ken,
Thank you again for your insight. Thanks for putting in so much
time to tell me about memory things. I hope that others may also read
this thread, as it is very useful.
Click to expand...


You're welcome. Glad to help.
 
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