I'd like to make my current PC faster....

[Ron in Regina]

Ron do you want an address as to where those 2 512 chips should be sent, I know somebody that has two open slots for that type of ram. No sense throwing it out.

Sure! Just PM it to me.

 

[MHz]

Any suggestions on what would make a good bench mark to see what gains I make with that extra gig. Something that could be matched to a test you do before the upgrade to your system.

With 4Gb I would be tempted to off the virtual ram if no big graphic files were being worked on.

This test would seem to be just what I was looking for.
http://www.ehow.com/how_5060778_determine-need-ram-computer.html

 

[MHz]

Using this from the above link on a machine with 2GB ram (this one I'm on which is slower than yours) I'm using about 25% when I just opened a few more programs than I would normally run. That means 2B is with the 'acceptable range. I could add 1GB more and that would get me to the lower limit. I don't have access to the other machine at the moment and the demands on it would be a little more than I do so 2gb might not bring it down to 25% unless they unload all the needless software (like anti-virus) when running the one they use that hogs lots of memory.

Most of your programs are running checks on the data on your hard-drive and that is where the bottleneck is if you find yourself 'waiting' for those programs to finish. More ram is not going to speed up a program that is reading data from the disks.

A site like Major Geeks has disk utilities like defrag that actually moves the data on the disks rather than XP which just writes a new 'index' an the data is still scattered all over the physical disl. That site is freeware and shareware so the programs usually fully functional for 14 days and for reordering and compacting the disk to 'new like condition' is possible without spending any money at all. On that same site is a registry program called regcleaner that searches the registry for obsolete entries and cleaning that out speeds the system up. Some other programs even compress the registry to make it as small and as efficient as possible, again at no cost to the user.

If you don't know how to do this you coulds give control to somebody you trust, like Dex, and they could log onto your desktop (via VPN) and do those tasks for you the first time and most only have to be done one time unless you are somebody who likes to test out lots of different software.

1. 9
   Now open all the programs that you typically have open at once when you're pretty busy. So probably open your e-mail program, a few web pages, and whatever other software you use often. Now re-check the available ram compared to the total ram and see how empty it is. If it's under 25% empty now, you'll probably want to consider getting more ram. If it's 15%, your situation is pretty critical and you absolutely need more ram! You may also want to consider opening the most memory intensive programs you use like a video or photo editor and see what the ram is at then. If that causes the memory to be mostly full, you'd still benefit from installing more but it's a bit more optional since more may not be needed to run lesser program like an internet browser and your e-mail.

According to the above just a 1gb stick would pout you in the 25% range. Your OP said you were cheap and that is the cheapest solution.

If you want faster buy a reconditioned tower that already has the faster motherboard and then start jacking up the ram and video and sound that can take advantage of the much faster hard-drive access speeds.

There used to be a shareware prog called Si-soft Sandra that gave a rating for your overall system compared to other makes that are similar. You could use that as a 'base' and compare to what you can get (just the tower) for under $500 or whatever budget you set. If you only get a 5% increase in speed for an extra $500 then you should save your money.

I used to decide it was time to upgrade my tower based on if it was waiting for input from me or if I was waiting for it to compute the information I was giving it.

Back to the point of 'contention', I'm still not sure why there is such a reluctance to allow mixing ram that is the same speed the only difference is if the stick has the chips on one side only or on both sides. In your case the two existing sticks could be run as a 'matched pair' and the double sided could be in the other color slot.

That saves you $120 and if it doesn't speed things up enough you need a newer system and put the $120 towards that.

http://www.computertrends.com/product-zoom.asp?productId=102126&categoryid=27
​

 

[DurkaDurka]

Any suggestions on what would make a good bench mark to see what gains I make with that extra gig. Something that could be matched to a test you do before the upgrade to your system.

With 4Gb I would be tempted to off the virtual ram if no big graphic files were being worked on.

This test would seem to be just what I was looking for.
How to Determine If You Need More RAM in Your Computer | eHow.com

SisoftSandra, it's a benchmarking utility. It will measure cpu, memory throughput, gpu, hard drive etc etc and then compare to the vast library of system configurations commonly available.

Edit: Oops, looks like you are already aware of sisoft sandra.

 

[DaSleeper]

On my other machine, when doing video transcoding, because I'm still running Norton on it (2 months left on the licence, then AVG is going on it) I have to shut it down if I want to get anywhere...
With this new PC....Running AVG...it don't seem to make a difference on or off....maybe it's because that notebook came out of the box with 4 gigs of ram....

 

[Ron in Regina]

OK...before doing anything, & with my current RAM of 2x512 sticks, & with
four windows open to different sites, & Outlook Express open...using a site
that Andem posted a while back ( Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test )...

Here's where my CP is at right now:

I'll do this again after increasing the RAM. Then again after having some
superfluous processes are turned off, then again after going to a different
processor (either a Dual Core or a Core 2 Duo) which I'm told is also a
fairly inexpensive upgrade.

 

[DaSleeper]

Ron: I'm not a techie....all I know about PCs is from trial and error, so the real techies in this forum will probably disagree with me.
I have run those tests in the past with the three PCs in the house and while this one I'm using now is a dual core processor, fully loaded...I get virtualy the same results on all three and even my IPod gets the same result...
So I have come to the conclusion that more memory only affects the inner workings of your PC and not so much the speed of the internet.

The thing that I found that makes a difference is when I'm uploading videos to youtube...my wife complains that it slows down her Pogo games;-)
I must be hogging all the bandwith:lol:
One techie here in town told me that if I went in and tweaked the packets size that my PC sends and received I could get better speed on the internet...but I'm not about to go play in there.....I think I did...years ago when on the road, I would be using my cell phone as a modem... but now I wouldn't even know where to look for the adjustment:lol:

 

[MHz]

This test is just for your network connection, ram won't change the numbers.

Ron: I'm not a techie....all I know about PCs is from trial and error, so the real techies in this forum will probably disagree with me.
I have run those tests in the past with the three PCs in the house and while this one I'm using now is a dual core processor, fully loaded...I get virtualy the same results on all three and even my IPod gets the same result...
So I have come to the conclusion that more memory only affects the inner workings of your PC and not so much the speed of the internet.

The thing that I found that makes a difference is when I'm uploading videos to youtube...my wife complains that it slows down her Pogo games;-)
I must be hogging all the bandwith:lol:
One techie here in town told me that if I went in and tweaked the packets size that my PC sends and received I could get better speed on the internet...but I'm not about to go play in there.....I think I did...years ago when on the road, I would be using my cell phone as a modem... but now I wouldn't even know where to look for the adjustment:lol:

The easy way is to use a program that does the adjustments for you.
Foxfire has an addon that speed up it's connections.

SpeedGuide.net :: TCP Optimizer / Downloads

this is my score after adding the optimizer settings.

 

[DaSleeper]

This test is just for your network connection, ram won't change the numbers.

The easy way is to use a program that does the adjustments for you.
Foxfire has an addon that speed up it's connections.

SpeedGuide.net :: TCP Optimizer / Downloads

this is my score after adding the optimizer settings.

Thanks for the link, I'll keep it for further reference, although I did try the add-on for firefox and I didn't find much difference...at the time I did the tweaking I was using windows '98....Now I think the newer versions of windows do it automaticaly...Two of my PCs are "Acer" and they have a built in program that does it.
Let's see if this works....this is my speed to-day...It varies a lot from day to day....


Edit: the distance for me is actualy 500 miles because my IP shows me in New Liskeard while I'm actually 200 miles north of that in Kapuskasing:smile:

You should see the results I get at Tim Horton, Their server is in Vancouver......somewhat faster than dial-up but not all the time:lol:

 

[Ron in Regina]

This test is just for your network connection, ram won't change the numbers.

Ahhhh....OK.

OK...In my travels today, I took my computer in for the increased RAM.

Ron, I would check with your motherboard manual to see if it can support 4GB of RAM. You might be able to physically install 4GB, whether it can utilize all 4GB is another story.

If you know the chipset in your PC, you can compare to this site here, which will show you the maximum RAM supported. http://www.memoryupgrade.pro/intel-chipset-maximum-memory1.html

Chipsets for the Pentium D vary from a max of 2GB-4GB, make sure yours isn't one of the 2GB versions before plunking down for 4GB.

Weirdly, though the manual says I can bump it to 4GB of RAM...only 2GB
will make any difference. Something to do with the configuration of the
Mother Board, & Windows...& things divided by two. Whatever....

So what did your computer guy say Ron?

One 2gb stick for $60 or toss the 1gb you have and ass $120 worth of new ram where that 4th gb sped up your tasks by 0.003 % on average over the initial 2gb rise that sped things up 2.087x on average?

Anyway...I can bump my Computer up to 2GB's and not 4GB's...and weirder
(to me anyway) is that it's less expensive to buy 2 1GB sticks than it is to
buy 2 more 512whatever sticks...so I'll be installing 2 GB RAM Sticks, but
they don't have them in stock at the 3200something speed and are ordering
these in for me. These are some of the first DDR2 that hit the market, &
speeds (carried in regular stock) are now faster than that it seems.

Now, due to the configuration of the Motherboard and something to do with
Windows XP, jumping up from the Processor I have to a Dual Core or
Duo 2 Core Processor will actually make my computer run slower.
It has something to do with how the information communicates
with each other....so these guys talked themselves out of the
sale of a Duo 2 Core Processor & two more 2GB's of
RAM than the ones I'll be purchasing.

They where slow, & I was the only customer there, so they also ran through
my processes and turned a handful of them off. The ones that they
recognized anyway, & many of those ran right from the Start-Up.

So I get to wait a week or so to double the RAM in my computer, which is
really no hardship at all. In the mean time...I can play with many of the options
put forth in this Thread by others more knowledgeable on this subject than I am.

 

[MHz]

The 512 chips are no longer manufactured, the 1gb chip has the same chip, just twice as many 'chips' on the 1gb stick. Both sides compared to one side, as you will see.

 

[MHz]

It ends up that other PC that uses the same DDR2 ram that you use got a bigger upgrade than 1gb of ram would provide. Since that one is used to play some of the 'modern games' it needs at lest two gb ram. It has 3 now, I plugged a 2gb stick in one of the 2 free slots. It now says 3gb and it passes the mem test from the bios. The vid card only had 128 mb video ram, the games need 1gb video ram these days so that also got upgraded. At some point I could put one more stick of 1gb ram to bring it up to 4 but at that time I'm sure it will be mobo upgrade to something that improves the CPU to a quad core or higher. Poking along the net with my system doesn't need that much in those areas and a quad core would be a waste of money as it would be worked very hard. So keep your ram and put in 1 stick of any variety that fits the slot, have them test it and there is your low cost up-grade.
The system that got upgraded will get the old card back when it gets retired and the vid-card will probably go into the tower that replaces it. That old one can then be given to somebody who can use it for web surfing.

Thanks for the offer though.