Will another gig of ram fix this issue?

I'm having a problem with my A8Jm. When running large programs (like World of Warcraft, or the Vanguard SOH beta) my hard drive will often be working like *crazy* after I close the programs for several minutes. If I exit from WOW and try to open a firefox window, it can take 15-20 seconds to open (I counted) while the hard drive is chugging away at a frantic pace doing something. As I said, this will persist for several minutes after the large program is closed. It is also very apparent when I alt+tab from WOW (or other large programs).

It's clear looking at the "Performance" tab of the Task Manager that I sometimes only have 75mb of RAM available when running WOW (less when I was running VG SOH, it was sometimes as low as 5-10mb), so my guess is that the computer is forced to put stuff on the relatively slow 5400rpm hard drive instead of storing it in memory, causing the long delays.

I would just like some reassurance that adding another gig of RAM will likely cure this issue. Also any specific advice on which kind? I was looking at this: Corsair Value Select DDR2 533 (PC2 4200)

 

Yes it should help. I have 2GB in both my laptop and desktop. Both play Vanguard SOH just fine. Going from 1GB to 2GB made a night and day difference for alt-tabbing out of games.

 

If there is only 75mb left in available RAM -- of course you need more!! How big is your system page file (maybe increasing this will also help)? Also, you have a 5400RPM HD it will obviously be slower, and make more sounds, than something faster. I think an upgrade to a faster HDD in addition to RAM = best playing experience!

 

Yea adding another gig will definitely help, also defrag your HDD. As far as what ram to get there are a few places to find out: this is a good one just follow the 3 step process to find out what type of ram (pc4200 pc5300 etc) your notebook uses and then go from there.
http://www.crucial.com/store/listmfgr.asp?cat=RAM

 

Yeah, any time you're using over say 60-70% of your ram, performance is going to take a dive. Now although a 7200rpm hard drive will increase your read and write times, 5400rpm isn't "slow". In most cases you'd see more of a performance increase off the bat with the hard drive upgrade, but in your case I think the ram should be priority number one because you're using more than you should already. IF you want to then also upgrade to a 7200rpm, it certainly wouldn't hurt.

 

I had the exact same issue with Battlefield 2 until yesterday when I added another gig of RAM. I say go for it.

~ Brett

 

There you go..... hope that helps.

 

Just a quick update. Adding a gig of RAM completely resolved the issues I was having.

Thanks folks.

 

Knew it would - glad to hear it.

~ Brett