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    upgrade from 1gb to 2gb ram, but not much improvement

    Discussion in 'Asus' started by glasscup, Sep 29, 2007.

  1. glasscup

    glasscup Notebook Enthusiast

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    I purchased two 1gb G.Skill ram from newegg (this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231069 ) and I just installed both into my A8JP, but when I boot up, it still takes a couple minutes to fully boot up. When i launch applications such as Office 2007 or even IE, I don't see a noticeable improvement compared to when I had the stock 1 gb.

    What should I do? The computer says there are 2gb of ram. btw, I'm running winxp MCE. Should I just do a clean install from oem discs? Thanks in advance.
     
    glasscup, Sep 29, 2007
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  2. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    More RAM won't make a difference to the start-up and load times. The difference will show when you have lots of RAM-hungry applications open and switch between them.

    You may be able to optimise your existing start-up. Reinstallation will help clear the rubbish, but the other way to improve start-up performance is to use a faster HDD.

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Sep 29, 2007
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  3. JCMS

    JCMS Notebook Prophet

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    1GB->2GB is pretty much minimal in XP.

    You will see improvements mainly in late 2006-2007 games
     
    JCMS, Sep 29, 2007
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  4. E.B.E.

    E.B.E. NBR Procrastinator

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    E.B.E., Sep 29, 2007
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  5. glasscup

    glasscup Notebook Enthusiast

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    thanks all. this is kind of disappointing. if i knew there wasn't going to be much of an improvement, i would've saved myself 70 bucks. the guide seems pretty useful. i'm reading it now. thanks
     
    glasscup, Sep 29, 2007
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  6. E.B.E.

    E.B.E. NBR Procrastinator

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    E.B.E., Sep 29, 2007
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  7. glasscup

    glasscup Notebook Enthusiast

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    Thanks again for the guide. It's really helpful. I never knew about the FAT and NTFS cluster stuff.

    I also had some other questions. How come doubling the memory doesn't improve much? On my old desktop, I upgraded from 128mb to 256mb and it was a significant improvement. I'm going to buy a faster hard drive next. 5400 rpm for my asus a8jp HDD is really slow. I'm gonna have to wait until those SSD are actually affordable.
     
    glasscup, Sep 29, 2007
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  8. Rosemarycane

    Rosemarycane Notebook Consultant

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    I think it does depend on the number of programs you have open and also which programs you are running.

    For me, I noticed a HUGE difference in 1 vs. 2 gigs of memory with
    Battlefield2. The same with Quake 4. It just depends on what your running at the time. I didn't notice a difference in startup times either.
     
    Rosemarycane, Sep 30, 2007
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  9. eugenes

    eugenes Notebook Evangelist

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    Depending on what you use your notebook for, investing in SSD may or may not improve performance. The reason you saw a significant improvement from 128mb to 256mb was because you were most likely short of ram already and was swapping to disk with 128mb. If you run enough programs with 1gb to swap to disk as well, upgrading to 2gb would give you a noticible boost too.
     
    eugenes, Sep 30, 2007
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  10. knightingmagic

    knightingmagic Notebook Deity

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    2GB is past the sweet spot of memory in XP. If you were running BF2142 or Vista, then it'd be a noticable boost.
     
    knightingmagic, Sep 30, 2007
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  11. E.B.E.

    E.B.E. NBR Procrastinator

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    The performance isn't linear in the amount of memory. 128 was FAR below what XP needed to run, so the boost of the extra 128 was felt significantly.

    However, 1GB is far above what most XP setups need, so adding an extra 1GB was not very useful.
     
    E.B.E., Sep 30, 2007
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  12. glasscup

    glasscup Notebook Enthusiast

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    Ohhh... everyone here is so helpful. Hmmm... I just obtained a copy of Battlefield 2142. I think I might reinstall the 1gb and play it and then upgrade to 2gb again for kicks :)
     
    glasscup, Sep 30, 2007
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  13. E.B.E.

    E.B.E. NBR Procrastinator

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    Heheh you have a lot of time on your hands. :)
     
    E.B.E., Sep 30, 2007
    #13