512MB + 256 MB or 512MB + 512MB RAM

Hi all,

This is a general question. My mother board supports DDR1 RAM.

Currently I have
512 MB + 256 MB RAM

Would the difference be significant if I upgrade it to 512 MB + 512 MB?

1GB DDR1 RAM is out of my budget.

Waiting for your suggestions

 

which operating system do you have? I bet windows xp, right?

it depends on the task you're doing with your pc. I don't that you'll see a big difference in office or web browsing

 

If you are using like 768mb of memory on your current configuration, than upgrading to 1024mb or 1GB of memory will increase performance.

K-TRON

 

I have XP & UBUNTU 8.10 in dual boot. Most of the time I use UBUNTU.
>>upgrading to 1024mb or 1GB of memory will increase performance.
I know that i will improve performance but by how much? Is it worth to upgrade?

for e.g.
When I upgraded from 256MB to 768MB on XP. I could clearly experience significant difference while opening the folders & browsing machine. Would the difference be as clear as that in this case also.

Kindly elaborate.

 

What's your budget? 1gb DDR is only about $35 and 512mb is around $15.

 

Save some pennies and put in the max your mobo will allow.
In addition to what GamingACU said you can get 4GB of RAM for $40-$45 on sale. 2GB for slightly less. Adding RAM is the easiest way to boost performance.

 

What notebook are we talking about anyway? Give us some system specs. Laptop model, processor, graphics, etc.

 

If you're only doing basic stuff, upgrading from 768 to 1GB can give you at the most 1% performance gain.

 

You can check your memory usage in task manager when using Windows. Or just load it up to your worst case and see if there's much swapping to page file when you're switching between programs. I'm sure you can work out something similar for Ubuntu.

 

And where did that statistic come from?

 

Just a number I made up because the speed improvement is so small. I could've easily picked a number like 0.5%.

Anyways.. on windows xp or ubuntu, if you have extra ram, it will not get used. E.g. if you're currently using 300MB of ram, but you have 500MB installed. If you upgraded your ram to 750MB, it'll make little or no difference at all.

 

I wouldn't use anything less than 1gb in xp...

 

Don't mind me, jackluo, I'm just a when it comes to stuff like that. Making up statistics and what not. Nothing personal.

Incidentally, did you know that 80% of all quoted statistics are made up?

 

Did you know what I quoted isn't a statistic?
All I can say for sure is that the performance gain is very very small if you haven't already utilized the available ram before upgrade in Ubuntu and XP. As for the percentage of performance difference, it varies with system. But the difference is never significant.

 

I ran xp on 256mb ram back in the day and it wasn't slow at all, of course I kept the computer very clear of malware and unnecessary background processes, and multi-tasking was a no-no. Lots of ram would increase multitasking ability by a lot. Ram is cheap if you order it online, I'd just max out what your mobo can take, you can never have too much ram. Its very easy to install too.

 

He said he's on a budget and he cannot afford 1gb DDR sodimm.

 

Wow!! Great to see lot of replies
>>Anyways.. on windows xp or ubuntu, if you have extra ram, it will not get used. E.g. if >>you're currently using 300MB of ram, but you have 500MB installed. If you upgraded >>your >ram to 750MB, it'll make little or no difference at all.
But in my case it made significant difference in time for opening file & folders when I upgraded from 256MB to 758MB on WinXP.

So to conclude from the discussions. It is not worth to upgrade from 758MB to 1GB as upgrading won't give you significant difference. Kindly reply if anyone thinks it is not so.

One more thing on which I would like to have your opinion is about future Linux Distros. As new & new versions are developed the minimum memory requirement is increasing. e.g. On XP you can work even with 256MB of RAM whereas Vista requires 1GB.
If I don't upgrade to 1GB will it be future proof long enough (for LINUX usage). I know that there are some distros available with minimal requirements but I don't want to restrict only to those distros. I want my system to be future proof for most (if not all) LINUX distros.

 

It depends on use. More ram can make the system run a lot smoother if you have several things going on. Are you comonly waiting for things that seem slow and is the HDD constantly being accessed? Then ram is a good way to go.

 

It would be great if you give us your current ram ussage when running the task that you do everyday or most of the time.