RAM upgrade needed?

I was thinking if I should upgrade my RAM from 4 gb to 8 gb will this improve my speed even though my CPU is at 1 ghz? :confused2:

 

What CPU do you have? Full system specs? Or at least a laptop model number? You only really need more RAM if your applications are starved for memory, and few will be if you've already got 4GB. Digging around in your profile you have this notebook?

Depending on what exactly you do with your notebook either the (1) CPU is too weak or (2) the hard drive is too slow. There isn't much you can do about the CPU, unfortunately, and not even more RAM is going to speed processing up. A solid state drive (SSD) should improve loading times and hard drive throughput, which will definitely help the system feel snappier...but it also is not going to fix a 1GHz CPU.

 

Windows 7 Home Prem. , Amd C50 1ghz , Amd Radeon 6350, 4 Gb Ddr3

 

I just edited my post (#2) after looking at your profile. Might want to refresh the page. What sort of applications do you run on your system? What about it is slow?

 

I mostly run games and if im not running games I usually install updates download things and have about 5-10 open TABS on my browser to do some research.

Some of the games run at a sad 7 fps I think this is due to my RAM.

 

Ram plays a very small role in gaming. It is possible that you are running out of RAM, but the main reason for those measly fps is the GPU which is weak to start with and the 1GHz CPU that doesn't help either. You could take a look at how much RAM you use with the task manager when you're browsing, but i'd bet it won't go close to 4GB.

 

Is it possible for a AMD c-50 to be upgraded?

 

I haven't found any info if the CPU was BGA soldered or not, but in any case, your upgrade options would be pretty limited and not really worth it from a performance, economical and technical point of view.

There is also the not so little matter of your video card which can't be replaced at all and is very weak so that some recent games will play sub 30fps even at the lowest possible settings.

 

The only upgrade option, if it is an option at all, is the C-60. There is no different between the C-50 and C-60 save for a turbo boost that isn't going to help your gaming.

For internet browsing and general office use, your laptop is definitely fine. The problem here is gaming, and there is nothing you are going to be able to do to that notebook to improve gaming aside from dialing down the resolution and graphics options to bring your framerates up.

 

My wife has the C-60 version of the Aspire One 722, and it certainly is much faster with an SSD and 8GB of RAM.

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The SSD is definitely the cause there. 8GB of RAM means nothing if your applications don't need more than 4GB (believe me, most don't).

 

Indeed.
Unless you are working in RAM intensive software such as 3d Studio Max (which can load large textures into the memory) like me, then 8GB is not going to necessarily show an advantage during gaming or processing - and even in RAM intensive software, it serves more to prevent slowdowns and let your system do the work in an optimal manner.

As for Shemmy... yes, I would definitely say that most of the speed was gained there from the SSD.
8GB CAN help in Windows 7 x64 since the OS seems to 'feel' comfy with 4-6GB - although it can also mean that it can just cache more things and possibly improve snappiness in certain cases.

I can say that it's nice to see my OS working a bit better with 8GB.
It can be noticeable when having LOTS of tabs open at once (it can approach 4GB rather fast).

 

She may not need it, but id never use less than 4GB with 64 bit Windows. Besides, she can more or less run her netbook from memory. Considering that she usually just sleeps instead of shutting down, it's a nice buffer. And yeah, the SSD is great ;-)

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Tijo is right, adding another 4 gigs of ram will not have much impact to games...also, 4 gigs of ram should be enough to have 5-10 tabs open. I have 5 tabs open right now AND i have a local IBM Websphere server running on my computer with several users accessing it and i'm ONLY using 3gigs of ram. There is no way you are using more than 3 gigs while in a game or while you have 5-10 tabs open.

If you are running more than 4 gigs of ram, and you're only doing 5-10 tabs, then i'd open up taskmanager and look at what processes you have running...maybe clean things up a little or uninstall unnecessary apps

if you do decide to add more ram, make sure you are running a 64 bit OS as a 32bit OS will can only address up to 4 gigs so your money will be wasted