Noticeable difference in increasing from 2GB RAM?

I'm by no means a "power" computer user, though I use my HP all the time for fairly low intensity tasks such as word processing, internet, and playing DVDs. Would I see any real difference in increasing my RAM from 2GB?

Thanks,
Bill

 

I can honestly say I have not seen much of a difference upgrading my RAM from 2GB to 3GB (actual 4GB but using 32bit OS)

Weird thing I have noticed is that the Idle memory is higher also. With 2GB of RAM it idled at around 700MB-800MB when nothing was open, now with 3GB it idles over 1GB-1.15GB

 

I personally did not notice a real difference between my stock 2GB and the 3GB I have now, with the exception of a few benchmark points.....

 

Probably not.

 

Unless you're planning on using Vista x64, the most you'll be upgrading to is 3GB of RAM which won't make a huge difference. Perhaps in extreme multitasking performance will improve, but in your situation I don't see the need for an upgrade.

 

I had wondered if an upgrade would do much. I can't go to 64-bit because an academic software package I rely upon, Nota Bene, can handle only 32-bit at present, and I don't know that 64-bit processing would do anything for me anyway.

Thanks all for your insight.

Bill

 

I guess I'm the exception to this one. I actually did notice a difference when upgrading from 2GB to 3GB. I even started up a game (The Sims 2 and its expansions) and Vista told me I was low on memory and the game needed to be shut down. I've never seen that message with 3GB, though.

 

From my experience between 2GB and 3GB I think that with 3GB it definately helps. (32bit Vista).
I bought a new DV96xx (forget the exact model) 17" with Turion 2.2 Ghz and 2GB RAM. nvidia 8400m if I recall right. Also had obsolete HD-DVD rom!

I install and use Google earth with no issue on XP with old laptop or desktops. With the new laptop I had maybe a couple things going on, IE open. I opened Google earth and as I scroll/zoomed in to a town it was taking forever to load up. I checked Performance in Task Manager and it was using all my 2GB of RAM. Then it froze and closed!

Anyway, due to some quirks I decided very quickly to change it for a DV9774 that came with 3GB RAM, pretty much identicle, has the BluRay iinstead and Centrino duo 2.0 Ghz. nvidia 8600M GS. I have absolutely no trouble with Google earth on this. I don't game.

Plus I also read somewhere about the more RAM installed allows Windows to allocate more to itself, so at idle you will see more RAM used if you have 3 or 4GB than if you had 2GB.

 

Thats weird because I use to play the exact same game on my laptop and it ran just fine. I only have 1gb ram and 1.83cpu duo.

 

I know. I only saw that message one time when I started up TS2 and boy did it tick me off. But then again, life was sweet then because now my brand new HP is in the shop for repairs on the LCD. (Day 32)

 

I've actually been wondering about this too so thanks for the clarification.

Quick Question: I heard Photoshop (CS3) is CPU and RAM dependant. So would I see a good amount of performance increase if i upgraded to 3gb or little to none ?

 

Considering the tasks you're doing, you'll be hard pressed to notice a difference.

Spyder: Try running a search on that using the search function in the notebookreview.com banner up top. I'm pretty sure I remember a thread or something on that a while back.