Ram Upgrade Worth It?

Hey guys I have a dv6500t. I'm running vista 32-bit and a t7300 dual core. Currently I have 2 gigs of ram. Is it worth it for me to upgrade to 3 gigs? Will I see a performance difference?

 

hmm... with gaming with new games or intense things, yes, but with email and stuff... nope

 

K. I'm an engineering student so I'll be using some imaging software. I also play movies on an external display. Let me know whether or not this qualifies.

 

i believe that there will be some moderate increase in performance. i have the same config on a dv9500t and Vista is pretty slow.... it seems as if it runs out of RAM.

 

If you are doing video editing or gameing I would.

 

its worth it for gaming.

Note: if you're not on a tight budget, and you currently have one 2GB memory stick (instead of two 1GB sticks), have you considered going to 4GB RAM to optimize your performance?

 

4GB would be a waste as you're running 32 bit vista. 32bit can only see a max of 3.2GB RAM.

 

lol. missed the 32 bit OS part.

Orev is right.

 

I can't see 2GB -> 3GB being of any use for playing back movies. When your engineering related applications are in use how much memory are they using and how much memory is listed as "available" to the system? Gathering that info should help you sort out the answer. If you find your apps are struggling for memory and keep hitting the disk to keep up then yeah, more memory would be good. Also, if you haven't done so already, you can try toning down your Vista experience a little and maybe free up a bit of memory.

As for 4GB under a 32-bit OS, it's not always a waste. I have a C2D and P4 HT workstation at work with 4GB installed in each, 3.5GB reported by Windows. When running a bunch of virtual machines for testing/development that extra 500MB has come in handy.

 

If you're running VMware with 32bit windows as the host, I'm sorry to tell you but VMWare cannot see the "missing" 500MB. VMWare can only use whatever RAM is seen by the host OS. That 500MB is effectively not installed in the system.

The exception is if you are running XP and have PAE enabled, it *might* be able to see it, but the likelihood is also that you'll have stability problems.

 

Whenever I run my apps for school my comp is never too starved for memory, only when I'm using several at the same time. My current setup is 2 1gb sticks. I think 4gb might be overkill for a 32 bit os, but I could be wrong. I also already freed up a lot of memory by disabling/adjusting some of my services, startup programs, turned off user account control, got rid of aero glass, etc.

One quick question though. Where can I find my memory in the device manager?

 

orev was definitely right, and i just didn't read your first post carefully enough (sorry)

as the others have stated, your PC simply won't be able to use the extra RAM, so there's no point in getting it.

so, do this:
buy one 2GB stick of RAM and replace the 1GB stick under the keyboard.

 

OK, thanks.

 

You misunderstood.

The host OS is 32-bit - no special config or boot options enabled. With 4GB installed the host OS "sees" 3.5GB. Had I only installed 3GB then i'd have, well, ~3GB to work with. That's the "extra" ~500MB I mentioned, and it allows me to run 1-2 additional guests under VMWare.

 

Ah, yes, I see what you're saying. You must be running XP? In Vista 32bit is limited to 3.2GB, so it doesn't give you that much extra

 

I have 2GB installed in my laptop and I can see by memory monitor that it's hardly using just over a half of it in most resource-eating applications. The only use of 80%-90% of memory happens when I convert AVCHD video to any other format...But that's one of the most extreme processes available, I suppose. So thinking of adding 1GB more...

 

If you have intergrated video....4gig as in 2 matched 2gigs will help the video performance since you stay with dual channel.

My video performance with 3gig in Vista is 2.1....with 2gig or 4gig its 3.1. If I am playina MS HD video and I do the windows-tab key deal....with 3gig the video will stutter in the windows....with 2 or 4 gig the HD video is smooth as I do the windows-tab.

 

I run everyting under VM's, and have been considering going to XPx64 or Linux as a host (currently running Vista 64), just to get a bit of extra memory (and perhaps some extra CPU cycles) for more guests. While Vista sees all the memory, the video card sucks up quite a bit more than I would like it too.

FWIW, XPx64 as a guest runs like a rocket on my DV9500.

Joe