Ken
Fri Mar 14 12:16:01 PDT 2008
On Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:57:25 -0500, "New Orleans Novice"
<ReadingLearningWriting@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi ,
>
> Re: RAM Chips and Video Card
>
> How do you determine when to purchase more hardware in XP Home?
>
> The Kernel Memory shows 54256 total. The Kernel Memory Pages shows 33460
> while watching Foxnews Video:
http://www.foxnews.com/video2/
>
> The CPU 2.6 Ghz runs up to 75% - 100% most times while watching Video on IE
> 7.x.
>
> How do you determine when you need to add more RAM chips or a Video card?
> This PRESARIO S5100NX has 512RAM with onboard Video. The taskmgr shows
> Physical Memory: 515608. When watching VIDEO on IE 7.x the Available memory
> gets down to 65000.
>
> If I buy more hardware, Video Card with 256MB and more RAM; 1024 that should
> help it. But my main question is by watching TaskMgr how do you know when
> the Memory is used up so much you need to buy more RAM?
First, note that the memory being "used up" is never the issue.
Wanting to minimize the amount of memory Windows uses is a
counterproductive desire. Windows is designed to use all, or nearly
all, of your memory, all the time, and that's good not bad. Free
memory is wasted memory. You paid for it all and shouldn't want to see
any of it wasted.
Windows works hard to find a use for all the memory you have all the
time. For example if your apps don't need some of it, it will use that
part for caching, then give it back when your apps later need it. In
this way Windows keeps all your memory working for you all the time.
The issue with memory is minimizing the use (but don't mix up use with
just allocation) of the page file. If you are using the page file
substantially, that will negatively impact your performance. Page file
use comes about when you don't have enough RAM. The easiest way to
monitor page file use is with Bill James Page File Monitor. You can
get that at
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm
If that shows substantial page file use, adding more RAM will improve
your performance. If it's doesn't, adding more RAM will do very little
for you.
Regarding the video card, except for those playing computer games, the
speed of the video isn't terribly important. The amount of RAM on the
video card can be significant if you want to run at a higher
resolution or color depth than your present card supports. Otherwise a
new video card will do next to nothing for you.
--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
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