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Thread: RAM Upgrade?

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    Question RAM Upgrade?

    Ok.

    Occasionally when using say iTunes and browsing the internet at the same time my cpu usage goes up to 100%. It's quite annoying and causes the browser to crash sometimes.

    I have 512MB in at the moment, if i up this to 1Gig will this little problem be sorted?

    Cheers.

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    What CPU have you got? I have XP and my system uses 483MB on idle.

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    Thermoelectroceramicist redddraggon's Avatar
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    1GB is about the right amount for decent XP use. Definitely worth the cash increasing your RAM by about 512MB

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    Senior Member GSte's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by markymicro View Post
    I have XP and my system uses 483MB on idle.
    Off topic, but what you got running there? Antivirus using a lot?

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    Thermoelectroceramicist redddraggon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by GSte View Post
    Off topic, but what you got running there? Antivirus using a lot?
    To be fair I used about that much when I ran XP.

    Now I seem to be Idling at over 1GB with Vista!

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    I have mcafee and there is a few apps running in the back ground.

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    Quote Originally Posted by redddraggon View Post
    To be fair I used about that much when I ran XP.

    Now I seem to be Idling at over 1GB with Vista!
    They do say Vista is memory hungry.

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    Senior Member Pob255's Avatar
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    General rule of thumb, windows xp memory manager will steal half of available system memory and dump the rest into the page file (hard drive space turned into virtual memory)
    This behaviour cuts out around 350mb,
    ie
    if you have 512mb on memory windows will use about 250mb
    if you have 768mb on memory windows will use about 350mb
    if you have 1gb on memory windows will use about 350mb

    This is once you've just booted up and are not actually using any software.

    Upping your memory to 1gb should show some improvement, But your cpu should not be sitting at 100% if all you are doing is browseing the internet. :/

    My first suspession would be virus/trojan/malware, things to do first are:
    Virus scan: if you've not got some get your self a copy of AVG free edition, it's free
    Spyware scan: if you don't have spybot get yourself a copy of this as well, it's also free
    Defrag hard drive: while it shouldn't effect a cpu being constantly used it should improve overall performance.

    Also make sure you don't have a load of hamsterware
    Hamsterware is stuff that sits in your icon tray looking cute, but runs around in the background chewing up resources and it tends to breed
    itunes is an example, it runs about 4 programs in the background on startup which do nothing but decrease the loading times of itune and quicktime when you run them.
    Last edited by Pob255; 01-05-2007 at 03:14 AM.

  9. #9
    Banhammer in peace PeterB kalniel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by redddraggon View Post
    To be fair I used about that much when I ran XP.

    Now I seem to be Idling at over 1GB with Vista!
    Quote Originally Posted by markymicro View Post
    They do say Vista is memory hungry.
    'They' might be spreading a bit of misinformation Vista caches spare RAM, similar to Linux. That means rather than having RAM sitting around not being used, Vista and Linux actually make use of it, freeing it up instantly the moment an application requests more.

  10. #10
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    • chris123's system
      • Motherboard:
      • Abit NF7-s v2.0
      • CPU:
      • AMD 2600+
      • Memory:
      • 1 gig
      • Storage:
      • 1 x Maxtor 120 gig (ststem disk) , 1 x Western Digital 250 gig
      • Graphics card(s):
      • Ati 9800 pro
      • Case:
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    Cheers for the help.

    I've ordered an upgrade to 1gig. Should give me the improvement i need.

    Wasn't looking for dramatic improvement, just to make my machine run a little smoother.

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