How do you know if more memory will help?

[NeilF]

If you have say 512mb of ram, how can you tell if your machine is actually using more than that (generally)?

In 'Task Manager', if you look at 'Physical Memory', is the 'Total' showing you this? ie: If it's less than 512mb, then basically you have more memory (at that moment) than the computer needs?

 

[bilston]

Id think with 512mb of ram, if you increased it to just 1Gig, you'd notice a difference in XP regardless of what you do on the PC. For games and stuff, going up to 2gig you would notice an improvement.

What is being done on said PC?

 

[NeilF]

Id think with 512mb of ram, if you increased it to just 1Gig, you'd notice a difference in XP regardless of what you do on the PC. For games and stuff, going up to 2gig you would notice an improvement.

What is being done on said PC?

The machine in question is just a server - Torrents, printing, email, word etc...

But I'm more just interested in the concept TBH.

If the machine says it's 'Total' memory usage is under 512mb, then that means (surely?) the 512mb stick I have in the machine still isn't being fully used? (At that moment)

 

[Tetras]

You'll know if you don't have enough RAM, the hard drive will access a lot meaning that programs take a long time to open and close and ALT-Tabbing is slow.

In XP a lot of hard drive access during Windows tasks is almost always due to use of virtual memory.

If you look at how much the processes in task manager are using you will get a good idea whether the apps are memory hungry or not.

 

[Olibubble]

Your machine will never fully use 100% of that 512Mb stick. Windows will page memory to disk before that happens.

Windows is very conservative in that it always likes to have quite a bit of free RAM at all times. So even if you halved the memory to 256Mb and ran the machine the same way it is run currently, windows would still never use 256Mb. Your machine would run a lot slower as windows will use virtual memory (your hard drive) before it ever fills the 256Mb.

Therefore even though it appears that you are not using the full 512Mb, you may actually be using more!

If you really want to know a bit more, and want to monitor more than your memory usage, here is a good place to start.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx

 

[NeilF]

Your machine will never fully use 100% of that 512Mb stick. Windows will page memory to disk before that happens.

Windows is very conservative in that it always likes to have quite a bit of free RAM at all times. So even if you halved the memory to 256Mb and ran the machine the same way it is run currently, windows would still never use 256Mb. Your machine would run a lot slower as windows will use virtual memory (your hard drive) before it ever fills the 256Mb.

Therefore even though it appears that you are not using the full 512Mb, you may actually be using more!

If you really want to know a bit more, and want to monitor more than your memory usage, here is a good place to start.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx

Ahhh!

So on this machine at the moment for example:-
PHYSICAL MEMORY
Total: 523760
Available: 44568
System Cache: 125036

KERNAL MEMORY
Total: 88008
Paged: 75192
Nonpaged: 12816

What's that actually saying? Nearly all the memory stick is full, but how much is being used in total (memory and disk)?

 

[PhoenixUK]

The more RAM you got the faster the stuff loads and the more multitasking you can do.

For example if you download a torrent, have few windows open, office open, few messengers and lets say copy some files in background 512mb might be slow already and switching between windows will take long but with lets say 1GB it will be smooth and fast.

Even tho XP32 might not be using too much of memory, I have found increase every single time when going from 256 to 512, then to 1GB, to 2GB and even when going from 2 to 4GB.

 

[mk17]

run perfmon.exe and take a look at Memory->Page Faults/sec. to see the extent of paging. If its high, add more ram.