Hello.

This is my first post so please bear with me.

My wife is an engineer and she uses AutoCAD both at her office and on our PC at home. She also enjoys playing games on our PC. I don't. I'm a sociologist and my specialty is theory. I use the PC to write, to do research, and for communication. My friend has suggested to me that one way to improve the performance of the PC is to upgrade the memory.

We have a Velocity Micro ProMagix PC. A friend of mine, who lives in Australia, gave me suggestions regarding what kind of PC to purchase as well as the details for software and associated hardware. The configurations is:

• Power Supply:550 Watt Antec® TRUE POWER 2.0 Quiet Power Supply with 120mm Smart Fan (SLI Certified by NVIDIA)

• Motherboard: Intel® D975XBXLKR 975X Chipset Motherboard with DDR2, PCI Express

• Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme Processor X6800 Duo 2.93

• Cooling: Velocity Micro™ LiquiCool 3™ Advanced Thermal Electric Cooling
• MEMORY DDR2 Memory 4096MB Corsair™ DDR2 PC5300 DDR667 (4x1024)

• Video Card: 320mb evga 8800gts superclocked

• Video Tuning Basic 3D Video Performance Tuning & Optimization

• TV Tuner ATI® TV Wonder Pro Remote Control Edition
• Audio x-fi extreme audio
• HardDrive 1 250GB Western Digital WD2500KS 7200rpm SATA/300, 16MB Cache

• Hard Drive 2 250GB Western Digital WD2500KS 7200rpm SATA/300, 16MB Cache [HD1 and HD2 as RAID 1 Mirrored drive]

[list][*]Optical Drive 1 16x Lite On® DVD+/-RW/CD-RW Dual Layer, Black Bezel[*]Optical Drive 2 16x DVD/48x CD-RW Lite On® Combo Drive, Black Bezel[*]Floppy Drive & Media Reader 8-in-1 Floppy Drive & Media Reader Combo, Black Bezel[*]Network Adapter Integrated 10/100/1000MBps Gigabit Ethernet Network Adapter[*]NetworkAdapter 2 or WiFi Adapter None

• FireWire 2 Integrated IEEE 1394 FireWire Ports, 1 front & 1 rear
• USB 2.0 Ports 6 USB 2.0 Ports, 2 front & 4 rear
• Operating System Windows® XP Home w/Service Pack 2 on original CD, Installed &
• Productivity Software Genuine Microsoft® Office 2007 Professional Edition

Velocity Micro suggests the appropriate memory upgrade to be, for example, Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 (PC26400). And when I take a look at newegg I see examples of this. BUT, with Corsair memory, for example, there are slight differences. For example, there's a Corsair PC26400. But I also see,

1. Corsair 6400C4D,
2. a Corsair 6400C5DHX,
3. a Corsair 6400C4PRO
4. etc.

I don't know what differences exist among these memory. Can anyone say if there are any substantive differences in terms of performance?

Thank you.

Hello Mrm3601 Welcome to PCHF

According to your specs, you already have 4 gigabytes of memory. And, you are using Windows XP. So there are two things to note...

One is, any 32-bit version of Windows XP or Vista will only address up to 3.12 gigs of memory. In order for Windows to show more than that, you would need to upgrade to the 64-bit version of Vista.

The second thing is....that is already a lot of memory for most purposes. In gaming, going with even more memory isn't going to make a difference. The highest end games even in Vista won't use more than 2 gigabytes of memory unless you have a bunch of programs running in the background. Which you shouldn't.

In Autocad, you may see performance increases with going with more memory. But it really depends on how massive the work is you're doing in Autocad.

The way to see how much memory is being used is...reboot your computer, don't open any additional programs except Autocad. In Autocad, open some work, then hit CTRL+ALT+DEL, click on the performance tab, then look at the physical memory section. If there is plenty available, then upgrading memory won't help you.

If you notice there is no available physical memory all the time, then I would suggest upgrading to Windows Vista 64-bit to be able to increase the amount of memory you can see and add. However, that is risky because 64-bit Windows is going to give you a lot of trouble with your software and hardware. A lot of programs/hardware may not be ready for a 64-bit OS.

Another thing to check would be your running processes. For a computer to run smoothly in Windows, there shouldn't be much running in the background. When you hit CTRL+ALT+DEL, check the processes tab, click the show processes for all users checkbox, and note how many processes are running in the background. Let me know how many you have running, then we can see if we can help you improve your performance a bit by preventing programs from starting up with Windows.

Hope that helps!

PC Help Forum.com:

Thank you for your informative reply. I do appreciate it.

There are a few "tweaks" that can improve performance-- though you should have enough power in that PC to launch the Space Shuttle... I do know that Autocad is pretty intense.

Black Viper can show you how to manage XP's propensity towards unnecessary background stuff that just wastes CPU cycles.

Black Viper's Operating System Guides


you probably handle enormous files regularly--
this can lead to heavy file-fragmentation... which can be a big performance drag
Personally I use Diskeeper Pro on my machine-- runs as needed when you are not using heavy resources... and keeps your PC.
It is one of my favorite software purchases...Defrags that drive in minutes the first time-- then keeps it that way. I actually have to check --to see if it's still running (always is)-- just because it works so "silently" in the background.

Defrag Automatically to Maximize Computer Performance and Reliability

Wadd:

Thank you again for your response. I have done as you have instructed and there are 56 "processes" running in the background.

My guess is that you'll say this is just too many. But if so, I have no idea which "processes" to turn off.

Please let me know if you would suggest that I list them for you.

Within a few days I appreciate PCHELPFORUM to be, indeed, a supportive environment, and an asset, for me, who, as I've said, knows next to nothing about personal computers.

OK-- I guess Black Viper's site has gone up to "SP3" now...

I do NOT recommend you install SP3 ... yet.
The reason being... many users are still having problems with SP3.

This link:

http://codecavalier.com/blackviper/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

will take you to an older version of BV's services guide... for Service Pack 2-- which is what you have.
if you scroll down the page-- and read a little of the guide-- then follow the "safe" listing... you can check what services are running... and see what you want to stop-- or leave on.

An easy way to tell what is running in the background, is to reboot your computer, let it go into Windows and wait for the desktop to completely finish loading.

When your computer is done loading Windows, look at the bottom right of the desktop in the taskbar. Each one of those little icons is a different program. If you hover the mouse over each of them and read what the tooltip says, it will tell you what program it is. If it doesn't show a tooltip, right click on it to bring up a menu, or double click on it to open the program's window.

Make a list of every program down there and list them off in your next post, then I can try to help you choose ones to stop if necessary and I will instruct you how to do so.

Really though, for your specs, 56 processes isn't bad. But depending on which programs are running, you may be able to free up some more resources.