Hi there .
I Bought a Desktop Computer a couple of years ago with only 512MB of RAM, someone told me that upgrading your RAM was a great IDEA, better performance, etc, anyways I upgraded my computer to 1.49 GB Of RAM and i saw nothing really changed , (or it doesn't look like) I wonder why?. For that time I had a hard drive of 40 GB and I also decided to Upgrade so I bought an Extra hard drive which is 200 GB, then my computer got even slower,. I work most of the time with VIDEO editing and 3D animation. Recently i am working in a VIDEO editing project and the computer is just slow which does not allow me to work properly,.. My solution i think is if I buy more RAM, (2GB more, which is gonna give me 3.49 GB) do you guys think that could work? or how can I do to make my computer run faster???How can I get better performance and what do I need??, please help me......What Can I do????


My Operating system is XP Home edition
SP 2
Pentium (R) 4CPU
2.93 GHZ, 1.49 GB of RAM

Thank you all

Hi Tugo,

Welcome to PCHF.

You will only notice a performance increase after adding RAM, is if your were actually using that RAM in the first place. Once all the RAM is used up, temporary data is stored on the HDD instead, which is of course slower.

One thing I would recommend if your video editing, is to make sure your HDD is at least 7200rpm.

Another thing to consider is that Windows XP will not recognise any more than 3gb of RAM. I personally have 2gb and rarely use more than approx 600mb. Double check your needs and how they will benifit you before making these kind of purchases. To find out for example, how much RAM your using, press [CTRL] + [ALT] + [DEL], and click on the Performance tab. From here you will see how much RAM you have available when you have all your applications up and running.

I don't really understand why so many people believe that upgrading their RAM will increase performance. As I said, you will only notice a difference if you were running out of memory in the first place. Most noticable increases in performance is faster motherboard, CPU and HDD. Use the Performance monitor to check what is going on with your system. If your CPU usage is high when your not doing anything on your PC, then there's obviously some program using those resources.

I hope this helps.

Hello
Thank you for the Info. I was going o buy more RAM than I needed, but it was very nice of you to help me..
Thank you very much..

Sorry. One Question..
How can I check my HDD???

Hi Tugo,

It's normally written on the front of the HDD. However, sometimes this information can be accessed via software, depending on what HDD you have.

Download this little utility: SIW Download

Scroll down to Hardware - Storage Devices. In the right hand pane select your HDD. If the information is available, you will see a property called "Rotational Speed".

Something else I thought I would mention also, you will notice a difference between IDE and SATA hard drives. If your motherboard can support SATA, your much better off with one of these, as SATA can transfer data at a much higher speed. Have a look on your motherboard for these ports:

Hello..
How Can I thank you????

That was a great information, very useful...
Thanks a lot..

Any time Tugo, you already have thanked me, this is enough.

Let us know if you have any further questions. Will mark this one as answered.