More RAM will help but only if you have more than you need, a memory manager can help make better use of RAM, and also consider upgrading your cache.
To determine how much RAM you need, find out how much RAM is required by each program your using at one time, add these together than add the size of the files you will open. Double that total and thats how much RAM you need. However you can never have to much RAM so buy whatever you can afford.
e.g., I play music, use the internet and use MS Word, + Windows XP, Virus protection and a few other background programs. Thats about 450MB of RAM being used on my PC, so I need about 1GB.
You need to understand the difference between the megabytes or MB of RAM and MB of Hard Disk (herein called HD) space.
Think of your favourite teacher back when you were in school, what they looked like and their name, that information would NOW be in your conscious memory. That’s like the RAM. But before you thought about it that information was stored in your brains long-term memory. That’s like your HD. Every time you save something, download a game or install a program it gets saved to your HD. The files and programs on your hard drive do not affect the speed of the computer until you access them. (Except if you’re running low on space, but that’s a different problem.) When you access a file, a picture of someone or a program the computer loads it into ‘conscious’ memory or RAM so that you can use it. This is where speed is affected
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Let’s say you are writing an article that requires a lot of research sources from your library, but you have a small desk. The desk is so small that you can only fit a writing pad and a large book.
You’re getting some information from the book on your desk, you write it in your pad. Now you need another book. So you have to swap this book with another. Because of space you must get up from your desk put the current book away than get the next book. Next your need another book or a previous book. This swapping of books goes on every time you want to refer to different information. This takes a lot of time getting up and swapping books.
The problem isn’t the office or that you can’t process the information. The problem is the size of you desk. So you get a bigger desk, one that can hold many large books. You put all the books you need on your desk and open them to the right page. Now all the information you need is within arms reach and you can get to them without leaving your desk. This speeds up your work.
Here the desk is your work space, memory or RAM. The library is the Hard Drive.
When you have very little RAM the computer creates a file on your HD called a swap-file (AKA page file or virtual memory). It stores your background task in the swap file and the things you’re currently seeing and doing in the RAM. This allows your computer to open larger files; however the hard drive is much slower than RAM. In speed terms the HD is like a twin engine propeller plane and RAM is like a fighter jet when it comes to getting things done. Every time you need new information the computer first saves the current information to the HD to clear the memory than accesses the new information in the swap file.
If you have more RAM than you need though the computer will still create the swap file as a precaution but it doesn’t have to use it since the workspace in RAM is more than enough. Because everything is in RAM it can work very fast.
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Something else that helps speed up your PC is Level-1 and Level-2 cache. It’s like RAM but much faster. If RAM where a fighter Jet Level 1 & 2 cache would be the Star Ship Voyager. The computer puts information the CPU uses a lot here, a lot meaning several times a milliseconds. L1 Cache used to be on the main board right near the CPU so it could have fast access and you could install more of it. Than Intel began putting it right on the CPU because this was even faster; less distance to travel for information. So now L2 cache is or was put on the main board.
However, cache is very expensive. Fortunately you don’t need much of it. 64kb, 125kb, 256kb, 512kb 1MB or 2MB are the amounts that it came in, compared to 2000MB of RAM. What you can do is check with your PC manufacturer and see if your cache is upgradable than buy what you can afford. Expect to pay a bit.
If your PC has Intel’s low end CPU chances are it came with a smaller amount of Cache. You can buy the same speed of CPU with more cache and this will improve performance by light years. Do not buy a faster CPU with the same amount or less cache. That would be like getting an assistant to swap books off the shelf for you. You still have to wait till they get back with the next book before you can use it.
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Lastly, sometimes you open a program and close it but the program doesn’t release the memory. This is called a memory leak. It’s like not putting the books away you no longer need. Eventually you run out of space. You could shut down the computer and start again or you could install a memory manager. I bought MemTurbo; you can find it here http://www.memturbo.com/. This and other programs like it will automatically clear the memory for you of stuff not being used giving you access to as much RAM as it can.