Impact of doubling up RAM on an old Laptop

polkatese

I have a Compaq Presario V6000 with 1GB of RAM, that I have installed Windows 7 home. The Windows memory Experience Index is 4.5 and the total EI is 3.0 (bottleneck is in the Video).

By doubling the RAM to max (2GB), would I notice speed increase?

I have installed MS Office 2010, and it takes longer to load, unlike previous version of MS Office (the fastest being 2003, and 2007 was also pretty fast too).

TIA

mdaudioguy

In my experience, RAM upgrades haven't made anything faster. They've only allowed me to run more programs simultaneously. The bottleneck is likely your processor. This is assuming your RAM meets the minimum requirements for your OS, and it appears to in your case.

polkatese

thanks for your feedback mdaudioguy..

nadams

I'd go for it. You'd see a speed improvement in 7 going from 1gb to 2gb. I recommend no less than 2 gb for Win 7. Also, you would see a nice speed boost from a new 7200rpm hard drive. Stock laptop drives are typically notoriously slow compared to what you can buy from Newegg now.

nadams

Here's the ram I would recommend (assuming you have 2x512 in there now, and not 1x1gb) - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148161

And the HD - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136280

xj4094dg

nadams wrote: »

I'd go for it. You'd see a speed improvement in 7 going from 1gb to 2gb. I recommend no less than 2 gb for Win 7. Also, you would see a nice speed boost from a new 7200rpm hard drive. Stock laptop drives are typically notoriously slow compared to what you can buy from Newegg now.

+1. Memory and storage is cheap and well worth it. 2gb minimum RAM. I just bought a WD SCORPIO 500gb 7200 internal drive for about $74.00 (comes with a 5 year warranty).

Machine runs great for being almost 3 years old.

polkatese

ok. thanks.

DSkip, yeah, that's the case (2X1GB PC2-5300 200 pin). I am waiting for a RAM deal from Cokeandvanilla...:)

cokewithvanilla

polkatese wrote: »

ok. thanks.

DSkip, yeah, that's the case (2X1GB PC2-5300 200 pin). I am waiting for a RAM deal from Cokeandvanilla...:)

hey hey don't put me on the line here! lol. I only said *if* I happen to come across it.

to be honest, if you're running W7 I would have to recommend 4 gigs of ram. Windows 7 utilizes ram better than the previous versions of windows. For example, right now my computer at idle is using over 1 gig of ram. W7 will utilize a certain % of the ram that you have almost regardless of the fact that you are or aren't running software. When I start bringing up Photoshop and others, I can get up to 3 gig usage. It's not like a computer with 1 gig can't do the same thing with less ram, it's just windows will use the ram that you give it.

I find that 4 gigs of ram is a comfortable place to sit with W7, and it is a relatively cheap upgrade.

polkatese

IMO, Windows 7 is leaps and bound ahead of Vista. Not even a contest.

John, I just found on fleabay some used Samsung PC2-5300 for $26 + $5 shipping. So, I am giving it a go. I wish I could go 4GB, but this Compaq is spec'ed to a max of 2GB RAM (5 years old, it's on borrowed time the fact that it's still humming). Every other machine/laptops in the house all have 4GB RAM and run WIN7 wonderfully.

cokewithvanilla

Ah, I see. Good to hear you found something

polkatese

Thanks for your help John. The next time you're about to unload an i5 laptop (in the next one year), do keep me in mind.

nadams

Just FYI- My Win7 laptop that I'm on right now has 2gb of RAM. Sitting idle with one IE window open, and resource monitor shows physical memory at 41% used.

polkatese

nadams, you're saying that even 2GB is not enough? that's high utilization of RAM, but that isn't surprising. I can tell you that if I still have Vista, I would already bought a new laptop.

nadams

No, this laptop with 2gb runs just fine... I use it daily as my main computer at work. I guess I was more getting at, I essentially use 1gb right out of the box, so you should see an improvement bumping to 2gb.

nadams

At least you're not running an Exchange server





Yep, that's 16gb of memory.... gone.

Exchange is one of those things that will just take whatever you give it, though.

Bobsama

NT6 (Vista, Se7en) needs 2+GB RAM to run smoothly long-term. On my Se7en box, I've got 6GB RAM. At this very moment, I'm using 34% of the RAM--a bit over 2GB of 6GB. By the 1-week-uptime mark, I'm usually up to 50% or so RAM usage.

polkatese

Gotcha Nadams. I hope with 2GB it would let my laptop speed to graduate from a mopet to a Yugo..:)

Bob, is that an indication of memory leak? (at one time, Windows NT Server was notorius in needing to be bounced because of memory leak issue).

mdaudioguy

polkatese wrote: »

Gotcha Nadams. I hope with 2GB it would let my laptop speed to graduate from a mopet to a Yugo..:)

Make sure you let us know how much of an increase you notice and whether you think it was worth your investment. I'm still convinced that the biggest roadblock is the processor on your old laptop. Of course, I've spent untold $$ just to fill all the memory slots in many PCs over the years. Usually, I can't tell much of a difference, except that I sleep better at night.

Bobsama

polkatese wrote: »

Gotcha Nadams. I hope with 2GB it would let my laptop speed to graduate from a mopet to a Yugo..:)

Bob, is that an indication of memory leak? (at one time, Windows NT Server was notorius in needing to be bounced because of memory leak issue).

No, it's not. It's actually NT6's prefetcher. It's much better at utilizing RAM. It always gives me a kick when people try RAM cleaners and the like--they end up thrashing their hard drive 5 minutes later so that OS's prefetchers can load up what it was forced to forget.

I leave my computer running 24/7/365 (with the exception of thunderstorms and when I'm moving or it's simply too hot to run) at 100% load running World Community Grid cancer-related projects. I usually reboot every 2-4 weeks, though I've gone longer. Usually because of accumulated updates--Windows, Java, Adobe, et cetera.

John30_30

cokewithvanilla wrote: »

hey hey don't put me on the line here! lol. I only said *if* I happen to come across it.

to be honest, if you're running W7 I would have to recommend 4 gigs of ram. Windows 7 utilizes ram better than the previous versions of windows. For example, right now my computer at idle is using over 1 gig of ram. W7 will utilize a certain % of the ram that you have almost regardless of the fact that you are or aren't running software. When I start bringing up Photoshop and others, I can get up to 3 gig usage. It's not like a computer with 1 gig can't do the same thing with less ram, it's just windows will use the ram that you give it.

I find that 4 gigs of ram is a comfortable place to sit with W7, and it is a relatively cheap upgrade.

Guys, don't make me do all the heavy lifting here. Specs I found say that laptop only supports 2 gigs max *. Dunno about bios upgrades.

Presario V6000 specs

*Which ought to be fine. A RAM upgrade is always the cheapest, bestest performance enhancer.

cokewithvanilla

John30_30 wrote: »

Guys, don't make me do all the heavy lifting here. Specs I found say that laptop only supports 2 gigs max. Dunno about bios upgrades.

Presario V6000 specs

I'm glad you googled that. You also could have read a few posts up where he said that himself. Don't worry yourself with the 'heavy lifting', just read the thread

John30_30

cokewithvanilla wrote: »

I'm glad you googled that. You also could have read a few posts up where he said that himself. Don't worry yourself with the 'heavy lifting', just read the thread

Uggggh, my back!

polkatese

So I installed the additional memory that bring it up to 2GB max.

MS Outlook 2010 loading time is cut in half, the laptop definitely becomes more spiffy. Performance index of RAM went up from 4.5 to 5.2, the rest are the same. However, the overall PI is still at 3.0 since Graphics Gaming score is still a paltry 3.0.

Overall I am pretty happy though, an expense of $32.00 that is well worthed.

Thanks everyone!