hi
I have an hp dv9408ca, which has one GB of memory. Recently I've been considering upgrading this. Im told (by free -m) that 875 MB of ram is available to the system (the go 6150 seems to take a reasonable amount, I have it set to take 128mb of the system's memory. I find that reducing that amount causes some not very smooth scrolling in abiword and pretty much every other program that has something scrollable. people with discrete graphics - shut up!).
right now, about 440MB are consumed by cached things, and Im told that 110MB are free.
I mainly run linux on this computer, it has vista home premium, or ultimate, or what ever, I can't remember right now.

here's my question: if I upgraded to two or three, or even four GB of ram, do you think I'll notice (me, not some kind of bench mark, or something) a performance increase in linux?
usually, the most resource demanding tasks I do include compile things (kernels, and programs), browse the internet, and rip and encode music and sometimes video.
I can't imagine requiring a lot of memory for programs since I decided trying to run windows server 2003 in vmware on this computer wasn't my best idea, or unless I was editing or viewing a gigantic picture, for some reason, and I have ~900 MB of swap space on top of physical memory, so that shouldn't be too big a deal, if I decide to.

oh, and I don't have any negative feelings toward people with discrete graphics.

thank you in advance for any responses and your patience

simply put, yes you would see a increase in performance in Vista.

i cant speak for Linux as i dont run it to know its characteristics.

my personal rule of thumb is, any computer running Vista, doesnt matter what flavor, needs a bare minimun of 2 gigs. thats just run to the OS and do normal everyday stuff and light gaming. 4 gigs for gaming rigs, but for a 32 bit OS you wont see anything above 4 gigs, you would need to switch to the 64 bit version.

if you dont mind spending the extra cash, buy 2 x 2 gig sticks. buy matching pairs to run in dual channel. otherwise if money is a concern, 2x1gig dual channel will work.

Quote: Originally Posted by TCG_Modder my personal rule of thumb is, any computer running Vista, doesnt matter what flavor, needs a bare minimun of 2 gigs. thats just run to the OS and do normal everyday stuff and light gaming. 4 gigs for gaming rigs, but for a 32 bit OS you wont see anything above 4 gigs, you would need to switch to the 64 bit version. if you dont mind spending the extra cash, buy 2 x 2 gig sticks. buy matching pairs to run in dual channel. otherwise if money is a concern, 2x1gig dual channel will work.

I have a 32 bit version of Vista, and I don't think I could think of something to do to consume 4 GB of memory, so if I do decide to upgrade, it would probably be 2 GB. perhapse if I do decide to upgrade I'll try to make sure I get ram I could return.

thanks for your reply

I upgraded to 2 sticks of 1 GB. I think extreme tux racer might run a bit faster now, but that's all I've noticed so far