Will more memory speed my computer up?

Question

At the moment i have a pc thats about 5+ years was running xp now runs on vista.

I always find im running out of memory on pc as i only have a 40 gig hardrive.

However these are the specs :

2ghz processor amd sempron 2800+

2x 256mb ram (upgradeable to 1 gig)

Graphics card geforce Fx5200

cd rewriter

etc

would it be better getting a better hardrive ie 300gig because it slows when i have very little memory left or will ram be better upgrading to 1 gig.

i have only just changed to vista home premium running the stats above and there has been no difference in peformance between xp and vista.

Any help would be apprceiated. (computer runs on ide devices)

Answer 1

Adding more RAM will probably benefit you more than the bigger hard drive.  The hard drives help comes from it accessing virutal memory faster, which is being used a lot because you dont have enough RAM.  So if you get more RAM less need for virtual memory, and that takes away some need for a faster disk.  I am really surprised you didnt notice a performance hit going from xp to vista.  It must have already been ungodly slow.

Answer 2

Hard drive has NOTHING to do with memory.

Get the 1gb of memory into your machine.  Frankly, 1gb will be marginal for decent performance, but it's the best your mobo can do.

You probably could use a bigger hd; check on Computer, right click your drive and check available space.  If you have less than 10Gb free, consider getting a bigger drive.

Answer 3

Yes it will speed your computer up but not your internet if thats what your thinking. It will speed up the loading of internet but not visiting websites thats due to your router

Answer 4

directly no it wont' but it will make it faster running more applications at once, as windows will not have to load as much into its swap file.

Answer 5

Most computer users have been trained that if you want more speed for your computer, then add more memory. Well, this is true, in certain circumstances. But for most of the times, it really is just bad files in your registry files. Corrupted or missing registry files can make your computer too slow.

The registry is a main part of your computer's Operating System. With time, as you use Windows and install and uninstall programs, your registry will get congested and full of errors. So your computer could slow down. So, if you can clean it up this problem can be solved.Sometimes you can speed computer up by 300%. To clean up registry,You can download a software called regsitry cleaner---Clean registry,remnant,corrupt files and temp files,history,cookies,etc.. This site:

http://www.speed-up-your-pc.com/index.ph...

lists top 5 registry cleaner,you can download and scan for free.

Good luck!

Answer 6

Vista's stated minimum requirement is 1G so you better upgrade the ram right away!

Answer 7

More RAM will reduce load times and likely make things feel faster. When your computer doesn't have access to enough memory it starts 'paging', when it does that, it uses the hard drive as memory. Hard drives are thousands of times slower than RAM.

Answer 8

It sounds like you have the minimum physical memory for Vista to

manage.applications that have a high computational function

also require more memory.

with a lower level of physical memory,windows uses 'virtual' memory

in the form of a file on your hard disk. both additional ram,

and a larger hard disk would certainly improve the performance of

your machine.

Answer 9

First of all you should have never switched to vista.

Second yes memory (RAM) will speed up your PC.

Answer 10

yes .. ofcourse.

Answer 11

Couple of things:

1.  Get a bigger hard drive.  Most of your 40 GB is being used just to hold the Operating system.  The rest of the hard drive is being accessed a lot and if you have little space left over (for moving files around) this can slow down your PC.

2.  You want to have the 1 GB your motherboard supports, especially when running Vista.  To be honest, if you are going to stick with Vista I would suggest upgrading your whole system because it runs best with 2 GB of RAM.

3.  Vista is a good program, but with your System you may want to consider going back to XP for best use, especially if you do any gaming at all.

Answer 12

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Wil...

Answer 13

The amount of hard drive space you have is mostly irrelevant when it comes to speed. If anything a bigger hard drive might slow it down a bit because it has more data to look through before it retrieves what you need. (Likely it would be so small a difference that you couldn't tell.) Honestly the fact that you are running Vista on only 512 MB of RAM is a bit scary. I would go back to XP or at least upgrade to 1 gig of RAM. (Honestly less than 2 gigs with vista is a bit shaky, but I suppose if it doesn't bother you then no worries.)

Also an FX5200 is HORRIBLE when it comes to the Vista Aero look. The glass desktop is rendered by your 3D card and well...a 5200 is like 12 years out dated. I understand that graphics cards are expensive but truly that might be slowing Vista way down.

Also a single core Sempron is not very powerful. The Sempron was the replacement for Duron. They are the lowest end Athlons.

I don't mean to criticize your PC so hard. I definitely understand they are expensive and, but you are about due for an update. Even things like web pages are so graphic intensive any more that it would be worth it. If you are looking for cheap and easy speed I would look into more ram, and a better graphics card. The hard drive will probably not help much if any.

Answer 14

Yes it would, but before you go down the road of spending cahs, try these things to speed up your computer and free up space and memory for free:

Go to the Start Menu> Run

Type in "appwiz.cpl"

Uninstall whatever you don't need.

Next, go to Start> Run and type in "msconfig".

Go to the Startup Tab and uncheck everything you don't want to startup. If you want, you can uncheck everything, and your anti-virus will still restart itself when you log on.

Now go to My Computer> Hard Drive> Documents and Settings> [USER NAME]> Local Settings> and delete everything inside the Temp Folder. (This is a hidden folder so you will need to have "show hidden files and folders" checked in Folder Options) All the files in this folder are just temporary files that your Internet stored for certain websites.

Next, you should install CCleaner, it will get rid of alot of temporary files on your computer. It also has a registry repair system, which is easily the best free one available on the Internet:

http://www.ccleaner.com/download

Another option is to try defragmenting your computer.

Go to the Start Menu and go to All Programs

Go to Accessories and System Tools.

Choose Disk Defragmenter and when it loads click defragment.

Next, go to Device Manger (Start> RightClick My Computer> Properties> Hardware Tab> Device Manager) and expand all listings. Now rightclick and update all drivers.

Another thing I would say is to compress your files if you already haven't.

Open My Computer and right click on your hard drive

Check the Compress Drive button and let it do it's thing.

Finally, make sure your Hard Drive doesn't have any bad sectors. Go to My Computer> Right Click Hard Drive> Properties> Tools Tab> Check Now> Check both boxes and Start. It will ask you to reboot, so reboot. This will clear out any bad sectors on your Hard Drive.

These are short-term solutions however. the easiest way is to just upgrade the RAM on your system, but at least the ways above are free.

If you want to see what type of RAM is supported by your computer, go to http://www.crucial.com and run the system scanner.

It will show what type of RAM, how much RAM, and answers any other questiong you might have while giving you all the details about you RAM capacity. You can also buy the RAM from there if you're interested.

Hope that helps.

Answer 15

More memory will speed you up. I use a Gb in mine. Your Nvidia PCI card has available ROM on it, but an audio card will suck a lot of ROM away. Use two matching memory sticks for best performance.  

Answer 16

Yes it will speed up your computer

Good choice

Answer 17

Yes...something called Ram (Random Access Memory) u should have atleast 2 gigs imn uf comp....tigerdirect.com