Should i get more ram?

[Motoko Morigi]

Hello there.
ATM my pc has 4 GB RAM, and runing in "mid-high"  quality.

getting 8 GB will help me?

My specs are:

 

Asus N61jQ

Windows 7 Home Premium

I7, 1.6Ghz
4Gb Ram
Amd radeon 5730

 

thanks in advance

[Rhys Goode]

4 G is a bit thin, in my experience. If money were no object, go for the ram.

For me, with 4 G, I had a lot of memory swapping from RAM to disk, especially with chat enabled.  I could see it with the windows Resource Monitor.  This would pick up if I had other programs running in the background.  And it translated directly into lag.

 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

wow 4 GB, all i got is 504 MB of ram, I guess thats why the log in window says I can log in but I probably won't be happy

[Frawmusl]

Yep! Ram goes a long way in SL, And if you get the chance to upgrade your graphics card to a compatible one that would go a far way too.

http://www.crucial.com/

That site can help you find compatible parts, make sure you check what kind of ram you are getting before you blindly go to the store! Certain mobos = certain ram!

[solstyse]

ram for that laptop is only $40. Not a bad investment, in my opinion. I was happy going from 4 to 6 gigs. but 8 for you is so cheap you may as well.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

---

Motoko Morigi wrote:

 

getting 8 GB will help me?

---

Look in your task manager while playing SL. (right click the taskbar or hit ctrl-alt-del).

On the bottom you'll see "Physical memory"  and a percentage. If this percentage is near or at (can it even be over?) 100%, getting extra RAM will give you a real boost. If it's not, getting more RAM will do you no good.

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

Are you running 32-bit Windows or 64-bit?

Briefly, while there have been work-around on the 32-bit limit since the last century, Windows will not use them, and you're limited to 4GB for total memory addresses. Your video card will use a lump of the 4GB. An individual Windows app is limited to 2GB of RAM. One or two things such as RAM Drives can bypass the Windows limit with their driver, and give you a very fast swap file.

There are a few things that software writers can do which will allow a 32-bit program to access 4GB of memory under 64bit Windows. I don't know which viewers allow this. The slplugin.exe system is another way of easily using more RAM.

Conclusion: switch to 64-bit Windows and you will have more RAM available on any 4GB system. Then, if your motherboard supports more RAM, add some.

I cannot install more than 4GB on my system, and I am seriously thinking about switching to 64-bit because of the competition for memory addresses between RAM and video card. When you figure in what Windows needs, that would make a big difference to what would be available for the Viewer and other user software. Keeping voice turned off is also a good idea.

 

[Motoko Morigi]

thanks! the manager says i'm using 76% of my ram...so i guess i'm going for it!

[solstyse]

http://www.amazon.com/N61JQ-X1-16-Inch-Versatile-Entertainment-Laptop/dp/B00352LQZS Is that your laptop? I would still get the ram due to it's low price. After all, the laptop retails for almost a grand. An extra $40 to make youself happier with it is a small price in comparison.  if you got that one I have a few other suggestions.

A review of this laptop by a customer who seemed objective listed tons of bloatware as one of the "cons" to buying this computer. He reported 80 running processes running at initial bootup, using 33% of his memory. That's quite a bit. A free fix is to uninstall any programs that came factory installed, and remove those you will use only occasionally from your startup folder.The operating system will still use some ram, but it should be nowhere near 33% after you do that.

[Motoko Morigi]

yep..that is it.

thanks for the tip, i will give it a try