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Laptop running slow with Vista & 1gb RAM

post #1 of 4
11/17/08 at 1:23pm
Thread Starter 
My laptop is running very slow with Visa and 1gb of RAM. It's an Acer Aspire 5100 with room for gigs of RAM. I am going to upgrade to 2 gigs, but I am wondering if going all the way to 4 gigs would be worth my while.
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post #2 of 4
11/17/08 at 1:57pm
Vista will use all the RAM you give it and it will improve all the way up to 4GB. The problem is of course that the 32 bit version of Vista which you probably have can't address more than 4GB and due to overhead issues it will only give you access to between 3 and 3.5GB of that 4GB wasting the rest.

Ideally if you could install 3GB you wouldn't have to worry about the waste associated with 4GB but you would sacrifice the memory's ability to use dual channel features. Dual channel doen't have a huge impact on performance with Intel Core 2 systems but since your Acer has an Athlon 64 it will have a more significant impact and I would recommend a pair of 2GB matched memory sticks rather than a mismatched pair. In order to get dual channel memory performance you must insert memory sticks in matched pairs. This will improve the memory's performance.

Upgrading from 1GB to 2GB would also significantly improve your performance in Vista and it depends on if your current configuration is a single 1GB stick of RAM or a pair of 512MB sticks as to how you should go about upgrading.

RAM is cheap and it's probably the best upgrade you can make in an old notebook.
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post #3 of 4
11/17/08 at 2:13pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Woody87 View Post
Vista will use all the RAM you give it and it will improve all the way up to 4GB. The problem is of course that the 32 bit version of Vista which you probably have can't address more than 4GB and due to overhead issues it will only give you access to between 3 and 3.5GB of that 4GB wasting the rest.

Ideally if you could install 3GB you wouldn't have to worry about the waste associated with 4GB but you would sacrifice the memory's ability to use dual channel features. Dual channel doen't have a huge impact on performance with Intel Core 2 systems but since your Acer has an Athlon 64 it will have a more significant impact and I would recommend a pair of 2GB matched memory sticks rather than a mismatched pair. In order to get dual channel memory performance you must insert memory sticks in matched pairs. This will improve the memory's performance.

Upgrading from 1GB to 2GB would also significantly improve your performance in Vista and it depends on if your current configuration is a single 1GB stick of RAM or a pair of 512MB sticks as to how you should go about upgrading.

RAM is cheap and it's probably the best upgrade you can make in an old notebook.
It's currently running 1 stick of 1 gig. I was thinking about adding another 1 gig stick, but now I don't know if I should just go all the way to 4 gigs.
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post #4 of 4
11/17/08 at 2:26pm
If you can find a second stick that exactly matches the specs (timings) of your current stick that would work well and be your cheapest option.

4GB might work better depending on how many apps you like to run at the same time and how demanding they are. Vista will run more efficiently on 4GB than it will on 2GB but it may not be something you notice.

It depends on how much you wish to spend and how good a deal you can find on memory that fits your notebook.

Another thing to consider is that with many notebooks replacing two sticks is considerably harder than replacing one stick and often access to the second stick requires serious disassembly while adding one stick is sometimes very simple. It depends on the notebook design and which slot is already occupied.
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