|
|
|
Comment |
Sorted by
Date Written |
Re: Very nicely done (Reply to this comment)
by janika
Thanx Suzi! I am glad to help. In fact that's my Job. Currently I am a system support specialist and network admin. If you have any specific question, don't hesitate to drop me a line.
ktyuli@hotmail.com Regards,,,
Janika
|
Nov 03 '01
12:44 pm PST
|
|
Comments (Reply to this comment)
by vicwang
There's definitely some useful information in this article, but it also has a few inaccuracies that make it hard to recommend:
"In some instances upgrading your memory is not worth it. For example if you are running a Microsoft Windows 95 Operating System PC. Reason: Windows 95 is optimized at 32-Mb. It will use the extra RAM but only if it needs it, instead of utilizing your hard drive as a virtual memory.
You're correct that Windows 95 only uses the virtual memory when needed (as opposed to Win98 which by default uses virtual memory continuously) but I wonder how that has anything to do with memory requirements? After all, the entire point of adding extra RAM is for situations when it IS needed, and in that case you will need far more than 32 megs to run modern applications, or even more than one application at a time. If anything I would suggest 32 megs as the bare minimum for a Win95 system, not the "optimal" amount.
(By the way, there is a way to "force" Win98 to use "conservative swapfile usage" as Win95 did, but, again, doing so has on effect on RAM requirements)
"Microsoft Windows-95 is optimized at 32-Mb, Windows-98 is optimized at 64-Mb, this applies to Windows-98 SE as well."
I'm curious what you mean by "optimized", since again these recommended amounts are, at most, the bare minimum for a system to function properly. Virtually every article I have read on the subject (not to mention personal experience) has suggested at least 128 megs as the "optimal" amount for Win98, with diminishing returns once you reach the 256+ meg range. Of course, with RAM costing about 15 cents per megabyte these days (literally 1/20 of what it cost two years ago) there's simply no reason to have less than 256 megs of RAM in a modern system, since the cost savings of having less would be negligible.
"DDR RAM is more expensive and it has to be supported by your mother board to be able to benefit on it's high speed."
DDR RAM has not been "more expensive" than traditional SDRAM for many months now; in fact in some instances it is actually CHEAPER than comparable SDRAM. At Crucial.com (Micron subsidiary and most reputable RAM vendor on the internet) 256 megs of PC2100 DDR currently costs $43.19, which is exactly as their price for PC133 SDRAM.
As for motherboards needing DDR support "to be able to benefit on it's high speed", they actually need DDR-support to even use it at all. DDR chips use a completely different socket than SDRAM, so they will not fit in the same motherboard.
"I over clocked many systems before and the speed and performance I gain was so minimal, it's not worth it. Just add RAM to your PC if you want speed."
Although I've already left a similar comment on your A7V review, again I would suggest that overclocking and adding RAM are not mutually exclusive options; it's not a situation of "either/or", but rather "why not simply do both?" Since in many cases there is no "cost" whatsoever to overclocking one's system, I would say that ANY performance gains from overclocking would be worth the minimal effort required.
Of course, conventional wisdom says that overclocking leads to a shortened CPU life, less stability, etc. but in many cases that's simply no longer true. Newer AMD CPU's are sold so far below their true limits, it's almost ridiculous, and overclocking by reasonable amounts (say, 200-300 mhz) typically has no drawbacks whatsoever.
As for the performance benefits of doing so, I've found the increased speed quite noticeable in certain applications, for example latest 3D games, video and audio editing/decoding, and "distributed computing" applications like SETI@Home and RC5, all of which will take all the CPU power you can throw at them. And that's to say nothing about tasks like 3D rendering and CAD that are also CPU-bottlenecked.
Naturally applications like web browsing, office applications, etc. don't benefit much from overclocking, but that's simply because they were not CPU-bottlenecked to begin with.
-vicwang
|
Aug 05 '01
10:34 am PDT
|
|
Very nicely done (Reply to this comment)
by Suzer
I think I need you to move in and help me with my computer, but that aside, this is very helpful. Thanks.
Suzi
|
Aug 04 '01
9:13 am PDT
|
|
|
|
