[Alfred Trautweiler]

I have a Dell 8400 with 512 mb ddr2 sdram 533MHz. When I'm doing a lot of
moviemaking, scanning pictures, working with sound, the computer seems
pokey. If I use the performance administrator tool, what settings should I
have, and what should I look for to see if more memory will help me.
Thanks.

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Alfred

You need more memory for the type of work you do.. look to upgrading to 1gb
RAM at least..

To find out which memory.. www.crucial.com or www.kingston.com


--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/User

"If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept
it all to themselves." - Lane Kirkland


"Alfred Trautweiler" <atrautweiler@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:OLj9kT%23eFHA.228@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
>I have a Dell 8400 with 512 mb ddr2 sdram 533MHz. When I'm doing a lot of
>moviemaking, scanning pictures, working with sound, the computer seems
>pokey. If I use the performance administrator tool, what settings should I
>have, and what should I look for to see if more memory will help me.
>Thanks.
>

[Ken Blake]

In news:OLj9kT%23eFHA.228@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl,
Alfred Trautweiler <atrautweiler@hotmail.com> typed:

> I have a Dell 8400 with 512 mb ddr2 sdram 533MHz. When I'm
> doing a
> lot of moviemaking, scanning pictures, working with sound, the
> computer seems pokey. If I use the performance administrator
> tool,
> what settings should I have, and what should I look for to see
> if
> more memory will help me. Thanks.


Almost certainly more memory is what you need. Although 512MB is
sufficient for most people, you are doing highly memory-intensive
tasks. As a result, you are paging a lot and that's what's
slowing you down.


--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup

[Ron Martell]

"Alfred Trautweiler" <atrautweiler@hotmail.com> wrote:

>I have a Dell 8400 with 512 mb ddr2 sdram 533MHz. When I'm doing a lot of
>moviemaking, scanning pictures, working with sound, the computer seems
>pokey. If I use the performance administrator tool, what settings should I
>have, and what should I look for to see if more memory will help me.
>Thanks.
>

Adding more memory can noticeably improve performance only if the
added memory results in reduced usage of the virtual memory paging
file. Therefore if the paging file is not currently being used to any
significant extent then adding more memory will not provide a
significant improvement.

Unfortunately there is no ready way of determing actual paging file
usage provided with Windows XP - it does not have an equivalent to the
'Memory Manager - Swap File In Use" reporting provided by the System
Monitor utility in Windows 95/98/Me.

There is a free utility that you can download and run which will
provide this information for you. It was written by MVP Bill James and
you can get if from
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm or from
http://billsway.com/notes_public/WinXP_Tweaks/

If that utility shows actual page file usage of 50 mb or more on a
regular basis then that is indicative of fairly significant paging
file activity. Adding more RAM will reduce or even eliminate entirely
this activity thereby improving performance.

This apples regardless of how much or how little RAM is currently
installed in the computer, at least up to the 4 gb RAM maximum for
Windows XP.

Hope this explains the situation.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm