Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (
More info?)
On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 21:12:39 +0530, "Abhilash Tibrewal"
>I see this thread is evoking the old discussion "how much RAM is enough".
>The answer is that like money, no amount of RAM is enough.
If it were free, and there were no downside, I'd agree with you.
But there comes a point, for a given installaytion and useage, beyond
which money spent on more RAM is not well spent, due to the law of
diminishing returns. Once everything is in RAM, as opposed to RAM
plus pagefile, and the HD is "adequately" cached, more doesn't help.
There can be downsides to "too much" RAM as well, even if you are
clear of old PCs that can't extend L2 cache beyond the first 64M.
For example, you may collide with another optimization; running a
small C: in order to reduce head travel.
If you have set full sized memory dumps, then the pagefile has to be
large enough to swallow the entire RAM contents. If you turn that
off, but still use fast user switching, you have the same sort of
problem. You may in fact crash, if you run out of pagefile space.
>Mike, why don't you just try benchmarking a 433Mhz system(real-world
>benchmarking software) running Windows XP with 128, 256 and 512 MB of RAM
>and check the "marginal improvement" for yourself.
Part ofthe hassle is XP's rather silly pagefile sizing logic, which
sets a small pagefile with small RAM. At 128M, RAM+pagefile is less
than 512M RAM alone, whereas with 1M RAM, you have an absurdly large
page file that stretches head travel on C:.
On Win9x, I'd suggest running System Monitor, selecting Memory, Swap
File In Use, and do your usual thing while watching that graph. If
you never hit swap, you have enough RAM; if you hit swap after fresh
boot and before running any apps, then more RAM's guuud.
In XP, the equivalent may be Ctl+Alt+Del to get the Task Manager, and
then watch "Page Commit". What I don't know, is whether this is
bloated with never-used just-in-case allocations, or is meaningful.
>In addition to my earlier claim(128MB, WinXP, 433MHZ), here are a few more:
>1. I used Win98 on Pentium 200MHz, 16 MB EDO RAM, 2GB HDD and encoded a lot
>of MP3s(from WAVs) on the same computer.
>2. Installed and used Windows 2000 Professional on P-200,64MB SDRAM, 2GB
>HDD.
The most amazing low-RAM mileage I had was with the original Win95
(and no, I wasn't trying 4M RAM!).
I had a few DOS games that required 8M RAM in DOS, to the point they
would not load if I had over 128k of SmartDrv cache loaded.
In Win95 GUI, with Word, Excel and Bitware Fax running, I could run
both of these games at the same time! Sure, they were a slide show
when windowed and de-focused, but that they ran at all, was kewl.
That was in 8M RAM, BTW.
>It may be a sign of "geekiness" to use GBs of RAM, but frankly, you will be
>amazed on the capabilities of "well-configured", but "low end" systems. I
>write this on the basis of years of experience building and maintaining low
>end systems, while I was at college. Just try for yourself.
I like deferring RAM because there's no downside to adding this later
(as long as you don't wait so long that availability dies, and as long
as you plan in advance for hibernate and pagefile bloat).
But for XP, plus the kind of apps you are likely to use on a new XP
PC, I'd see 128M as lean, 256M as OK, and 512M as happy. For heavy
lifting e.g. video editing etc., I'd consider 1G or even more.
>> >> chungacs wrote:
>> >> > I have a Celeron 433 MHz with 384 MB ram running on win98SE .
>> >> > I am thinking of switching to windows xp. Is this pc's hardware
>> >> > resources adequate to run Windows XP?
Well, I would brace myself for a bit of a slowdown, though the
more-than-usual RAM may help to balance it out.
With enough RAM (say, 2x or more what you might have considered comfy
in Win9x), the NT kernel may run faster than the Win9x kernel. It has
a higher % Win32 code than Win9x, and that runs more efficiently on
Pentium II and later processors. Then again, it's aimed at the P4
core, so the earlier processor generations may not shine.
I retro-fitted XP on a 533MHz Celeron with 256M RAM, and that was very
nice; didn't feel slower than the Win98SE he had in 64M RAM before
that (the 64M went to upgrade a buddy's PC).
>> >> > Anything to look out for when installing win xp
>> >> > on this machine?
Drivers! Some of the old SVGA (e.g. Intel 740) may not have drivers
for the DirectX version that will come with current XP SP2, and a
motherboard of that vintage will not support the lower AGP voltages
that today's cards will require.
I'm not a fan of new software on old PCs, myself.
>> >> It won't be any good for graphics-intensive applications, and most
>> >> newer games.
IOW, anything that "requires Windows XP" is likely to be a pain.
>------------ ----- ---- --- -- - - - -
The most accurate diagnostic instrument
in medicine is the Retrospectoscope
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