system speed ?

[danidrag4]

I have a really old pc that works great it just runs slow. Right now it has 128mb of ram and the max it supports is 512mb.

I was wondering how big of a difference in speed would I see if I upgraded all the way to 512mb? Would just a simple upgrade of 128mb to make it 256mb make any difference? Thanks for the help

[mjc]

There are other factors to consider...like what version of Windows.

If it is 2K or XP, then yes 512 would still be on the 'up' side of improvements. 2k peaks out around 512 MB, XP at 1 GB...after that, while there are still over all improvements with adding more RAM, it isn't as noticeable.

If it is an 9x (including ME)...then 256 is where it starts to 'flatten' out...

[Fruss Tray Ted]

512 megs is quite nice with ME but lacking a bit with XP. 256 is OK with 98 but screaming with 95!

There are also alternate ways to speeding up your computer. Give us the specs including OS and we can advise from there.

[WSS]

More ram will improve boot speed but offers no real performance upgrade. In games cut scenes will load faster but you wont get an increase in frames per second being rendered (won't improve gaming experience). Windows experience will be slightly better though, but you can't run Vista with 512 megs.

[123456]

You could run Vista with 512mb, but it's insanely slow.

[danidrag4]

I am using WIndows XP sp2.

[Heartborne]

128 MB is the bare minimum to run XP. It is possible that one of the reasons your system is running so slow is that all of your RAM resources are being used just to run the OS and your background apps, so every time you want to open an application windows has to swap some things into virtual memory in order to open up some RAM space.

long story short, if you upgrade to 512mb you will see a huge difference in the way your computer runs in general.

There are other factors to consider as well, including the type of CPU you have, the speed of your hard drives, the size of your paging file and finally how many background applications you have running. In addition to upgrading your RAM I also advice running a disk cleanup, then manually uninstalling any applications you' don't need. It is also a good idea to use a utility like Malwarebytes' Anti-malware to make sure you don't have any rogue programs eating up your resources. Finally, use a disk defragmentation utility. When data is continuously written to your hard disk (as is the case with all computers) the data on the drive becomes broken up into pieces so the drive has to search all over the hard disk to find all the bits of a single file. Defragmentation will help to make these files contiguous and speed up your computer's ability to locate and open files.