How Much Ram?

[mccoady]

I have a built computer that's about 3 years old or so, I believe it's around a 1600 mhz with 512 Ram. I'm also running XP Pro but not SP2. I do alot of shrinking and burning copies of my dvds and like to do multi-tasking at the same time and find that I seem to be using alot of resources doing this. I realize that there is always things running in the background and they should be kept to a minimum, but would would an upgrade of Ram improve anything?

[waheed]

512MB is sufficient for your needs. Upgrading RAM can sometimes make a difference.

Unless you fully utilise the 512MB of memory, I doubt you will notice much difference if you upgrade to 1GB.

However, a processor upgrade will see noticable benefit.

[reboot]

A gig with XP SP1 is useful. I found that 768 works probably as well, and 512 was a little shy.
Definitely upgrade your CPU if you want more speed. It's really the only thing that makes any difference when working with video (especially encoding).

[normcar]

With encoding, its upgrade your CPU and encode from 1 HD to another HD. Those are the 2 most important speed results. You can use CTRL ALT DEL and look at Windows Task Manager, then look at the Peak. This usually shows the max memory your computer looked for during a session.

[mccoady]

Okay thanks, I guess I wouldn't have any idea what I would upgrade my CPU to, how much it would cost, or how hard it would be to do. I probably would have to find someone to do it for me.