Ram problems!

[basketkase543]

I recently bought some more ram because the 512mb I used to have was incredibly inadequate for things I needed to do (namely, video editing). So I bought two sticks of Kingston 512Mb and bumped my total up to 1.5gb of it.

So what's the problem?

I don't notice a damn difference! I've done checks on my comp and it definately is reading it as 1.5gb of ram but my performance has not increased at all! Rendering video still brings me problems despite the vids only being about 4 minutes long. I seroiusly don't understand; i tripled the ram in my comp so the logic is that there would be at least some sort of improvement.

What can I do about this? Was I supposed to "optimize" my computer some how for it to properly utilize the ram? I hope so because I can't think of why my ram is sucking. Here is the link to what I bought:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=20-141-424&depa=0

Any help would be great. Thanks.

[Admiral Ackbar]

What's your system?

You may need a reformat if it's still sluggish. It could just be broken and buggy programs piled up over time.

[CheapyD]

Call this dude...

[supadupacheap]

Also, dont look at 1.5 being triple your old. Its a case of diminishing returns after 1GB in most cases (it will be faster but not 3x faster)

Also, do you know how much of what you are doing is loaded where? More memory helps but oftentimes the Videocard is needed to share the load especially in cases of average processors. Also, any HD encoding is a bear on just about any system. A ton of RAM cuts it down from 3 days to 10 hours :lol:

[basketkase543]

I have a:

2.6Ghz comp (pentium 4 w/ multithreading)
1.5gb of ram
two hardrives (primary 120gb and secondary 230gb),

I tried defragging my drives last night but to no real success. I

Could the problem be that both of my drives are pretty full? My main one is about 60% full and my secondary is about 80% full. This is really bugging me right now.

[basketkase543]

bump

[the3rdkey]

Run a virus scan or ad aware scan and it should be faster. I think your computer was already fast and now that you upgraded it is just hard to notice the difference. I just upgraded from 1gb ddr2 to 2 gb of it and I notice everything is a lot quicker....


I guess my whole post was pointless.

At least Cheapy has a new avatar.

[the3rdkey]

Call this dude...

Who is he by the way?

[spidey]

Go to your task manager and check your peak memory usage.

Video editing/encoding/decoding is more CPU dependant anyway... so RAM is likely to have little/no effect. Try some photoshop work with 512MB and then with 1.5GB and you'll notice a difference.

[mingleje]

it could be where you placed the ram, unmatched pairs really won't add anything. Unless your previous ram is the same stuff the the two new sticks should be in matching colored slots.. not next to each other. or you shoulda got this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145440

ram likes a friend that is just like it, so get it always in pairs. then you can reap the benifets of dual channel

[basketkase543]

I actually did get my ram in pairs in hopes that I would reap the benefits of identical dual sticks.

As far as virus scans go, my comp passed every test completely. I ran spybot, adaware, AVG, Norton, Housecall (and Pccillin) and got pure clean results in every test. I was happy but a little part of me was hoping that it was some mini virus that was sucking up my cpu and that could be easily fixed: There was nothing.

I'm seriously stumped on this.

[mingleje]

The link that you have is a single stick that you bought two of, you should always buy in prepackaged matched pairs., ie the link i showed. and i will say again placement is key in ram. pull the old stick and just use the two new ones. if your old stick is a different bandwidth it might override the new faster ones.

To really test is the ram is working try a benchmark test like 3dmark03, or 05 with the sticks in and without.. it gives you a hard number score at the end to compare.

[psiufoxx2]

The link that you have is a single stick that you bought two of, you should always buy in prepackaged matched pairs., ie the link i showed. and i will say again placement is key in ram. pull the old stick and just use the two new ones. if your old stick is a different bandwidth it might override the new faster ones.

To really test is the ram is working try a benchmark test like 3dmark03, or 05 with the sticks in and without.. it gives you a hard number score at the end to compare.

Good call. Use this link to download 3DMark03 (http://www.futuremark.com/download/?3dmark03.shtml).

I would suggest running the test with:

1) Old ram only.
2) New ram only.
3) Combination.

You'll most likely be able to tell what is going on from the results.

[Purkeynator]

Also , are you sure you have your hyperthreading turned on? I know you can turn it off. It is also possible your motherboard doesn't run two sticks of ram at the same speed. For instance my Asus Diablo motherboard will run one stick of ram at 400 MHZ but when I put in two sticks it will downclock to 333 Mhz even though both sticks are 400 Mhz PC3200. Another thought: How fast is your hard drive and how large is the cache? I would say at a minimum for video editing you would want a 7200 RPM hard drive with a 8 Mb cache. And yes having more space on your hard drive will speed things up as well.

[Purkeynator]

Another thought I had: What are the timings on your old ram? It could be high latency ram that makes the new ram run slower to match it's timings. I noticed the timings on the ram you bought has a latency of 3. Not really fast but not too bad, a 2.5 would have been quicker. Check all your speeds and timings of your ram in the bios before you boot up.l

[Quackzilla]

Video encoding is very CPU dependent, it doesn't use a lot of RAM.

[basketkase543]

Great advice about checking up on my ram. I'm going to try and do it tomorrow after work and i'll let u know how it goes.