PC Hacks 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools

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Hack 30 Install More RAM

Having a significant amount of RAM in your PC provides enormous benefits, most notably that the operating system, drivers, programs, and data don't need to swap out to your hard drive to keep things running smoothly and you will have more memory for disk caching to speed up disk read and write operations. More RAM is also obviously important for loading applications and data, especially large ones like spreadsheets, databases, graphics, and video.

While the minimum RAM requirement for Windows XP is a meager 64 MB and Microsoft recommends 128 MB, 512 MB of RAM is the bare minimum for what most of us consider a fast Windows XP system. Long gone are the days of Windows 98 and Me, when 128 MB was the most memory that the majority of systems needed. Running an unhacked Windows XP configuration with only 512 MB of RAM does not leave a lot of room for programs, data, and disk caching. With 1 GB, the VCache [Hack #32] gets all of the RAM it can handle, leaving much more RAM for your use.

Depending on the chipset and design of your system board, performance may be enhanced if you install as few RAM modules as possible—changing out two 128 MB DIMMs (Dual Inline Memory Modules) for a single 256 MB DIMM, two 256 MB DIMMs for a single 512 MB DIMM, and so on. Fewer modules means less addressing and data-signal delays as the chipset switches between modules.

If the chipset in your system supports Dual-Channel Double-Data-Rate (DDR) RAM modules, as the Intel 865G and 865PE and 875P chipsets do, memory performance can be enhanced by using matched pairs of modules, which allow the chipset to split the RAM signal bandwidth across two memory modules. Your system board documentation should tell you which chipset it uses and the type of memory it supports.

If you cannot determine which chipset your system board uses by looking at the chips on the board or from the manual, look up your system or system board model number using Google or http://www.motherboards.org.

Before adding more RAM, check your chipset against [Hack #32] to see if more RAM is fully cacheable in your system. Beware that the more you fill up your RAM with programs and data, the longer it will take to swap any one of the larger memory hogs to the swapfile.

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