Will adding RAM to my system solve my problems?

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Summary: Windows loves RAM, but whether or not adding RAM will resolve the issues you're experiencing depends on the issues. We'll look at an example.

It's impossible to say whether additional RAM would help the specific symptoms you're experiencing. It could, but there are probably hundreds of other possible explanations for those symptoms as well that don't involve the amount of RAM on your system.

So let's look at what some of the more likely problems are, and whether more RAM might be something to try.

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I've long held that adding RAM to your system is one of the cheapest and quickest ways to improve your system's performance. RAM prices have dropped so dramatically in recent years that even if we don't think it'll help, it's high on my list to try anyway, just because.

512 megabytes of RAM could be enough for a fine Windows XP system, but in all honesty, it depends on your specific system. If you have lots of things getting loaded at start up, if you like to run lots of programs at the same time, if you run few programs that like to use lots of memory, 512 megabytes can actually be a limiting factor pretty quickly. Naturally there are two approaches: reduce the number of programs running or the memory that they might use if you can, or add more RAM.

How do you see what's running and how much memory is being used? That's easy: you can do it with Task Manager, or my preferred utility Process Explorer. Once you run Process Explorer you'll see a complete list of the programs running on your machine. Click on the Working Set column header and see who's using the most of your computer's RAM. In Process Explorer you can also click on the Virtual Size column header to see who's using the most total virtual memory (both in RAM, and swapped out to disk).

I actually advocate both cleaning up running programs and having lots of RAM. I hate having programs running that I don't need, even if only on principal. And as I mentioned above, having more RAM doesn't hurt.

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Now, about those symptoms of yours...

Slow loading web pages are extremely difficult to diagnose. They're more often associated with slow internet connections, or other traffic eating up your bandwidth. Make sure you're not trying to do a bunch of things that use your internet connection at the same time.

Occasionally browser speed will be affected by disk speed as it manages your internet cache and history. Also, realize that the first time you visit a web page it may often be slower than subsequent visits. The first time the browser must download everything, but on subsequent visits your browser may be able to avoid downloading some of the page contents by simply using the items it already has in its cache.

Browser performance can also be affected by your machines processor utilization. Independent of memory, if another program is performing calculation-intensive work while you're browsing, it can impact everything, including how quickly your browser downloads, draws, and reacts to your user input.

And yes, it could be memory. Again, depending on the configuration of your specific system and what you happen to have running at the same time, RAM could be an issue, and more RAM could help.

Video chat freezes are even more difficult to diagnose.

If it's just the video chat application that's freezing, I actually tend to blame either the application itself (try a different video application or service), or the speed of your internet connection. Video can use a lot of bandwidth, and some applications don't handle it well when there's not enough bandwidth to deliver the video in a timely fashion.

I'd also look at video drivers - specifically making sure that the drivers for your video card are up to date. Some cards are better than others, and more importantly, drivers occasionally have problems that can manifest in this way. This is particularly true if it's your machine that crashes or freezes and not just the video or video application.

And yes, it could be memory. Just like slow loading pages, depending on the configuration of your specific system and what you happen to have running at the same time, RAM could be an issue, and more RAM could help.

In most situations where you suspect you are running low on RAM, keep an eye on your disk activity light. If you're not explicitly doing something on disk yourself, and that light is flickering a lot, or even on solid, then there's a good chance that you've used up all available RAM and the system is using disk-based virtual memory.

And lastly, more RAM may not help, there are just too many possibilities to know for sure.

But more RAM won't hurt either.

Related:

• Ask Leo! - How much memory do I REALLY need for Windows XP?

• Ask Leo! - How can I tell what's running on my machine?

• Ask Leo! - Why is my machine slowing down?

Article 12224 | Posted February 10, 2008