Laptop RAM upgrade ??

[mrgas]

I'm currently using a Dell latitude D830 laptop

its got a T7300 2gig processor, 160gb HD and 2gb of RAM

its a few years old now but still works perfectly, since buying it i've installed win7 64bit and all's fine

I'm more than happy with it but since using a "faster" computer at work with an i5 processor I realise my Dell is a little slow, would increasing the RAM to 4gb make much difference ?

I'm using elements 9 and LR3 and would be happy if these were quicker

I'm not buying a new laptop as this ones fine but wondered if a RAM upgrade would be worth it ?

 

[arad85]

I realise my Dell is a little slow, would increasing the RAM to 4gb make much difference ?

With your usual programs running, right click on the Taskbar->Start Task Manager. Click on Performance tab. In physical memory (MB) you have 4 numbers. If Available is very low (it is in MBytes, so your 2GB Physical should appear as 2048 and by low I mean in the low hundreds) and your disk seems to be doing a lot of activity as you swap between programs, then you should add more RAM.

My guess is yes, but those numbers will tell you for sure.

BTW, if you have shared graphics memory, the Physical may show as less than 2048.

 

[tdodd]

I'm using a five year old Dell XPS M1710 (T7400 processor), supplied with 2GB RAM and upgraded to 4GB. It has 512MB of dedicated GFX. Due to chipset constraints the OS can only use 3.2GB of the 4GB installed.

I'm running Win 7 X64 and with PSE 10 and LR 3.6 fired up, plus Outlook and Digiguide, I see the following memory stats....

Total 3326
Cached 1319
Available 1295
Free 10

Maybe that will give some idea of the benefits installing 4GB might deliver.

 

[mrgas]

cheers for the replies

thanks

 

[Suomi]

I have also increased from the standard 3GB to 4GB just before moving from Vista to W7 64bit (vaio FW21 with T5800 chip). Tend to max out the CPU now more than the memory (panorama work will still max out both).

Best thing I did was to drop in a SSD, makes the machine operate far more snappy now But LR will still make the machine bog down, just not as bad as before.

 

[mrgas]

I have also increased from the standard 3GB to 4GB just before moving from Vista to W7 64bit (vaio FW21 with T5800 chip). Tend to max out the CPU now more than the memory (panorama work will still max out both).

Best thing I did was to drop in a SSD, makes the machine operate far more snappy now But LR will still make the machine bog down, just not as bad as before.

I've heard good things about SSD's, still seem expensive though

I reckon I'll try a RAM upgrade and see what that gives

thanks for your reply