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I have a Win 7 Pro 64-bit Toshiba with i5 processor and 4Gb ram in a single slot. I am running fairly heavy CAD programs and need to upgrade. Question is, will I see much difference between adding an identical 4Gb card to bring it up to 8Gb (cost £30), or putting 2 x 8Gb to bring it to 16Gb (cost £120). I'd rather save the money if I'm not going to notice much difference! I'm aware of the need to keep the ram cards exactly the same.
Thanks!
Impossible to say, and really depends on the cad package and many other things.
FWIW, speaking in general, and from experience, moving from 4Gb to 8Gb makes a substantial difference. I've never gone to 16Gb, as generally its the law of diminishing returns and I'm not that much of a power user.
Are there any forums for the cad package? If it can take advantage of it, it may well be worth it.
Other things to consider, if you have and HDD, and SSD would make a substantial improvement (at a cost). Also, if you have and HDD, ready boost may improve things if you have a USB drive knocking round, especially if your lappy has 3.0.
Are you seeing the memory constantly maxed out and paging to disk? You may get a rough idea from the amount of Virtual Memory the system is using.
If you have a spare memory stick, you could try using Readyboost and see how much that takes you up to, although I'd guess it would need a pretty speedy USB stick:
[url= http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-use-readyboost-to-speed-up-windows-7.navId-397912.html ]http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-use-readyboost-to-speed-up-windows-7.navId-397912.html[/url]
Have you considered an SSD?
You could add 1x 8Gb stick, cost £60, to take you to 12Gb and leave you with an option to upgrade the other 4Gb later. If you buy another 4 and then want to go to 16 in the future, you'll be throwing away two lots of SODIMMs.
Are you seeing the memory constantly maxed out and paging to disk
This is the obvious question, is memory actually a bottleneck?
The Physical Memory usage never seems to get above 72% accounting to Task Manager. Perhaps it's something else slowing it down?
Obvious question #2 - the slow software, is it 64 bit (check process in taskmanager for *32)?
If it's 32bit it might be maxing out on 2Gb ram usage.
What is it that's slow about the software? Maybe you just have a slow computer*? E.g. if you're rendering a detailed model (lots of polygons) with a first gen i5 on integrated graphics, it's never going to be fast.
*well it's i5 so it's not "fast". Which gen i5 matters too. Control Panel->system will give you a model number. i5-xxxx
what cad software are you using?
do you have integrated Intel graphics or a seperate card?
as above, what specific processor number? it makes a hell of a difference.
I'm using Sketchup, with models which are typically 30-50Mb in size, and lots of fine details. Simple tasks, copying, pasting components etc just takes a very long time. Processor is i5-3230M. 64-bit. Internal graphics card - just whatever came with the computer.
Intricate 3D models on a mid-to-low spec laptop? It's just gonna be slow.
(but could be sketchup being crap, only used it a little bit.)
I wouldn't be surprised if your laptop doesn't meet the recommended hardware requirements, especially the graphics cards:
http://help.sketchup.com/en/article/36208
You may find this useful:
http://help.sketchup.com/en/article/36235
But ultimately trying to heavyweight work on a laptop is tough with built in graphics, really need something with a decent graphics card in it.
Ah, thanks.
So extra ram isn't going to help, as 32-bit programs are limited to about 3Gb.SketchUp will run on 64bit versions of Windows, but it will run as a 32bit application.
Personally, I still wouldn't rule out an upgrade to 8Gb helping. Although SketchUp might not use it, the rest of the system will. I've always found 4Gb on w7 to be a bare minimum.
Also, this is one of the few situations where ready boost may well be of benefit.
Depending on you useage etc, I wouldn't rule out an SSD either. You can get 60Gb for £40. Makes a big difference in some situations.
The Physical Memory usage never seems to get above 72% accounting to Task Manager.
Afaik it doesn't just let the physical memory fill completely before starting to swap pages. 72% is enough to be doing some paging, but I think goign to 8Gb will see a big improvement.
You can see how much virtual memory it's using I think by opening task manager then going to the processes tab, select view then click select columns. If you select paged pool, this shows how much of the processes's memory is swapped out to disk - I think, anyway. Cougar will correct me I'm sure.
I don't know sketchup but if its any like autocad it will need a discrete GPU, especially for rendering. But I agree 4gb is bare minimum theses days, I run 24 in the laptop and 32gb in desktop.