Ram

[Clarkey]

I've got 3gb of ram in my dell inspiron. I took a look at there are 4 slots, 2 with some crappy 1gb ram and 2 with kingston 512Mb ram. I think the maximum ram this comp can handle is 4gb.

Is there any gain to having all of the same brand in there?

Is there any gain to having all of the same size (all 1gb) obviously if you add more it's going to be faster but I'm wondering if mixing the sizes affects things at all?

I see they are plugged into the machine alternating, 1GB, 512, 1, 512. Is this necessary for some reason?

Will the brand affect the speed at all?

[Rathji]

Brand shouldn't matter. Same size/speed does help as timing really has an effect on how things run. In some cases, depending on the motherboard, you must have identical pairs installed or it wont work at all.

To de reasonably sure of what your computer can have max, try the scan tool from crucial.com. In the results from the scan it will give you some more info about the questions you asked, as it pertains specifically to your computer.

[silentsim]

Note, having more then 3GB is pointless if you are using a 32 bit OS.

[Clarkey]

Well it looks like my max ram is 4gb but my OS is 32bit so no use in adding ram.

I've got an intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @2.4ghz. I think the processor is pretty good so I'm not sure why my system is somewhat slow.

It doesn't have a good video card, could that be the problem?

What does the video card do? Is it more for playing movies and games, or does it have other system performance advantages?

[CaramonLS]

Originally Posted by Clarkey

Well it looks like my max ram is 4gb but my OS is 32bit so no use in adding ram.

I've got an intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @2.4ghz. I think the processor is pretty good so I'm not sure why my system is somewhat slow.

It doesn't have a good video card, could that be the problem?

What does the video card do? Is it more for playing movies and games, or does it have other system performance advantages?

If you are experiencing problems with video games, 90% of the reason is probably the video card. It was absolutely unreal how much my computer performance was increased when I bought a real video card.

[Clarkey]

Originally Posted by CaramonLS

If you are experiencing problems with video games, 90% of the reason is probably the video card. It was absolutely unreal how much my computer performance was increased when I bought a real video card.

I don't do any gaming, would a better video card help with other system performance?

I do use photoshop, excel, access, firefox and may be doing some home video editing.

[photon]

Q6600 is 2.4GHz which is ok but not super fast, and in general Windows usage the 4 processor cores don't really have much of an impact on performance. A cheaper dual core 3GHz+ computer will be faster for general usage, the quad core only really impacts in things that utilize it properly.

More memory would probably help but as you say with a 32 bit OS you can't use any more, you'd have to go to a 64 bit OS.

Video card isn't really going to help with performance for Windows or Excel, Access, Firefox, etc.. Photoshop it might help if you have the newest one that uses the video card for processing for some filters.

Hard drive speed is another large factor.. you might want to download a few benchmarking utilities and do some testing to make sure that there's not something messed up at least (i.e. incorrect drivers or something setup to a lower speed).

[SebC]

Originally Posted by photon

Q6600 is 2.4GHz which is ok but not super fast, and in general Windows usage the 4 processor cores don't really have much of an impact on performance. A cheaper dual core 3GHz+ computer will be faster for general usage, the quad core only really impacts in things that utilize it properly.

... like Photoshop and video editing. I'd say Clarkey's usage, the Q6600 was the right way to go.

[Hack&Lube]

Your problem is most likely in the hard drive department.

I also have a Q6600 and I look at my CPU usage and ram monitors that I have setup all the time on my sidebar. The system will be chugging and the HDD light on the computer will be solid as it struggles to feed itself data but the CPU cores are mostly idle and only half of my 4GB of ram is ever used. The system is fast but the hard drive is a bottleneck.

If you get yourself an SSD (solid state drive) that might help a great deal but they are quite expensive. You could also try some other things to speed up conventional drives like going with WD Raptors, RAID, or having separate partitions for scratch disks (photoshop), page file (set a set size yourself, don't let the system manage it). Whenever you feel your system is slow, hit CTRL-ALT-DEL and check the ram usage under performance and see how much ram is being used.

Your problems could always be other things like your drive might badly need to be defragmented or perhaps uneccessary programs are loading or you have virus/trojans/malware, etc.

[photon]

Originally Posted by SebC

... like Photoshop and video editing. I'd say Clarkey's usage, the Q6600 was the right way to go.

I agree, I didn't say he made the wrong choice, but he was talking about general system slowness, not slowness in specific apps, I was just commenting on the tradeoff of more cores vs. higher speed.