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Why Does More Memory Make My Computer Run Faster? Why does more memory make my computer run faster? It Doesn’t! OK – Then why are you always advised to get more memory for your computer? There are a number of factors that have an affect on how fast your computer runs your programs. These factors include:
These are physical factors in the computer that are set – and don’t change once you select and buy the computer. When buying a computer, faster is better, but once you buy, for the most part, what you bought is what you go. (If the motherboard can accept a faster processor, you can upgrade and pick up some speed.) How does this all factor in to the speed of the computer? The typical user perceives the speed of the computer on quickly a task completes once it is started. Other then browsing the Internet, this involves starting a program and loading the data that is used by the program. (Internet browsing is mostly affected by your Internet connection speed and how fast the web server you are accessing sends you the web pages.) Look at the following diagram:
All programs, including Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, AOL, Email, games and any other program your run is ‘processed’ in the CPU. A program is a series of instructions that tell the CPU what to do as far as manipulating data. The instructions for the program and all the data the programs need are kept in memory. (The hard disk – often referred to as memory is actually storage. The CPU cannot make direct use of what is stored on the hard disk directly – it has to be transferred to memory.) When you start a new program, the instructions that make the program work are transferred from the hard disk into memory. The instructions in memory are transferred to the CPU while the program is running. The programs also use additional memory to keep track of ‘stuff’ while running. Finally, the data the program is manipulating is also kept in memory while the program is running. For example, when you run Word, the document you are editing is kept in memory. When you finish editing and 'save' the document, it is written back to the hard disk. The reads and writes between the memory and CPU are much faster then reads and writes between memory and the hard drive. Let’s look at what happens when we edit a Word document: When you launch Word, there is a delay while the Word program is transferred from the hard disk to memory. (Microsoft keeps you occupied by showing a "splash screen" as Word loads.) Next you open the document – and it is also transferred from the hard disk to memory. As you use the program and edit the document, and for the most part – the hard disk is never used until you save the document. When saved the document that is in memory is written to the hard disk and cleared from memory. When you exit Word, the program is also cleared from memory. Every one of today’s computers will appear to run about the same speed if you are running only one program at a time. However, most user run multiple programs and have multiple files open at the same time. That’s the process – but why does more memory help? When a program is running, the program and its data needs to be in memory. Programs that are running constantly, like Windows, your anti-virus program, Internet Explorer and all those little programs that put the little icons in your system tray have to be in memory, and because of this are given a priority to stay in memory. And all of these programs and data are in memory at the same time.
When you want go back to Excel (which is now in Virtual Memory), Windows will gladly move it back into memory, but it will send another program, the one that has now been idle longest, to the virtual memory. This is called swapping. If you have very little memory – let’s say 256MB – then you could run out of free memory after 1 or 2 programs are loaded, and there will be lots of disk swapping. (You can hear this by listening to how much the hard drive is being accessed.) The computer has to go through the slow process of swapping and your computer seems to ‘hang up’ while these programs are being swapped. Have you ever had a Word document open at the same time you are browsing the Internet and you have your Quicken open? You go to type in word, and nothing shows up on the screen. Then, all of a sudden everything catches up. This delay was most likely caused by disk swapping. If you increase the computer memory to 512MB, 1GB or more, your computer can have many more programs open at the same time without the need to ‘swap’. Having more memory eliminates the delays while programs and data are swapped to the slower hard disk. With more memory, even though your computer is not ‘running’ faster, it appears to run faster simply because there is much less of the slower disk-swapping. You don’t have to wait for the computer to catch up.
Pentium 4 is a copyright of Intel Corporation.
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