Doubtful you will see any speed improvement from additional RAM.  Very few 
programs actually access RAM above about 700Mb.  Specifically, what software 
are you running when the machine seems slow, with maxed-out CPU usage?  Is 
your hard drive running 7200 or 10k rpm?  I've seen many machines slow to a 
crawl running a slower rpm HDD.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ron Kaplan" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 11:43 AM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Subject: Could more RAM help?


I am running xp Pro on a PC with an Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.53GHz, with a CPU 
speed of 2523MHz, and 1G of RAM. My hard drive is 300G and is still mostly 
free space. I use Zone Labs Security Suite, with anti-virus scanning daily. 
Spyware Doctor runs upon bootup, I regularly use Spybot Search & Destroy and
AdAware for spyware, CC cleaner for "tuneups", and Auslogics for disk and 
reg. defrag. Still, though, my PC can be terribly slow too much of the time. 
More often than not, when it's slow, the Task Manager shows 100% CPU usage. 
Nevertheless, I'm wondering if adding 1G of RAM could help. A computer savvy 
friend says that with my CPU, more RAM will not help. The service dept. at 2 
Fry's stores said that was not true. Any educated guesses as to how good the 
chances are that an extra G of RAM would help my PC's speed? Thanks very 
much in advance for any assistance.

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