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At 10:10 AM 3/19/97 HST, David Ross wrote: >Randy Whittle writes: > >> difference. I posted sometime back that according to Norton Utilities, my >> base Win 95 setup (with the little extras loaded, like Norton Navigator >> utils) uses up something like 30 MB RAM just by booting up and sitting >> there without any additional software loaded. The Win 95 kernel alone >> (without *any* fancy stuff--i.e., networking capability) takes up 12 MB RAM. > >What is NU really reporting here? I've run Win95 w/only 8 megs, and >while it is sometimes horribly slow, at other times it runs fine w/no >HD access visible. A fair fraction of this kernel must therefore be >fairly irrelevant, and Windows must be smart enough to page it to disk >and keep it there. Actually, that's not a NU reported figure--that 12 MB kernel thing was something I read in some computer magazine (I think PC/Computing, but don't recall--it was some months ago. It might even have been off of some Microsoft technotes). At any rate, *any* time stuff is paged off to disk, that's a performance degradation. Ideally, you have enough RAM to hold this stuff so it *doesn't* have to resort to using any virtual memory. >The reason I raised the question is that the price difference between >a 16 meg dimm and a 32 meg dimm is very substantial, and to me >wouldn't be worthwhile unless software actually ran faster at times >other than when it was being loaded. More memory will not in itself "run software faster". The point is whether at any time code is being paged off to the hard drive because there wasn't enough RAM to hold it all. *That's* the point where more memory would be useful and in the sense that the machine isn't forced to resort to using virtual memory, it is "faster". >(Common 'wisdom' on >comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips is that too much memory can actually slow >a system down! I don't know whether to believe it.) In a theoretical sense, this can indeed be true under certain situations. But I think it's crap, when it comes to actual practice under real-world circumstances. You will simply *not* be faced with a situation where your machine's performance will degrade if you move from 24 MB to 48 MB RAM--or even up to 96 MB RAM. ------- Randy Whittle rwhittle@usa.net Marshall Graduate School of Business at USC http://www-scf.usc.edu/~whittle I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being first and foremost, and as such I am for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole. - Malcolm X