4 GB makes a difference?

[UXaficionado]

I am looking to get a new ultra portable laptop. I had my TX and it died. I am will do something with it if I can to fix it and maybe pass it along to my son.

As I am researching my options, I saw Sony is coming out next month with a new TZ that will have 48 GB flash. The current 32 GB TZ has only 15 available to the the user. It would follow that a 48 GB should give the user at least 31 GB available. Twice as much.

Then I started looking into the SZ series. That's is getting a little big. I like the 13.3 inch screen. Not crazy about the 3,7 pounds though (a pound more than the TZ).

But what's great about this series is that this series gives you some real options to customize that I am sure we wish we had on the UX platform. You can choose up to 4 GB of ram and get the new T7700 Santa Rosa processor.

So I was wondering...What kind of performance boost would you get with 4 GB in ram and the T7700? For example, the new Office 2007 files open much slower than previous versions of Office. They are compressed in a new format. Would the 4 GB help them to open faster?

Is Ram involved in how fast Internet pages load? Separate from the speed of your Internet connection, would more ram boost the speed pages load? (and does it make a difference here if any of it is dedicated video ram or does that just impact on games)?

What I am really asking is does the faster processors and and increased ram make any difference if you aren't a gamer?

I work with office files, listen to music, want to do more with audio and video editing, upload my podcasts and some videos to sites. Would more ram make a difference to me?

Now I am using XP. If I am upgraded to anything it would have vista. I have heard you take a hit with vista and that it needs at least 1 GB just work. I would guess 4 GB would speed up everything overall, no?

[Benz145]

RAM doesn't have very much of an impact on the speed of your computer as long as you have enough that your computer isn't maxing it out. If you have enough RAM, adding more won't make your computer faster. Things that you need to look at is the speed of the RAM, and how quickly the CPU can communicate with the RAM. That comes down to the speed of things like the Front Side Bus, and North Bridge. In general, the faster the FSB, the faster the CPU will be able to communicate with the rest of the computer. Different chipsets have different FSB speeds. When it comes down to video editing I would say that a better CPU would have more of an increase in performance than more RAM.

Also I'd definitely recommend that you check out the new Dell XPSs. They are running the new Santa Rosa chipset, and are a very good bang for your buck if you are looking for a 13" or less laptop.

[sev7en]

I guess the big difference is 1 vs 2Gb. 4Gb are better for multitasking enviro or if you load heavy images or renders but many tests showed as there is not a gap as from 1 to 2Gb.

BCCHardware wrote about that (http://www.bcchardware.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3135&Itemid=40) with Vista and a classic gaming station.


Here's some snaps:

http://www.bcchardware.com/gallery/albums/VistaRAM/AoE3.sized.jpg

http://www.bcchardware.com/gallery/albums/VistaRAM/FEAR.sized.jpg

and the final word:

At the end of this article we have discovered a few things that are as sure and death and fuzzy kittens.


* 1) Windows Vista is coming and with it come higher system requirements if you want a smooth enjoyable experience.
* 2) 2GB of memory will be enough to keep all of today's games running quite smoothly. However, in light of Battlefield 2, and the Battlefield 2142 Demo taking up over 1.8GB of a 2GB system, there isn't much room left for other programs running in the background.
* 3) I honestly won't be rushing out and buying Vista as it uses way more resources that Windows XP.
* 4) Eventually hardcore gamers will all own Vista as DirectX 10 is only available for this platform.

I have a feeling that memory companies are going to be pushing 4GB Gaming kits shortly after the launch of Vista.

[MeanSquare]

On XP systems more memory only came into play when you started loaded up multiple programs simultaneously. System performance would go down when you got close to the physical RAM limit and had to use the paging file. On Vista systems, the OS is more aggressive about using available resources. SuperFetch (and some other system routines) will use whatever memory you have available to try to make the system more responsive. Of course it will give the memory back when your processes need it. As a result, Vista tends to run better with more memory.