Will doubling RAM increase laptop speed?

[JDay]

Ubuntu 11.10. Just emptied the temp, not even a MB was in there. Not too many things running. I do have a resource monitor and it shows my memory filling up, a huge chunk is cache.

I'm guessing you do not have a swap partition on this machine. Go ahead and make one, contrary to popular belief it will not cause excessive wear to the SSD. I've had swap on my laptops SSD for over a year now and all the SSD health utils show that drive as being at 100% health still.

[yellowsulphur]

I read somewhere that adding more ram to systems with shared system/graphic memory (Intel) more ram will be allocated to the gpu. I noticed better performance with the Intel HD 3000 when I increased the ram from 4 to 8 GB.

[Demonicspire]

I personally have an XPS of the same model, and mine is actually running pretty slow at the moment. To be fair I haven't sat down with it, flushed out the startup items and checked thoroughly for viruses.

[Autarchist]

Here is a screenshot I took while I had Firefox and Netbeans open, two things I have running most of the time, as I use this laptop for web development. I'm sure Firefox takes up a bunch of memory, especially since I usually have many tabs open. Same for Netbeans, I usually have 5-10 tabs open in there as well.



A visual representation of the same output in the terminal is in the top right. The blue is the "used" memory space, the green directly above is "cache", and the bright green at the top is "free" memory (boxes on the left and right represent CPU and bandwidth usages respectively). It seems like the "free" memory eventually gets down to the same size every time with the "used" and "cached" sections varying in size depending on what I have running.

[stilly]

You have TWO different machines, TWO different OSes; TWO different CPUs; a QUADCORE vs a DUALCORE, AMD VS INTEL Etc...

My point is this, you are comparing apples and oranges.

I only know that Unbuntu is NOT windows but rather a form of Linux or something along that line. The way they handle the cpu and manage resources is prolly different. Laptops are not made to be faster, they are made to get the job done and be portable, but mainly they are made to be portable. They are not workmachines unless you pay a LOT of money to have some rep tell you that they are workhorses.

Sure, if you have the space go ahead and increase your RAM, but the gain you get will most likely give you about a 5%-10% increase in performance.

Wanna increase performance? wipe it all out and reformat and reload and then take speed measurements. Then later on when it slows down take measurements again, rinse and repeat...

good luck with whatever you find that works.

[Autarchist]

You have TWO different machines, TWO different OSes; TWO different CPUs; a QUADCORE vs a DUALCORE, AMD VS INTEL Etc...

Let me guess: the sky is blue, the grass is green, and politicians lie?

The purpose of the comparison was to set a reference point. I see that I could have been more clear about that. To some people, anything less than an overclocked six-core i7 with an SSD and 16GB RAM is "slow", and to others, anything more than the e-machine collecting dust in their closet is "fast". That said, simply saying "Hey will more RAM make my laptop faster?" is fairly vague. Faster to who? Faster than what?

I also understand the purpose of laptops. The size, cooling, and power limitations put them in a different class than desktops. That said, I'm not looking to play the latest FPS on maximum settings, and I'm not running 5 different resource-heavy applications simultaneously. For my purposes, I think "snappy" performance on a laptop is a pretty reasonable goal, even on a machine this old.

My questions could have been phrased much better. I understand that performance increases are relative, but also dependent on the specific hardware in question and how it is being used, hence the screenshot above. Furthermore, I know there are some folks lurking about these forums with specialized knowledge of linux and how resources are utilized.

Very few "upgrades" will result in a 5-10% increase for everyone with everything they do. An upgrade may result in an "average" 10% increase "overall" (again, these are pretty vague terms), but that means a 5% increase here, a 20% increase there, and so on. Where you get the biggest performance increases and where you want them the most, I think, determine the value of those upgrades.

[speedrrracer]

My title at work is Senior Software Engineer, so forgive my knee-jerk response to doubling RAM: HELL YES! More cycles, more RAM, more SSDs, and much, much more bandwith

The truth, however, is that the system stats you display suggest no need for extra RAM.

When you run free -m in your example above, look at the "-/+ buffers/cache" row. That is your used and free RAM after subtracting and adding (respectively) I/O buffers and page cache. If this row's free column is approaching zero, your memory requirements are greater than your RAM, and you will swap. You can confirm you are not swapping because the "used" column in the swap row holds a big, fat zero.

So if that's truly a representative shot of your machine when you're working, then you're fine from a RAM perspective.

But you should still double it

[Autarchist]

My title at work is Senior Software Engineer, so forgive my knee-jerk response to doubling RAM: HELL YES! More cycles, more RAM, more SSDs, and much, much more bandwith

The truth, however, is that the system stats you display suggest no need for extra RAM.

When you run free -m in your example above, look at the "-/+ buffers/cache" row. That is your used and free RAM after subtracting and adding (respectively) I/O buffers and page cache. If this row's free column is approaching zero, your memory requirements are greater than your RAM, and you will swap. You can confirm you are not swapping because the "used" column in the swap row holds a big, fat zero.

So if that's truly a representative shot of your machine when you're working, then you're fine from a RAM perspective.

But you should still double it

That's what I was thinking. I checked this by opening up a bunch of programs and eventually the "swap" space started getting used.

Still, it seems to really slow down when the "free" space gets tiny. Is there anything I can configure in the settings to help alleviate that?

[steve92407]

what is your feeling about a sshd.

[gl0ckc0ma]

Yep I heard a solid state HD will dramatically increase the speed of a laptop.

I have not tried it, I have an XPS i7 8gb ram and a terrabyte HD and is fast enough for me

[speedrrracer]

Still, it seems to really slow down when the "free" space gets tiny. Is there anything I can configure in the settings to help alleviate that?

There is no setting that can get blood from a turnip. There are some tweaks, but at that point, what can/should be done 1) becomes specific to the system and 2) comes often with a price.

If you find yourself often depleting all your free memory, then I would argue the screenshot you posted is not representative, and you therefore should increase system resources. If you're just saying your system gets slow when it runs low on resources, well, so do all systems.

One thing I would recommend is not to jump to purchasing RAM until you have a more complete picture.

As you start consuming the remaining memory resources by opening more programs as you mentioned, study not just your memory footprint but also your disk and CPU. Often RAM is a culprit, but other resources can bottleneck and easily cause system slowdowns.

[steve91104]

it can't hurt

[yellowsulphur]

Have you checked your load average? Might not be a ram or hard drive problem, but an I/O issue. Should be less than 1 ideally less than .5.

[winnre]

I used to have the XPS M1530, it ran slower than a Celeron! I upgraded to a Dell Inspiron 17 with 4GB and I was not impressed with the speed. I added 4 more GB for a total of 8GB and I see no difference whatsoever.

Time for the Dell Inspiron 17 to be replaced and I will not be in a rush to buy RAM.

[Autarchist]

There is no setting that can get blood from a turnip. There are some tweaks, but at that point, what can/should be done 1) becomes specific to the system and 2) comes often with a price.

If you find yourself often depleting all your free memory, then I would argue the screenshot you posted is not representative, and you therefore should increase system resources. If you're just saying your system gets slow when it runs low on resources, well, so do all systems.

One thing I would recommend is not to jump to purchasing RAM until you have a more complete picture.

As you start consuming the remaining memory resources by opening more programs as you mentioned, study not just your memory footprint but also your disk and CPU. Often RAM is a culprit, but other resources can bottleneck and easily cause system slowdowns.

You're probably right about that. I'll keep a closer eye on things for the next couple days. If I decide on the memory upgrade, I'll start by swapping out 1 stick (leaving me with 2GB+4GB), and then reassess the value of swapping out the other stick.

Have you checked your load average? Might not be a ram or hard drive problem, but an I/O issue. Should be less than 1 ideally less than .5.

Which command is that?

I used to have the XPS M1530, it ran slower than a Celeron! I upgraded to a Dell Inspiron 17 with 4GB and I was not impressed with the speed. I added 4 more GB for a total of 8GB and I see no difference whatsoever.

Time for the Dell Inspiron 17 to be replaced and I will not be in a rush to buy RAM.

As I understand it, they originally shipped with Vista. Most of the negative reviews I read were about the Vista installation it shipped with, and the overheating, the latter of which seems to have been greatly improved after a BIOS update. If it was the stock Vista install that you were running, I'd mostly chalk up the sluggishness to the "OS" (notice quotes).