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Scottland · 2011-12-20, 13:09

Hi,

I have an Acer R3700, with 2gb RAM.

I'm contemplating giving it a bit of an update, just wondering whether I'd see more benefit to increase the RAM to 4gb or add a small SDD instead (<64gb).

Obviously adding a 2gb stick is far cheaper, but I'm not too bothered about that.

Cheers Nod

Atomic Zombie · 2011-12-20, 13:18

Why not do both? Big Grin

Scottland · 2011-12-20, 13:25

I probably will...at some point. I'm just interested in which will have more of an impact. Smile

Orclas · 2011-12-20, 14:16

Well, which are your perceived bottlenecks?

Scottland · 2011-12-20, 14:26

Orclas Wrote:Well, which are your perceived bottlenecks?

Media playback is ok, but moving between screens/menu's is a tad slow.

PaulCarter · 2011-12-20, 17:23

I've got an Acer Revo 3700 running Ubuntu 11.04 and Dharma and a bunch of other things including a couple of low traffic websites. I've never seen it go much over 1GB of RAM used - so I don't think you'll gain much with added RAM. Replacing the standard HDD with an SSD should certainly speed read-times up - but it doesn't sound like you've got any media issues. It would speed up boot times if that's important to you.

So, in summary, I don't think you need to do anything. Treat yourself with the money you've saved Big Grin

On the other hand, you haven't given details of your setup - if you're running Windows then the extra RAM may well be useful!

Scottland · 2011-12-20, 18:01

PaulCarter Wrote:I've got an Acer Revo 3700 running Ubuntu 11.04 and Dharma and a bunch of other things including a couple of low traffic websites. I've never seen it go much over 1GB of RAM used - so I don't think you'll gain much with added RAM. Replacing the standard HDD with an SSD should certainly speed read-times up - but it doesn't sound like you've got any media issues. It would speed up boot times if that's important to you.

So, in summary, I don't think you need to do anything. Treat yourself with the money you've saved

On the other hand, you haven't given details of your setup - if you're running Windows then the extra RAM may well be useful!

Yeah it's running W7 Wink

I may just see if there's any bargains popping up over the xmas perio.

Orclas · 2011-12-20, 18:08

I'd say 2Gb is the bare minimum for Windows.

There you have it, RAM should be first step, it's the cheaper one too Smile

bluray · 2011-12-20, 18:12

Orclas Wrote:I'd say 2Gb is the bare minimum for Windows.

If it is W7 32-bit, 2GB of RAM is all you need and you will not benefit from 4GB either. If it is W7 64-bit, you'll benefit from 4GB of RAM. Smile

PaulCarter · 2011-12-20, 18:33

Quote:I'd say 2Gb is the bare minimum for Windows.

There you have it, RAM should be first step, it's the cheaper one too

Alternatively, ditch W7 and move to XBMC Live (or Ubuntu). Save yourself the need to upgrade RAM and re-use the W7 license elsewhere to save even more money Nod

Atomic Zombie · 2011-12-20, 18:48

Or openelec Big Grin

eskro · 2011-12-20, 21:45

even tho i have 4GB of ram for my win7 HTPC,
im basically only using only less then 2GB...
ive never seeing my RAM get used more then that,,,
again, becuz its a dedicated XBMC machine...
however, 4GB is still recommended specially when using an SSD.
u can then disable page file windows feature and prolongates the life of your SSD
since u minimize the writes to it.,

i think u should use OpenELEC if u dont need to surf the net and what not.

Orclas · 2011-12-21, 02:36

bluray Wrote:If it is W7 32-bit, 2GB of RAM is all you need and you will not benefit from 4GB either. If it is W7 64-bit, you'll benefit from 4GB of RAM.

Well, if I'm not yet fully a victim of age - and the slight dementia that comes with it - a 32-bit system can access up to 3Gb of RAM (including any GPU RAM). That's 50% more in such case Wink

Question still remains though - would it be used and make any difference?

I'd say that if you run it on a multi purpose Windows machine, with all the little processes and services that comes with it, then you could probably expect some micro "pauses" at times. Particularly AV's can be good at incurring those little small delays.

Scottland · 2011-12-21, 11:40

Thanks for the replies chaps, it's x64 W7 I'm running - and I do occasionally use it for other stuff so I'd prefer to keep Windows on (Plus I'm a Microsoft fanboy :p).

I've managed to pickup another 2gb stick for £6.50/$10 so that'll do and I'll keep an eye out for a cheap SSD.

Cheapest I've seen is ~£65 for 60gb at the moment.

Orclas · 2011-12-21, 12:22

Don't go too cheap though, you dont want your sysdisk to fail on you Wink