Technical Question: How Much RAM For Celeron CPU?

ElvenKing · Post by **ElvenKing** » Thu Jul 04, 2002 9:13 am

Forgive me if this sounds like a dumb question, but I'm not exactly up to speed on tech stuff!
I'm currently running a system with a 900Mhz Celeron Socket 370 with 256 Megs of SDRAM. There are some pretty good deals on CPU's and RAM around here right now so I was thinking of upgrading to a 1.2Ghz Celeron. Would it be worth it to add another stick of 256 MB SDRAM? I remember hearing a while back that any amount of RAM over 256 was wasted on the Celerons because of the Bus. The newer chip comes with a larger cache so I was wondering if I could effectively increase my total RAM to 512 Megs.
Any clarification would really help.

Thanks,
ElvenKing

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Thu Jul 04, 2002 9:38 am

Has nothing to do in the NwN forum - moved to Tech Support.

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HighLordDave · Post by **HighLordDave** » Thu Jul 04, 2002 10:56 am

I've never heard that; RAM use is often more a function of the operating system, not the hardware. For instance, old versions of Windows95 were very inefficient at using memory, so having more than about 64 MB didn't bring you an appreciable amount of additional performance. However, that's no longer the case with later versions of Windows 9x, Windows NT and XP.

As to how much RAM you should get, ask yourself this: How much RAM can your motherboard support, and how much can you afford? To me, RAM is like gasoline in your car; you can never have too much, but if you don't have enough, you'll wish you'd bought more.

ElvenKing · Post by **ElvenKing** » Thu Jul 04, 2002 11:24 am

My apologies...

Sorry about that Xandax. It was meant to be more of Neverwinter specific question. Basically in a roundabout way I'm trying to find ways to increase performance for NwN without dropping a ton of money on a new video card. Right now I'm running a 32MB Riva TNT2 and was hoping to stay away from dropping a lot of coin on a new GeForce.
HighLordDave - thanks for the reply. As for my motherboard I'm using an Asus TUV4X so as far as I know I can drop in more RAM no problem. Any other ideas on increasing performance?

Thanks,
ElvenKing

HighLordDave · Post by **HighLordDave** » Thu Jul 04, 2002 12:07 pm

There are three basic things you can do to get the most performance out of your computer without doing major upgrades (mobo, processor, etc.)

1) Buy more RAM. It's the single biggest way to get the most bang for your buck. Find out how much your motherboard will support, and buy as much as you can afford. Also make sure that you buy it in the correct configurations (ie-If your board will support 1.5 GB of PC133 SDRAM in three 512 MB chips, don't buy a 1 GB chip thinking the board will support it because it is less than the 1.5 GB total RAM).

2) Reduce the number of things running off of the motherboard. I hate integrated components, especially onboard video and sound. On top of being extra parts that can break down, they siphon off system resources for their own use. For instance, many computers that advertise 128 MB of system memory but have on board video are using 4 MB of your system memory for the graphic processing unit, leaving you with 124 MB of memory. Same thing with sound; if you have an extra slot, fill it with an expansion card and disable it from the motherboard.

If you can afford it, get a better video and sound card. The prices on ATI's Radeon cards are dropping (be careful of their driver support though) and the price on the GeForce4 MX cards is in the low-end range (I wouldn't buy one, though). Look around this forum for some of the video card threads to get some ideas. You can get a fairly good SoundBlaster card for about $50, and that will reduce some of the burden on your system if you're running AC97 motherboard sound.

3) Disable as many things in your OS from running. I hate crap like the AOL Tray icon, the RealPlayer quickstart, Gator, etc. Shut all that stuff down; you don't need it. You shouldn't run anything except your system critical applications (video drivers, sound, anti-virus, firewall, etc.), because every program that's running chews up a little bit of your system's resources, and while individually they aren't noticible, if you've got 7 extra programs running in the background, it's going to slow you down considerably.

Other ways to make sure your system is running as efficiently as possible are to periodically run ScanDisk and Defrag, and clean out your registry of unused entries and keys that aren't used any more.