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peter026
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For all you PC experts out there.

Is the download speed also reliant on what RAM you have or the front bus speed,or both.

My last PC had 256 RAM,and was a lot faster than this temporary replacement, at only 64 RAM.

My Broadband speed is 2.2Mbps

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It isn't really mate but what you'll be seeing with 64MB is called swapping meaning that the operating system is constantly moving programs in and out of RAM on onto the disk causing the slowdown - you do need to knock up that amount though mate to minimise swapping, 256 I'd say is the minimum nowdays, all mine have >1GB in.....

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FSB speed won't matter unless you have a 100Mbps Internet connection. The speed of normal broadband shouldn't trouble any Pentium based PC.

However your operating system needs a resonable amount of RAM to function correctly. You wouldn't want to run Windows 2000 or XP on only 64MB of RAM. Windows 98 is ok on 64MB.

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Yes because the faster you are downloading the more processing power you need.. And that also use;s memory... Its like pass water though a 4" pipe into a 2" pipe ..(It will still go though but will take longer due to restrictions in size)

Craig

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Yes because the faster you are downloading the more processing power you need.. And that also use;s memory... Its like pass water though a 4" pipe into a 2" pipe ..(It will still go though but will take longer due to restrictions in size)

That's only true for software USB modems mate, a lot of PCI Ethernet cards as used in a PC / router combo offload all of the processing onto the dedicated chip and use bus mastering etc which sees minimal to no CPU load, you shouldn't really notice it on today;s machines running at over 1Ghz, although 64MB is enough to cripple any modern OS :sick:

Like Colin says you'd have to be in the Gbps range before you're seeing bottlenecks in the memory or disk subsystems....

Anyway, more importantly, an ot, nice to see you back Craig :D

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Thanks for the replies every one.

If I can increase the size of the swap file will that increase the speed?

Damn insurance assessors and Dixons are dragging their feet on this, I have been waiting since the end of June for a new replacement PC, Shall have to ring them yet again to-morrow,they must surely be getting p***ed off with me and my moans.

Only took 3 days for the TV replacement,why this long for my PC.

Sorry Rant over

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Not really mate, it will just mean that it will load more programs before running out of memory, and all the while it will constantly swapping data between memory and disk - if you can hear the disk churning away constantly when you're not really doing much that is what is happening... Data gets thrown to the swap file when it's not been used for long and has to be read off disk again when needed - the disk is much, much slower than physical RAM which is why you see the dramatic slowdown...

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what operating system are you using?

Increasing the swap file probably won't help and may make things worse.

I was operating 98,but as it was not SE,the adsl modem wouldn't configure, so had to reformat the hard drive completely to get rid of a boot virus that both Panda Platinum and Norton couldn't get rid of,and reload XP.The XP mag say's they have run XP on 32 RAM OK .

The only other programmes on this PC are Quicken, Norton and Zone alarm Pro

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A lot of the time those speed tests give dodgy results back - I get a nice steady 830KB/sec here which does me nicely and that test gave me completely random results, highest I got was this one:

6286.6 Kbps

770.4 K bytes/sec

Still well short of what the line can do :D

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hmmmm i got...

2181.8 Kbps

267.4 K bytes/sec

I don't think that site above is the best measure of speed!

I just got the EXACT same figures! I am on NTL 2Mb!

64Mb with XP is not a good idea..but you should be able to struggle along while the insurance sorts your PC out. You need to get rid of all the graphical-enhanced features of XP and also turn on the classic theme. This should hopefully speed it up slightly.

You can also turn off some of the services that Windows XP doesn't really need such as the messenger service and a few others. You can use MSCONFIG to turn off some useless start up programs that sap limited memory.

I wouldn't mess with the Windows virtual memory settings with only 64Mb Ram.

I have had a quick look on the internet and here is a seemingly useful guide for you to follow:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,554793,00.asp

Can also give tweakXP a go? (www.tweakxp.com)

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A lot of the time those speed tests give dodgy results back - I get a nice steady 830KB/sec here which does me nicely and that test gave me completely random results, highest I got was this one:

6286.6 Kbps

770.4 K bytes/sec

Still well short of what the line can do :D

Aido mate - you on a 8Mb ADSL line or something?? :D

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what operating system are you using?

Increasing the swap file probably won't help and may make things worse.

I was operating 98,but as it was not SE,the adsl modem wouldn't configure, so had to reformat the hard drive completely to get rid of a boot virus that both Panda Platinum and Norton couldn't get rid of,and reload XP.The XP mag say's they have run XP on 32 RAM OK .

The only other programmes on this PC are Quicken, Norton and Zone alarm Pro

[/quot3]

XP ran ok on 32mg ram?....im sure the xp manual states not to run it on less than 128!...... :)

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My broadband line is only 18 Mbps  :)

That's not fair :lol: I guess you're using that for business?

Didn't know they came in 18MB! Leased line or T3 or sumit?

Another popular speed tester site here at adslguide

But just to confirm Pete, having a slow PC (caused by such a dramatic drop in RAM) will heavily impact anything you do on your computer. TBH, the use of internet will be slowed down with simply IE loading up, and displaying/caching web pages. :nuke:

D.

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