On Mon, Oct 31, 2005 at 06:19:09PM -0500, Robert Glueck wrote:
> I'm thinking of upgrading my i686 system (Intel Celeron, 1.8
> GHz) from 512 MB RAM to 1GB (it uses PC133 SDRAM DIMM
> modules). I'm assuming this upgrade will give me better
> speed and performance.
I recently went from 256 MB to 1 GB. I see mainly two differences.
1. All programs I use fit in the memory. I hardly need swap space
anymore. So when I switch to another program that is open already I
can use it immediately instead of having to wait seconds before it is
moved from swap to ram. So daily usage for me is faster.
2. I use rsnapshot for making snapshots (backups). This used to take
about twenty minutes for me. Now it is twelve minutes. First time
this was run after the memory upgrade the memory usage shot from
roughly half full to full in short time. Apparently for programs that
need to copy large chunks of data from one part of the hard disk to
another, it helps if you have enough free memory. It avoids having to
read in a small amount of data, storing it in scarce memory, moving
the hard disk head, writing the data out and starting again. Also, I
can now fairly conveniently continue working while rsnapshot runs,
where before the upgrade it was considerably slower.
I used to think that it wouldn't matter too much, because 'free'
usually reported that there was still some room in memory, if you
didn't count the buffers and cache. But with no apparent change in my
usage patterns I now use about half a Gig continually, with the rest
going to buffers and cache.
$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1036572 927404 109168 0 153516 242952
-/+ buffers/cache: 530936 505636
Swap: 2252128 6276 2245852
So for me, memory size does matter. :)
I would say the main questions to ask are: how much swap are you using
and do you notice that?
As for swap size, if you have enough memory you may not need it at
all, though I would suggest at least a few hundred megabytes. I'm no
expert there though.
--
Maurits van Rees | http://maurits.vanrees.org/ [Dutch/Nederlands]
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"It can seem like you're doing just fine,
but the creep's creeping into your mind." - Neal Morse
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