Oh no! I've been misunderstood yet again.
Of course adding memory will improve the performance of any process where memory is the bottleneck. In fact, Windows does a reasonable job of using all it finds: Disk buffers, application 'roominess', and the reduction or elimination of swapping.
What I was addressing was the fixed-sized chunk of memory which is measured by Windows Resource Meter, a utility which displays a bar graph resembling a beaker of green stuff in SysTray. The memory allocated to this use cannot be expanded no matter how much memory you have available. I consider this a basic design shortcoming, and I guess Microsoft does too, since Win NT and 2000 allows this area to expand when needed, eliminating the problem.
Right click the 'green beaker' and you'll be given a chance to see more detail. Again, you'll be presented with a bar graph and a percentage. And again, you'd be wise not to let these numbers fall to low values.
So to try for clarity, I was only addressing the effects of additional system memory on the values displayed by the little green beaker, and not overall performance.
Further information on the matter is provided by a number of sites explaining GDI, or Graphic Device Interface. Nearly all provide much more understandable and complete explanations.
Cheers, PW. |
