>>128 to 256 RAM: How much benefit in NT 4?
In my experience (at a lower level of RAM), NT will use
what it has based on the demand. NT is actually pretty
good about this (compared to other MSFT products, anyhow).
Whether your demand makes good use of 256 megs or not
depends on your use of it. If your commit charge is not
exceeding 128, then you will likely not see any performance
boost (or at least rarely); in fact, unless your ACTIVE
demand exceeds 128, you won't feel a thing, even if the
commit charge exceeds 128, except when you switch from ap
to ap. Depending on what you do, your active commit charge
(or working set) may approach the commit charge reported or
even the peak commit charge. It all depends on how you
use it and on how often you use it that way.
How's that for mealy mouth? But the truth is, it depends
so much on how you use it that there isn't any good way
to generalize. That's a bouquet for NT, incidentally;
that's the way it should work.
Experience. My commit charge runs around 120-150mb with peaks
of 180 in a 64mb system. I rarely experience serious memory
pressure (read that disk thrashing). I do mostly database
work, and the upshot is that the db segment gets paged in
(pretty fast) then everything runs in memory. Little profit
from a memory upgrade there, unless my databases get bigger
(they're for development testing, so I can more or less control
them). Real memory gets divided about evenly between NT and
application stuff, including disk cache in the NT half.
On the other hand, occasionally I work on high-res
scans of photo images which exceed memory, and everything
goes to a crawl, to use a VERY polite term (not resembling
the words I use when it happens <gg>). And of course I'm
frequently switching to memory hog browsers, quote getters,
charting programs, etc, more and more every day.
Suffice it to say that for me the next machine has AT LEAST
256mb; preferably more. Have you ever noticed how aps
expand to use available memory and then some? Expenses
expand to use available money and then some? Waist
expands to use available belt loops and ... clearly
time to stop.<gg> Got to go get on the treadmill ... .
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