From: Barry Marks (barry_at_fbtc.net)
Date: Wed Mar 03 1999 - 15:07:08 EST
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Khoury <pkhoury_at_mindspring.com>
To: ThinkPad List <thinkpad_at_cs.utk.edu>
Date: Tuesday, March 02, 1999 6:23 PM
Subject: RE: Should I upgrade to 80 MBytes on TP760ED?
>So, does this mean that the RAM beyond 64MB doesn't make a difference, or
what
>exactly does it mean?
The cpu is faster than the memory. Accessing memory by the cpu is one of
the major things that happens in a computer. It spends a large portion of
it's time reading and writing to memory. Since the cpu is faster, it
initiates a read from memory and then has to pause and wait for the memory
to return the requested data.
The cache is something used by the cpu to retain what it last got from
memory in case it's needed again. Retrieving from the cache is much faster
than retrieving data from ram.
If memory is added above 64 meg and it's not cached and Win95 puts itself in
that uncached ram, then it'll run a little slower. I don't know how much
this speed reduction is offset by having more ram when youre running several
apps. I suspect that if you're using a lot of ram, then adding more above
64k will speed it up, but not as much as if it were cached also. If you're
only running one app and its not using a lot of memory it probably will
cause a decrease in speed.
The first 64 meg is cached and will continue to be cached regardless of the
extra memory. All the memory will still be used.
I hope this helps.
Barry
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