filmbuff
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general question
Hi folks. can you help me understand ram, cpu speed and how they affect speed. I have a program I use to keep track of my fantasy football league. I use this program at work too, and it seems to work much quicker. my comp. at home has more ram[64}but a slower processer beefed up 486[133].
I am also running win98 at home. At work i use a 166 48mb ram win 95. I also downloaded a cd streamer program at home and when I playback a song, anything else I try to run is very slow. to sum it up my question is even though I increased my ram will my slower processer still cause me to lack speed? whats more important or do they have to work hand in hand. Thanks for your time.
I am also running win98 at home. At work i use a 166 48mb ram win 95. I also downloaded a cd streamer program at home and when I playback a song, anything else I try to run is very slow. to sum it up my question is even though I increased my ram will my slower processer still cause me to lack speed? whats more important or do they have to work hand in hand. Thanks for your time.
Yes, even a 486 133 is slow, mainly because of the inferior architecture. The FPU (floating point unit, used for processing math, specifically numbers like 1.3 * 5.3, i.e. ones that contain a decimal point) is slower on the 486 than on the Pentium and Pentium II. If you have the money, you should upgrade to a Pentium II. You could get the lower end ones for very cheap now (266 for example).
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For some type of programs like video, there is no substitute for a very fast processor and lots of ram, there are also many other factors that may effect performance not just ram and processor, it could be a bottleneck in the video or disk sub system or a like. This is why pentium-II's come with plenty of memory, a very fast harddrive and powerfull video card.
I agree completely wayneb. The computer basically has to be "in proportion." Like you said, you don't want a computer like this: i8088, 16.8gb hard drive, 64kb monochrome video card, 1gb RAM. It just doesn't work well at all.