Computer help - 2 hard drives with XP (updated)

[Billy's Little Trip]

Is it still necessary to get two equal memory sticks of ram? I think I remember that's old school.

Also, why are there 3 ram type choices? Is one better than the other? PC2-4200 (533 MHz), PC2-5300 (667 MHz), or PC2-6400 (800 MHz)

[JonPorobil]

For posterity's sake, here's a screencap of the performance from my tri-channel RAM (three sticks, 2GB each):



My computer literally never opens up virtual memory.

[JonPorobil]

Is it still necessary to get two equal memory sticks of ram? I think I remember that's old school.

Also, why are there 3 ram type choices? Is one better than the other?

Nah, my laptop has one stick of 512MB and one stick of 2GB and it works fine. You could totally compromise by buying one stick of 2GB.

The higher the MHz rating on the RAM you buy, the faster it can dole out memory to the computer. The differences aren't enormous, but likely noticeable. Funny, though, it barely shows up in price difference.

[Billy's Little Trip]

I didn't look to see if there's a 3 gig stick.

And yeah, I'd like it if I never have to use virtual memory, because this thing is SO quiet when I'm just typing like right now. It doesn't even sound like it's running.

[JonPorobil]

I didn't look to see if there's a 3 gig stick.

And yeah, I'd like it if I never have to use virtual memory, because this thing is SO quiet when I'm just typing like right now. It doesn't even sound like it's running.

There might be, but that's when the price starts to catch up with you.

We haven't talked budget, though, so you can decide for yourself.

[Billy's Little Trip]

So, PC2-6400 (800 MHz) would be my better choice for my ram. 2 gig sticks seem to be around $38 bux, which seems really inexpensive. I hate to waste my 1 gig, but I want the max my computer allows. So two 2 gigs it is.

And no, I can't find a 3 gig stick.


edit: This is so cheap, why? It has the numbers I need. http://www.frys.com/product/5917194?sit ... IN_RSLT_PG

[JonPorobil]

edit: This is so cheap, why? It has the numbers I need. http://www.frys.com/product/5917194?sit ... IN_RSLT_PG

I really don't know why. Corsair is a very reliable maker of memory, and I highly recommend them to anyone. Manufacturer's rebates are pretty standard deals to stimulate sales, but even the pre-rebate price is lower than I'd expect for that product. I'd go for it if I needed it.

Oh, and if you're worried about waste, you can probably list that 1GB stick on eBay or Craigslist. Someone out there wants it.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Cool, thanks for the help, everyone. I'll report back after I install more ram.

By the way, I never really paid attention to the resource monitor before. So I watched it as I browsed the webz and sure enough, when I had multiple sites open and went to my myspace page (which myspace ruined) it went below 0 on my free physical memory and the hard drive was spinning at full speed. So my demands are higher than my ram can deliver.

Off the subject: Has anyone noticed how horribly hoggy myspace is now? I see that Brad Sucks is pulling out.

[JonPorobil]

Off the subject: Has anyone noticed how horribly hoggy myspace is now? I see that Brad Sucks is pulling out.

It's been about three to four years since myspace loaded with any reasonable speed. It has pretty much lost all cultural relevance as well. Which came first? Kind of a chicken and egg problem...

But it's always been resource-heavy, largely due to its design which allows anyone with a profile to run just about any script they want from that profile. Ugh.

[Spud]

I mean holy fuck. Who would have ever thought it would take over a gig to run a god damned operating system. And you still can't rename more than one file at time. Geez.

[Billy's Little Trip]

I mean holy fuck. Who would have ever thought it would take over a gig to run a god damned operating system. And you still can't rename more than one file at time. Geez.

I think you need more gigaSpudz.

...see that? The thing I did?

[Rabid Garfunkel]

What Spud said...

[JonPorobil]

I mean holy fuck. Who would have ever thought it would take over a gig to run a god damned operating system. And you still can't rename more than one file at time. Geez.

Operating System Bloat is one of my pet peeves - it keeps computers from getting substantially more powerful than they were five years ago (or, more generously, it significantly retards all that progress we've been making), because all the extra computing power goes straight back into powering the OS. Windows and Mac both do it. I ran Ubuntu for four years because of this, and even it has some bloat issues.

Finally I buckled down and paid a lot of money to get ahead of the technological curve. That's why my system performance up there is so sweet. Eight cores of 2.8GHz computing power coupled with three DIMMs of 2GB DDR3 RAM can run Windows without breaking a sweat. It just cost money.

And SURE you can rename more than one file at a time - you just need to learn how to use the Command Prompt (aka the Shell, formerly known as DOS) to do it. That's been around for two three decades at this point.

[jast]

Actually you can rename an arbitrary number of files (in the same directory) simultaneously even in Windows Explorer. The result is just not useful most of the time.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Update: 01/31/11

Ok, I went to Fry's and bought two sticks of 2gig RAM. So far so good. I can have multiple windows open and watch a vid on youtube and I hear the hard drive just slightly pick up speed for a quick second, but hardly noticeable. But if I open my MySpace page with other forum pages open and youtube open, it kicks up to high speed, but only for a moment or two.

So the RAM did the trick.

My next question. Why was there so much Physical memory still available, yet it kicked into my virtual memory while having youtube, MySpace and forum pages open? Is that a setting of some sort?

[JonPorobil]

Same thing as above. It takes a second for the sticks of RAM to allocate all the necessary memory. Once it's all allocated out, the virtual memory on the hard drive isn't needed anymore. Sounds like me like it's functioning as expected. Glad it worked.

Incidentally, defragmenting your hard drive might reduce the audible spin when it accesses virtual memory. That way all the blank spots that it can use for virtual memory will all be organized in the same spot.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Yeah, I did a defrag the other day. But right now while I'm adding my software up on this computer, I'll do it a again after I'm done adding stuff.

I was using Windows Live Movie Maker today before I bought the RAM. It worked fine until I went to render it. It would shut my computer off about half way through. I haven't tried it yet with the new RAM. I'm going to be disappointed if it still shuts down. I miss my old Movie Maker with XP.

edit: Nope. I just tried to "make movie" at the "recommended" 1440 X 1080 pixels, aspect ration standard, 24.18 mbps, 172.58 MB per minute of video. I'm bummed. And now I don't like Windows Live Movie Maker.

[jast]

172.58 MB per minute of video.

That's a little bit crazy, you know.

Also, rumour has it that Movie Maker 2.6 (yes, that's the old thing without the "Live") is compatible with Windows 7. If you can find somewhere to download it, you might be able to keep using it (though apparently they have removed video capture features from that version).

edit: ah, here it is: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/ ... laylang=en

[Billy's Little Trip]

Thanks Jast. I just downloaded it.

All I was trying to do is to have one of my songs with a still album cover picture so I could upload to youtube, and it would render it, ugh!. From your comment, sounds like I was making the file too big.

I'm trying to fill my BLT youtube channel with BLT music. Youtube needs a vid file or it fails. What a pain. I suppose I could just change the wav or mp3 to a vid format somehow, right? If anyone knows an easier way to put songs on youtube, let a bro-ham know.

By the way, the only reason I'm doing the youtube thing with my music is because it's been requested numerous times. Right now I'm getting an interest in my music from the youtubers because of the Tokin Daily Show in Colorado and they seem to live on youtube. They want to be able to quickly click a members channel and listen, comment and rate. Right now the show gives my BLT MySpace site, but I've gotten a ton of people telling me the page won't load for them. MySpace is cutting their own throat with their cpu hungry design.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Ok, I just used the old movie maker with no problems. Of course the finished vid is only 34kb. So I went into windows live movie maker and custom set the properties the same as they are in movie maker and it almost finishing saving it as a movie and turned off my computer. WTF?

Has anyone use windows live movie maker? Is it a buggy program? Can someone try it and let me know?
1. import one of you songs.
2. add any picture and stretch it to fit the length of the song.
3. save movie.

http://explore.live.com/windows-live-mo ... r?os=other

[JonPorobil]

Oh my gawd do I hate Windows Movie Maker. And yeah, I get it, it's not worth it to shell out money for a REAL video editing program because you're doing something that doesn't actually require any real editing per se, but STILL. It's absurdly clunky and buggy. You'd think Microsoft programmers would at least be able to look like they're trying to design an intuitive and usable interface, but not for this program.

BLT, the bugs you're experiencing (right down to the completely counterproductive "suggested" default settings) are all par for the course for Windows Movie Maker. If you want something capable of producing movie files which is easier and/or less buggy, you'll have to pay for it, sadly.

Unless someone here is aware of some brilliantly-programmed open-source video editing suite.

[Billy's Little Trip]

That's what I figured, thank you.

Here's what I made with the old school movie maker in about 15 minutes, thank you jast.



...yeah, I know *sigh*