[wplug] Re: How much performance increase with more memory?

[M. Sussman]

Scott,

The really big performance hit you take with too little memory is 
caused by swapping.  If you are swapping during the execution
of your app, then you NEED more memory.  If you only swap
when you switch apps (takes a long time to refresh screen, etc.)
then you have a decision to make.  If you see little swapping,
more memory is a waste.

You are swapping when the drive is running during application
execution.  Running almost all the time.  Look at the drive light:
does it blink regularly?  Is it on continuously?  Is it on when
you don't think you should be reading or writing files?  These are
indications of swapping.

Some performance monitors report the amount of swap you are using.
The command vmswap will report your swap usage.

Good luck.

>Message: 9
>Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 10:01:34 -0400
>From: "Scott F. Kiesling" <kiesling+ at pitt.edu>
>To: wplug at wplug.org
>Subject: [wplug] How much performance increase with more memory?
>Reply-To: wplug at wplug.org

>I am running Gentoo on a Dell Inspiron 5000, Pentium 3, 128M RAM. I use
>Blackbox for X and the applications I use most frequently are Evolution,
>OpenOffice, Phoenix, XMMS, and Praat (a speech analysis program). If I
>upgrade my memory to 256 or 512, does the WPLUG public think I will see
>signficant gains in speed? That is, should I spend the $200, or wait for
>a while and get a new machine? 
>
>Scott
>-- 
>Scott F. Kiesling

>Assistant Professor              
>Director of Graduate Studies
>Department of Linguistics                kiesling at pitt.edu
>University of Pittsburgh, 2816 CL        Phone: 412-624-5916
>Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA                 Fax: 412-624-6130
>
>http://www.pitt.edu/~kiesling/skpage.html
-- 
M. Sussman
msussman at na-net.ornl.gov