System Performance: Unit 8
Edward Greene
NT 1110
When addressing system performance, a key element that is often overlooked is Disk Fragmentation. Even on a brand new system with plenty of RAM and processing speed, the performance of the hard disk may be a bottleneck causing issues. It takes time to load large data files into memory - issues become particularly noticeable when dealing with movies, video clips, database files or image files which may easily be several gigabytes in size. On a freshly formatted disk, these files load fairly quickly. Over time, however you may start to notice performance issues - caused by disk fragmentation.
The different processes running in the back ground, (i.e. Windows Explorer, Power Manager) all take an allotted amount of RAM to perform at optimum levels. More free RAM means that the essential processes that are running have more priority of the space and the CPU. When you begin to run your RAM to its limits, The essential processes and even the non-essential processes begin to lag due to the overtaxing of the CPU and RAM.
Your OS will use the hard drive as a “back-up” or virtual memory if your PC runs out of RAM while you are working away. Using your hard drive as memory causes a serious performance hit, as hard drives are way, way slower than RAM. So, the trick is having enough memory, adding more does not help if you are doing nothing that needs more memory. Today, with a modern PC and a modern OS, you need about 4 gig to achieve this for most standard users. If you do graphic work or work with a lot of applications at once, then more memory than even 4 gig may be better. The trick is you want enough main memory (RAM) so the OS doesn't start using the hard drive as memory, that is all. Also, to address more than 4 gig of RAM, you must have a 64 bit OS installed. If you are only using a 32 bit OS, it will only be able to use about 3.5 gig of memory. So installing more is pointless, it cannot be used.