Intel Corp (INTC)

[mmoy]

> Is that because the page file is smaller or the disk buffers
> are larger and mabye more of them (or a combination of both)?

For me, it's the disk buffers. I don't use a page file. This meant that something would get killed when I hit 2 GB of memory usage which does happen from time to time. The Virtual Machine I run for work is a killer on memory.

> I'm comtemplating going to 4GB on a new system from 2GB now.
> More than likely I will as it will be cheap enough.

This is a one-year-old machine running PC4200 which is dirt-cheap these days. I could have upgraded to something faster but I'm reading that the bang for the buck isn't there in upgrading memory speed.

An example of improved performance is in moving files of a few hundred MB around. In the past, it would take some relatively short period of time to do the disk to disk copy. With the extra memory, the copy is instant.