Alright. So, my laptop has 4GB of RAM and an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU.

My brother's PC has 2GB of RAM and an Intel Core 2 CPU, not a duo.

They're both running Vista 64 bit.

My question is, why is his computer faster than mine? My windows experience rating for memory is 4.5, while his is 5.9. His computer is also faster than mine, and boots up faster. I'm assuming his computer is faster than mine because it's a PC and my laptop limits the amount of ram that can be used or something. I guess my second question would be is my laptop even utilizing it's 4GB of ram, or is that much RAM for my laptop an unnecessary gimmick?

could also be how much crap you both have on your computers, or if you have a virus...

Laptops traditionally (especially in the time of core duos) use 5.4k RPM HDDs. PCs use (traditionally) 7.4k RPM HDDs. That would explain the disparity in boot-up times, which has more to do with drive speed than anything else.

For RAM memory, there's different frequencies. You may have something like 800 MHz, maybe less -- he may have faster memory.

There's also the issue that laptops sometimes try to power starve their components, or can overheat -- both of which can slow down your computer significantly.

Well, next to the processor specs. on both my brother's and my computer, it says it runs at 1.83GHz. Is this the frequency of the RAM memory?

No, your RAM (if you have the gateway P6860 and the PM965 motherboard from the other topic) runs at 667Mhz.

There are a number of factors that can affect your percieved speed. The biggest, like sacrieur said, is that you have a 5400 RPM hard drive, versus a 7200 rpm drive possibly. The data writing speed of the hard drive is most likely the bottleneck of the boot time, since it essentially is writing the operating system into the RAM, and the physical spinning disk tends to be the biggest bottleneck in a computer these days.

Like Kame said, if you have a great deal more programs that need to be booted up, or just are eating up more of your processing speed, that can kill a lot of performance too.

To answer your actual question, more RAM is always better, but typically you won't use anywhere close to 4GB unless you're editing some huge ass video, or maybe doing 3D modelling, I hit 4GB when running a mathematica model once, that kind of heavy use. The faster the memory the better of course, 1333 MHz is obviously better than 667 MHz, but the performance boost probably wont be 2x if you get 2x faster RAM because it has to interact with the CPU and whatnot. A computer is basically a series of bottlenecks one after the other, from the processor to its own caches, to the RAM, to the hard drive, over and over and over. 4GB is plenty, and the amount of RAM that can be used total is determined by the instruction set of the operating system. A 32 bit OS can only use just under 4GB, but a 64 bit OS can utilize the whole 4GB plus ridiculously more amounts of RAM.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 28 2012, 3:14 am by Vrael.

Put an SSD in your laptop and your boot times and application launch times will be much shorter. As far as I know, more RAM doesn't buy you anything unless you're running out of the RAM you have. Having more cache for your processor would also help with general speed, but that's not something you can just go out and buy.

I'd put money on the hard drive.

post speccy screenshot.

Your memory is way too slow.

How did you get the specifications listed on the right of that picture?

http://www.piriform.com/speccy

Wow, my computer is hot compared to yours. Even though I have a laptop fan/tray under it and a fan above me blowing down. Are these performance ratings matching up with my specifications?

Your HDD is 5.4k RPM, your RAM operates at 666 MHz, and your processor/mobo are running very hot.

That would be why his desktop is faster than yours.

Seriously, how do you run SC2 on High settings without melting your motherboard? My RAM runs at 667 MHz, yours is running at 1/2 that, though I'm not sure what my RAM timings are. (Sax, according to his specs sheet he's running at 329 MHz, not 666). Also, my CPU tends to operate at about 40C, not in the 70's. I am baffled how you have run SC2 at high without melting anything. REVEAL TO ME YOUR SECRETS O WIZE ONE!!! My computer is actually a gateway P173XL-FX, but according to gateway's tech sheets we are operating on the same intel/godzilla PM965 motherboard. WTF GOIN ON!?!?!

DDR is Double Data Rate, so the effective frequency is twice as fast as mentioned on speccy.