Would additional RAM help?

Question

Iron

Hello. Although I am fond of programming, but zero in hardware. Please tell me, my computer has the following components:
Motherboard : Asus M4A79T Deluxe
Processor : AMD Athlon II X2 250 @ 3000 MHz
RAM : 4096 MB DDR3-SDRAM (2 RAM 2 GB each)
Video adapter : NVIDIA GeForce GT 240
If I add more 4 GB of RAM, will it work better or is the processor too weak for such volumes?

Answer 1

In fact, there is very little information. Extremely. It's not even so much about the user case, but about such banal things as the OS and the age of the PC. It is very sad to see such cool-hackers who have one answer for everything - put an SSD. I was like that too. Until he straightened his arms. Now a brief educational program:
About SSD: it is fast, and not so much in terms of read / write speed, but in terms of access time, which makes IOPS skyrocket; however, consumer disks - 10k overwrites per cell, which in an intensive scenario will kill half the disk in a year (well, in general, as Windows likes); yes, additional goodies, such as lower power consumption and almost complete immunity to shaking, although they have a place to be, however, they are more necessary in laptops; oh yes, SSDs are silent - that's cool, but for an amateur, I like to detect PC operation by noise.
About RAM: This is very OS dependent, more specifically Windows/NON-Windows. I explain - this fiend loves to cache. Cache anything and everything. And more. It is very wasteful of memory. Apparently subsystems are written not just by different people, but even not in contact with each other in any way. From experience I can say that very often the engineering decisions in Windows are something like this: if something can be done one way or another, then here it is done one way and another. From which the overhead is colossal. Moreover, with an increase in the number, everything only gets worse - features are added, they forget to optimize. For some reason, the system really does not want to unload indexing from this, for example, freeing up access for applications. Also, there is a deep leak somewhere in Windows. It is treated only by reboot. Well, it keeps my laptop uptime for weeks - I have to reboot sometimes.
About the swap file: I don't know who called swap that way; normal systems can work without a swap, this one cannot (unless there is >16GB of RAM); I don’t know where the problem is, but it seems that Windows, for some reason, instead of forgetting the disk cache, really wants to remove inactive applications in the swap.
About wear and tear: the very first thing that wears out is crappy RAM slats. It just so happened that cheap RAM has rotten conders, and the logic itself is not so hot, so over time the charge keeps getting worse and worse. Hence the problems - the timings need to be increased, but that's just who will take care of it. Errors will pour in, the OS carefully disassembles them and reloads them (apparently for this swap), but this all becomes unbearably slow.
Okay, it turns out that if:
+ OS gets stuck from time to time
+ OS sometimes runs away under blue curtains
+ OS is rather tired of taking care of the user with messages about lack of memory
+ Task Manager predicts an apocalypse soon due to 99% of physical memory occupied
+ After rebooting for half an hour or an hour, you can work relatively calmly,
then it's time to change RAM. It is to change, not add, do not be stingy, the old RAM will only pull the new one to the bottom. I dare to assume that the slats are more than 2 years old - this is the approximate service life of bad RAM slats. Next time I recommend taking not budget kingston solutions, but some corsairs, one and a half times more expensive, but at least for 10 years =), as empirical experience has established.
Now about SSD.I do not recommend now. Seriously. This thing has not really warmed up yet, although it has a decent age. They almost do not suffer from childhood diseases, but there are still not enough really good offers on the market. Wait just a little bit, interesting buns are already being announced here. However, the consumer sector is already almost ready for SSD, in my opinion, solid state in a hospital is too much.
A little bit about the HDD.They are wonderful. Actually. They are very tenacious - the 160 GB HDD is still working, although it is almost 10 years old (at that time it was very very much); Now I have mounted a root on it and I do not know the troubles. During its trouble-free operation, 2 SSDs got tired (one of them was taken as soon as SSDs appeared and its volume was a modest 60 GB) and three hybrids. Moreover, one of the hybrids was reassigned to me for work "without a solid-state piece" - it is still in the NAS. Warranty repair of disks is a banal replacement, save your data and nerves. By the way, look in SMART, maybe this drive is just bad.
Even less about the new platform.Yes and no. If nothing serious is required (some feature-related programming) - not necessarily. Although the CPU also wears out, yes. Well, about the Core i3 - in no case. Pay attention to Pentium GXXX - unique stones, cheap, fast, cold. To be honest, the Core i3 is a stub. If Core, then at least i5 - here Turbo Boost is normal, and Hyper Threading gives noticeable 0-150%. Although it would be nice to upgrade the platform.
Results. If you still decide on an SSD - read here . There are many links, interesting and not so, can help. If you decide to update the platform, keep in mind that everything here will have to be updated. Not just a stone to turn, but at least - to change the mat. fee.