Windows 10: More ram

hi,guys
I have a dell inspiron m5040 laptop, it seems to load web pages a bit on the slow side, I note its using 4 GB of ram at the moment, I believe I can add a further 4 GB of ram, do you guys think the upgrade to a total of 8 GB of ram would load web pages faster,
thanks for your time,
,

:)

 

More Dedicated Video Ram

Thank you for the help!

 

More Dedicated Video Ram

Yes, it should usually unless they say dedicated memory is needed.

 

It could be just the general age of the machine. The hard drive is a 5400rpm one which is rather slow. The wireless card only supports b/g/n and no ac. The ram is clocked at 1066MHz which again is slow these days.

If you decide to add more ram, you'd have to get the same speed. It may be hard to find memory of that speed.

Here are the specifications of the machine.

 

Basic issue: are you running a 32 bit or 64 bit OS? -a 32 bit OS can only 'see' up to 4Gb RAM.

If you are short of RAM I would expect you to see other evidence of slow performance.

There's a whole raft of possible issues relating to your browsing experience. Let's start with a really simple reality check.
If you use a different device on the same connection near the same time browsing the same pages is the perceived response speed different?

Factors: your internet speed: other devices using the same connection: how busy the server is....

Make sure your page file settings are default. Check using your task manager how much free RAM you have.

Are you opening one page at a time or many?

What else is your PC doing at the same time?

Is your CPU/disk/network use low when your PC is nominally idle?

Etc...

 

My experience suggests that the single biggest upgrade you would ever make would be to go to an SSD (solid state drive). It just blows everything else (more RAM, tweak this, tweak that etc) into the weeds as far as overall performance gains are concerned. Its like comparing a pushbike to a racing car as far as speed of things happening is concerned.

 

Granted, but exactly how would that help with rendering speeds of internet pages, or download issues?

 

Internet and Download speed is based on your Internet Speed not the computer.
Test your internet speed at Speedtest.net by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test if it is slower then the advertised price you are paying for, then have your ISP test your lines.

 

Fair point *Smile I'm trying to recall whether I noticed a difference in the scenarios you mention. I'm sure I did. Everything was just so much snappier. I only run 4Gb memory and page loading on many sites is instant.

My old laptop running 10 really bogs down with many web pages, presumably due to lots of adds and so on. That runs a traditional drive. My speeds are in the 50Mb + region.

 

hi,
thanks for your time to answer my post,

The Crucial site say that I can use the ram below, what do you guys think, yes/no? swarfega said it must be the same speed (1066MHz)

thanks, .

Crucial 4GB DDR3L-1600 SODIMM
CT2294053

DDR3 PC3-12800 • CL=11 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR3-1600 • 1.35V •
upgrade for Dell Inspiron M5040 system.


Crucial 4GB DDR3L-1600 SODIMM
CT3302530

DDR3 PC3-12800 • CL=11 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR3-1600 • 1.35V •
upgrade for Dell Inspiron M5040 system.


Crucial 4GB DDR3L-1866 SODIMM
CT3429836

DDR3 PC3-14900 • CL=13 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR3-1866 • 1.35V •
upgrade for Dell Inspiron M5040 system.



Ballistix Sport 4GB DDR3-1866 SODIMM
CT4451109

DDR3 PC3-14900 • 10-10-10-30 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR3-1866 • 1.35V •
upgrade for Dell Inspiron M5040 system.

 

It could technically be different speed but both dimms would run at the slowest dimm's speed. Unless of course you decide to completely replace the ram, then you need to check what memory speeds the motherboard supports.

 

hi,swarfega
how do I check what memory speeds the motherboard supports ? where do I find this information?

thanks for you time,
,

 

Dell (mine anyway) list the memory type and speed in the user manual. You should also be able to see the actual RAM fitted from the Dell 'system scan' utility (if it has one). I saved all the information from these when I originally got the PC, and very useful they are for referring back to. Once I clean installed I ditched all the Dell bloatware.

 

I don't expect you to really see a difference in performance of the web browser with more RAM. Windows will use RAM if it's available. The key is not that the RAM i used, but rather if it's available. Windows will cache stuff in RAM to increase performance.

 

From the specs of the machine, it seems that the motherboard only supports speeds up to 1066 MHz. You can use faster RAM, but it will only clock at 1066. If this were a desktop, you could probably overclock the RAM, but laptops do not allow that sort of thing. You could check in BIOS and see what the maximum speed the machine could clock RAM is, but I think you'll find that the max is 1066.

As for an upgrade to 8 GB, It is supported by the laptop, and I think that it will make your machine perform better (as it uses shared memory with the graphics adapter, and this limits the RAM available to applications). Note that it probably won't affect your download speed, or the speed of loading web pages. That is internet related.