From: teffta@cs690-3.erie.ge.com (Andrew R. Tefft) Subject: Re: help with system to run unix Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1993 13:58:01 GMT
In article <Aug30.050242.31096@acs.ucalgary.ca> root@fusion.cuc.ab.ca (Superuser) writes:
>else..). The key to running a Unix box smoothly is memory- the more you
As usual, you can't just make this generalization.
There are many different things that can bottleneck a system. Once
you have "enough" memory, adding more doesn't improve your system's
speed at all. Enough means enough that you don't swap in normal use.
For me that has been 16 meg. I can't see me going over 16 unless someone
gives me some for free. Well, perhaps the idea of "get as much as you
can afford" is correct after all, since most people would cringe at
$600-$800 for more than 16M.
However I do agree with you that 8 is better than 4. The unfortunate
thing about 8 is that with most motherboards that means filling all
of your 8 simm slots with 1m simms -- then if you want to increase
that, you have to get rid of your 1m simms. In some cases it may be
worth paying a premium for a motherboard with a more flexible memory
configuration (in my case, I found a buddy who wanted to buy a system
and swapped memory with him in order to upgrade from 8 to 16M).
For the purposes the original poster had described, 8M is plenty
and 4M is probably sufficient.