How much memory, 256mb or 512? (performance vs hibernate time)

**Lum** · 03-03-2005, 08:23 AM

I've got my M10000, a 7200RPM Hitachi TravelStar HD, I'm goint to attack XP Media Centre Edition with nLite later and I'm about to order some memory from Crucial. I just can't decide on how much to get..

256mb will mean a fister hibernate and resume, but may introduce performance issues if it starts swapping and therefore make DivX playback unpleasant

512mb should be plenty, requiring minimal swapping, but how badly will it affect my startup? (I'm less bothered about shutdown)

Intended use includes MP3, SatNav, DeltaDash (Subaru Specific OBD-II like program with live data logging etc.) and occasionally it will be used for DVD, DivX and MAME

The last one may well be the killer, requiring the larger memory, but who knows? not me that's why I'm asking here

Any thoughts?

**stevieg** · 03-03-2005, 09:05 AM

Originally Posted by Lum

I've got my M10000, a 7200RPM Hitachi TravelStar HD, I'm goint to attack XP Media Centre Edition with nLite later and I'm about to order some memory from Crucial. I just can't decide on how much to get..

256mb will mean a fister hibernate and resume, but may introduce performance issues if it starts swapping and therefore make DivX playback unpleasant

512mb should be plenty, requiring minimal swapping, but how badly will it affect my startup? (I'm less bothered about shutdown)

Intended use includes MP3, SatNav, DeltaDash (Subaru Specific OBD-II like program with live data logging etc.) and occasionally it will be used for DVD, DivX and MAME

The last one may well be the killer, requiring the larger memory, but who knows? not me that's why I'm asking here

Any thoughts?

I use mine with MP3 + Satnav running, my basic bootup (no nlite, did it by hand in reverse) runs at around 44MB, upto 80-90MB with centrafuse running. I'm not using swap space at all on this setup.

More memory means more memory to load on hibernation resume, however if you use an Opus/standby you bypass that problem entirely and 512MB is no longer an issue.

If you want to keep the CPU cycles down try encoding in MPEG2 or MPEG1, depending on how many films you have. On my old Epia 800 board (with no MPEG2 acceleration!) to have everything running sweetly all at the same time I had to encode down to MPEG1... yuk!

To be honest if you're worried about it go for 512MB, if you are using hibernation the biggest ball ache is waiting for the bios, the extra 256MB is going to add a second-ish to your resume, imho and if it makes the 'running' system work better for you it might be an extra second wait.

**Lum** · 03-03-2005, 09:15 AM

If it's only a second or so then I'm going with 512.
My previous experience with hibernate is on my 512mb laptop where the resume takes ages.

I don't want to keep it in standby as I'm going with an M1-ATX which will completely kill the power to my board. It's all very well that if it notices my battery is getting low it will kill the power, but then my alarm gets to flatten the battery on it's own anyway!