Pentium 3s

Will upgrading the RAM on my laptop running a Pentium M processor at 1400MHz make a noticeable difference?

Right now the computer has only 256 MB of RAM. I am thinking about putting in 512 MB more but don't know if it is worth it because of the relatively slow processor. Thanks

Public Comments

1. yes a bit, make programs starts faster.
2. First check if your laptop is capable of supporting the extra ram. in case it is , check if you can instead go for a new lap instead of having to upgrade the old one.. final word is that ram will improve the performance significantly but is at times limited because of the processor specs. So you can upgrade for a noticeable difference
3. Oh, it's absolutely worth it. RAM is practically free these days, and a system with only 256MB of RAM will be forced to page things to your hard disk when running a modern operating system like XP or Linux with Gnome (Ubuntu). Even 512MB is pretty marginal, but having 256MB can be a bottleneck on such lowly things as a P3 500MHZ! As a general rule, if your drive is ever coming into labor as random access system memory, you NEED more RAM. On another note, your CPU isn't too bad, as it's based off a P3 core so it does a lot more work per GHZ than a P4. It's probably in truth closer to like a P4 1.8GHZ or 2.0GHZ- fast enough for today's productivity work, but probably not for tomorrow's.