Morrus - how much RAM?

[Gish Makai]

Yea...I have a 128 stick in now. I'm debating on getting another 128 or just go for a 256 stick.

 

[Morrus]

Well...

To upgrade from my current package to one with 1 Gb of RAM will cost me an extra $800 per month!

You heard right - $800 every single month for another 614 Mb RAM.

Over a year, that means I'd be paying $9600 for 614 Mb RAM. Or over $15 per Mb. The most expensive RAM in the whole world. Ever.

Of course, it's not the RAM itself that's costing all that. It's the extra stuff that I'd be forced to buy if I upgraded the package. Stuff I neither need or want.

So... any other options you can think of?

 

[Tharkun]

How about using Linux instead of a windows server? Can't be feeding the evil empire you know if you don't have too

 

[wsclark]

Hi Morrus,

From what I can gather in this thread, the machine that the message boards are on definitely needs a major boost in memory. I also gather that this machine is not yours but some type of package deal provided for your use from some provider. This leads to another thing to check into.

The boards are slow for me between 12PM and 4PM EST, consistently during that time period (not consistently slow, sometimes it is fine, it's the time period that is consistent). This time frame would be 5PM to 9PM your time, assuming your provider is local to you. You should ask your provider 1) if they perform daily backups on your machine and if they do 2) what time do they perform them and in what manner. If they are performing backups during this time frame, that may be what is bring access to a crawl. There might be other methods to perform the backup or at least change the time it is performed so that it happens when message board activity is low.

If you can post information about what exactly they are giving you, I'm sure that I and a lot of others could give you quite a bit more advice. If that fails, I'll sic my wife on them (who can basically get to the head person of an organization in an average of 5 minutes , I'm not kidding.)

If there is anything I can do for you, I'll be glad to lend a hand.

Bill
Senior System Programmer and all around jack-of-all trades with computers

 

[Grazzt]

Cool! You are the only one I know that can do this I bet 100$ that you will increase your performance - a lot!! - by adding a stick of 256mb RAM. They are cheap nowadays

Actually the mins for W2K aren't really all that much:

Computer/Processor: 133 MHz or higher Pentium-compatible CPU

Memory: 64 MB of RAM recommended minimum

Hard Disk: 2GB HDD (min of 650MB of free space)


I actually installed and setup a network for a local client about a month ago and 7 of the machines had 64 MB of RAM. Three had 128 MB of RAM. All took Win2K without a hitch, though it was rather slow and annoying on the 64 MB machines....but hey...what can ya do.

 

[LeeCHeSSS]

So... any other options you can think of?

How about you switch webhosting companies? This one is obviously ripping you off. Any decent one would negotiate with you and get you on a machine with more ram WITHOUT all the other added features a package upgrade comes with (and thus less cost). I'm assuming you have asked them for a special solution?

I would suggest one if I knew a better one for your situation, but alas, my site hasn't nearly as much members as yours, so I don't have to worry about stuff like this.

 

[Zappo]

Eech. No way you give them all that money. Ask them a special agreement, that they put in just some RAM and you give them a reasonable extra (some tens of $ would be reasonable, I reckon). I'm not an expert, but most of the few companies I've known allow that. You could hint that you may decide to dump them if they refuse.

 

[Psionicist]

Actually the mins for W2K aren't really all that much:

Computer/Processor: 133 MHz or higher Pentium-compatible CPU

Memory: 64 MB of RAM recommended minimum

Hard Disk: 2GB HDD (min of 650MB of free space)


I actually installed and setup a network for a local client about a month ago and 7 of the machines had 64 MB of RAM. Three had 128 MB of RAM. All took Win2K without a hitch, though it was rather slow and annoying on the 64 MB machines....but hey...what can ya do.

I was talking about real world use. Your computer would be much slower with 64mb RAM and W2K than 64mb RAM and say, Win98.

Based on my own experience, Win98 are much faster and more stable than Win2000 unless you have at least 256 mb RAM. Then W2K rocks.

 

[drothgery]

Cool! You are the only one I know that can do this I bet 100$ that you will increase your performance - a lot!! - by adding a stick of 256mb RAM. They are cheap nowadays

Eh. The only thing that I ran (I'm not a serious gamer) that was noticeably faster on my PIII-800 with 256 MB of RAM vs. 128 MB was Diablo II. And the only thing that was noticeably faster with 512MB vs. 256MB was Visual Studio.NET, which runs about the same on my work desktop (PIII-1GHz with 256MB) as it does at home. Both systems run Win2K Pro.

Still, if you've got a desktop from the trailing edge of the SDRAM era, getting 512MB isn't a bad idea. It doesn't cost much, and may help you sometimes.

For busy servers, though, get as much memory as you can afford. It never hurts.

 

[der_kluge]

Seems to me that, for that much money, you could just own your own server. Buy your own Win2K machine, get a dedicated IP address, and pay for the hosting service yourself. That should solve all the problems, and then you are the master of your own domain. (literally)