Is Ready Boost My answer to performance problems

I am running a AMD Sempron 2800+ with 1.5 gig of pc 2700 ram with 256mb ati
radeon 9550 and 3 hard drives one dedicated to run vista only (120gb wd 8mb
cache) i seem to be getting alot of lag and put the cpu monitor on the
sidebar my ram usage seldomly goes over 30 to 40 percent i am wondering if i
need a faster cpu or if ready boost will help because the problems usually
occur when i am say downloading, listen to music, transfering files, and
surfing the net please give a reccomendation

Thanks

No. You'd be better off buying more RAM to increase your memory problems.
RAM is still faster than a flash drive, but a flash drive is faster than a
hard drive. Up your RAM, and you will have less of a reason for ReadyBoost,
as you won't need your pagefile as much.

--
Dustin Harper
dharper@vistarip.com
http://www.vistarip.com

--
"Hank Hill" <Hank Hill@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C8599B17-3544-41A9-A44D-61D17B1FC01C@microsoft.com...
>I am running a AMD Sempron 2800+ with 1.5 gig of pc 2700 ram with 256mb ati
> radeon 9550 and 3 hard drives one dedicated to run vista only (120gb wd
> 8mb
> cache) i seem to be getting alot of lag and put the cpu monitor on the
> sidebar my ram usage seldomly goes over 30 to 40 percent i am wondering if
> i
> need a faster cpu or if ready boost will help because the problems usually
> occur when i am say downloading, listen to music, transfering files, and
> surfing the net please give a reccomendation
>
> Thanks

You will probably not notice improvement using ready boost. Your memory is
certainly adequate. The bottleneck is most likely your processor, and while
your video card meets Vista Aero requirements, it is at the low end.

Woody

"Hank Hill" <Hank Hill@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C8599B17-3544-41A9-A44D-61D17B1FC01C@microsoft.com...
>I am running a AMD Sempron 2800+ with 1.5 gig of pc 2700 ram with 256mb ati
> radeon 9550 and 3 hard drives one dedicated to run vista only (120gb wd
> 8mb
> cache) i seem to be getting alot of lag and put the cpu monitor on the
> sidebar my ram usage seldomly goes over 30 to 40 percent i am wondering if
> i
> need a faster cpu or if ready boost will help because the problems usually
> occur when i am say downloading, listen to music, transfering files, and
> surfing the net please give a reccomendation
>
> Thanks

Ditch the Sempron. That's AMD's crippled processor, like Intel's Celeron.

"Hank Hill" <Hank Hill@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C8599B17-3544-41A9-A44D-61D17B1FC01C@microsoft.com...
>I am running a AMD Sempron 2800+ with 1.5 gig of pc 2700 ram with 256mb ati
> radeon 9550 and 3 hard drives one dedicated to run vista only (120gb wd
> 8mb
> cache) i seem to be getting alot of lag and put the cpu monitor on the
> sidebar my ram usage seldomly goes over 30 to 40 percent i am wondering if
> i
> need a faster cpu or if ready boost will help because the problems usually
> occur when i am say downloading, listen to music, transfering files, and
> surfing the net please give a reccomendation
>
> Thanks

Look at the Resource monitor and see what is going on with the ram and hard
disk. This is how I diagnose problems. It is found in Task Manager's
Performance tab.

Ben
"Hank Hill" <Hank Hill@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C8599B17-3544-41A9-A44D-61D17B1FC01C@microsoft.com...
>I am running a AMD Sempron 2800+ with 1.5 gig of pc 2700 ram with 256mb ati
> radeon 9550 and 3 hard drives one dedicated to run vista only (120gb wd
> 8mb
> cache) i seem to be getting alot of lag and put the cpu monitor on the
> sidebar my ram usage seldomly goes over 30 to 40 percent i am wondering if
> i
> need a faster cpu or if ready boost will help because the problems usually
> occur when i am say downloading, listen to music, transfering files, and
> surfing the net please give a reccomendation
>
> Thanks

It's likely that the Sempron is the culprit. Try Task Manager instead of the
CPU monitor on the sidebar. I use a Celeron laptop and IMO, it's much more
visible and will give you a heads up that you are CPU bound. I also keep the
list sorted by CPU time so that I can see what's using the CPU if I'm not
knowingly running something CPU intensive. You may find out that it's
something like your AV software that is using up the CPU.

"Hank Hill" <Hank Hill@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C8599B17-3544-41A9-A44D-61D17B1FC01C@microsoft.com...
>I am running a AMD Sempron 2800+ with 1.5 gig of pc 2700 ram with 256mb ati
> radeon 9550 and 3 hard drives one dedicated to run vista only (120gb wd
> 8mb
> cache) i seem to be getting alot of lag and put the cpu monitor on the
> sidebar my ram usage seldomly goes over 30 to 40 percent i am wondering if
> i
> need a faster cpu or if ready boost will help because the problems usually
> occur when i am say downloading, listen to music, transfering files, and
> surfing the net please give a reccomendation
>
> Thanks