Do I REALLY Need More Memory? (Or a new computer?)

My PC Hates Me · Mar 23, 2015

Please help me decide if I need to add more memory (upgrading from 4 GB to 8 GB) to my aging Core 2 Duo E8400 machine, or whether I simply need a better PCU / computer altogether. Running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit. It's a dell optiplex 780 Small Form Factor.

I know it is an old machine but it had been running lightroom and photoshop fine (slowish, but fine).

Lately, lightroom has been having some problems where it will just stop responding. The mouse turns into a blue circle that keeps spinning, the title bar will say (Not Responding), and sometimes the lightroom window will turn solid white (or solid black). It will keep doing this for minutes on end.

It does this unexpectedly. Some times it will start to slow a bit, and I will check the memory useage of lightroom and it seems like it is at about 2.7 GB (out of my total 4 GB of memory).

However, if I look at the resource moniotor, I haven't seen it where the memory is at 100%. It is CLOSE (like about 80 to 90%), but I don't really see it going up to 100% (Right now using Lightroom, I see 576 MB standy and &&MB free).

On the other hand, doing most all common tasks in lightroom (like using the zoom function or the adjustment brushes) will have the CPU usage at 100% (When the CPU is at 100% I see corresponding spikes where the Disk Usage is at 1mb / sec and corresponding spikes in the hard faults that are around 30 or 40 on the scale of 100)

I had ordered 4 more gigs of memory, but should I just cancel that order and save up for just getting a new computer? I'm on a REALLY tight budget, so I was hoping I could improve my machine significantly by just spending $50 on a RAM upgrade. I just don't know if it is going to help or just be a waste of $50 now.

Thanks in advance.

mmaatt747 · Mar 23, 2015

My PC Hates Me :

Please help me decide if I need to add more memory (upgrading from 4 GB to 8 GB) to my aging Core 2 Duo E8400 machine, or whether I simply need a better PCU / computer altogether. Running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit. It's a dell optiplex 780 Small Form Factor.

I know it is an old machine but it had been running lightroom and photoshop fine (slowish, but fine).

Lately, lightroom has been having some problems where it will just stop responding. The mouse turns into a blue circle that keeps spinning, the title bar will say (Not Responding), and sometimes the lightroom window will turn solid white (or solid black). It will keep doing this for minutes on end.

It does this unexpectedly. Some times it will start to slow a bit, and I will check the memory useage of lightroom and it seems like it is at about 2.7 GB (out of my total 4 GB of memory).

However, if I look at the resource moniotor, I haven't seen it where the memory is at 100%. It is CLOSE (like about 80 to 90%), but I don't really see it going up to 100% (Right now using Lightroom, I see 576 MB standy and &&MB free).

On the other hand, doing most all common tasks in lightroom (like using the zoom function or the adjustment brushes) will have the CPU usage at 100%

I had ordered 4 more gigs of memory, but should I just cancel that order and save up for just getting a new computer? I'm on a REALLY tight budget, so I was hoping I could improve my machine significantly by just spending $50 on a RAM upgrade. I just don't know if it is going to help or just be a waste of $50 now.

Thanks in advance.

If it were me, I would not purchase the RAM and begin saving for a new PC. In the meantime, I would do a fresh install of Windows 7 on your PC. Sometimes that can help a great deal.

Calculagator · Mar 23, 2015

The RAM should help. Core2 is aging, but still usable. With your usage, it sounds like you are running low on RAM hitting the page file. With the slow disk you probably have, this will bring your machine to a crawl. CPU usage will be high if it is waiting for your disk. You could also significantly improve performance for what you are doing by installing an SSD.

On the other hand, you can pick up a used dell T3500 or T5500 quad core workstation with RAM, Disks, and Windows for around $250.

boosted1g · Mar 23, 2015

8GB of ddr2 memory is going to be very pricey.

I would just look at upgrading the whole computer.

If you are wanting something for the time being then get an ssd drive, that will help with normal disk reads and will help when windows is using the paging file. At least with doing the SSD upgrade you can format and reuse the SSD drive in whatever you upgrade to.

My PC Hates Me · Mar 23, 2015

mmaatt747 :

Thank you for the suggestion. I might try the fresh install of windows 7 first.

My PC Hates Me · Mar 23, 2015

Calculagator :

Thank you for the suggestions. I noticed that most computers (either new or used) in the $250 to $350 range don't score a whole lot better than my core 2 duo does on the cpubenchmark tests.

I will have to look into the workstations you suggested. I know nothing about them. Would I really see an improvement over my C2D???

My PC Hates Me · Mar 23, 2015

boosted1g :

Thanks for your input.

Just to clarify, it is 4GB of DDR3 memory that I just ordered via amazon, and the total cost was about $48 (including the shipping).

I do see your point about being able to reuse the SSD in a new box down the road.

My PC Hates Me · Mar 23, 2015

One Other Thought:

I could instead buy a Q9550 core 2 quad chip for about $70 off of ebay.

I just don't know which is the bottleneck: the CPU or the memory being maxed.

Karadjgne · Mar 23, 2015

All of the above. What's happening is you are being overtaken by tech advances. As more and more people are now using at least a quad core with a 64bit OS and 8Gb of ram, vendors are taking advantage of that and spreading out the workload over larger areas, more cores, more bandwidth, more ram speed etc. This means your C2D is getting squished out of mainstream, which is slowing you down. It sucks, but really, you'll have a hard time running newer software on an older cpu that doesn't have all the current instruction sets to take full advantage of the software ability.

Ideally you'll want a quad core running @3.0GHz or better with 8Gb of ram to run Win7 wide open, anything less is gonna slow you down.

Edit; there are many who have gotten the new pentium dual core and are running it very successfully, the difference being that it's over clocked, has the full range of instruction sets, and is only being used for single thread games. Where it bombs out and the equitable i3 kills it is in multithreaded apps where the i3's HT (almost 4 core ability) has room to spread the workload.

My PC Hates Me · Mar 23, 2015

Karadjgne :

So you are saying that I basically need at least a faster Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge i5 then, right?

My PC Hates Me · Mar 23, 2015

One more thing:

Both lightroom and photshop had been running fine (slowish, but fine) and the problem with lightroom not responding only started about a month or so ago...

Karadjgne · Mar 23, 2015

A sandy / Ivy Bridge cpu is leaps ahead in performance over your C2D. My 3570k is Ivy Bridge, and can do anything the current 4690k, i5 king of the hill cpu can do at a few % less ability.

Couple that with an SSD, 8Gb of ram and a decent gpu and there isn't a program out there you can't run at at least decent speed.

It'll be a matter of your time. Just how much of it do you want to waste twiddling your thumbs waiting on saves/loads of your C2D vrs the i5s ability.

Calculagator · Mar 23, 2015

I wouldn't upgrade to core2quad. They will not be much better. If you look at used workstations, the Xeon e55xx, e56xx, x55xx, and x56xx are equivalent to first gen i7s like the 920. They have much better performance than your core2 duo and will use ddr3, which is cheaper right now.
This one is a bit beat up, but has a nice 6-core cpu and dedicated GPU for $300 including shipping:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Precision-T3500-X5650-Hex-Core-2-67GHz-6GB-640GB-DVDRW-CDRW-Win-7-Pro-/121601359283?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c50017db3

My PC Hates Me · Mar 23, 2015

By the way: I have some screen shots to show you what happens sometimes when I use lightroom and it gets overwhelmed. I am not sure I know how to upload them here though.

Here's my CPU activity when lightroom goes crazy on me:

And this is what my memory looks like when it is going bonkers:

Oddly enough, when Lightroom is acting up all weird, I can still open up photoshop and print out these screen shots with no problem. Seriously, lightroom is acting like it's the apocalypse while photoshop just opens right up and lets me export images.

My PC Hates Me · Mar 24, 2015

I think I read somewhere that CPU spikes can be caused by bad drivers. Is that a likely cause?

Karadjgne · Mar 24, 2015

Well, drivers by themselves don't just decide to go bad, there is always an underlying cause. Most of the time it's due to an upgrade, whether you applied it yourself, or Windows did it for you.

If you look at Microsoft.net 1.1, and Windows says you need to upgrade to 4.2, that can cause problems, because there were compatability fixes in 2.3, that don't get addressed in 4.2. So you needed 2.3 as well before upgrade to 4.2 or you got driver errors.

Lightroom could be similar, if you upgraded drivers, without the prerequisites, you may have a problem. I'd try saving all your work/settings etc, then uninstall Lightroom fully and reinstall. The install will be a full version unlike an upgrade.

My PC Hates Me · Mar 24, 2015

Karadjgne :

Thanks for the suggestion. How do I "look" at microsoft.net 1.1 though?

Or when you say "look at Microsoft.net 1.1" do you just mean use it as an example?

I think that issue MIGHT have developed right after an automatic Windows 7 update.

Karadjgne · Mar 24, 2015

I meant it as an example, it gave me fits, personally, until I figured out I needed the net2 sdk , not just 1.1 and 4.

Yeah, just gotta love those Windows auto upgrades, there's been a few that were real nightmares, even 1 that killed a good 50% performance or better on some AMD cpus.

I'd do a reinstall with a fresh download.

My PC Hates Me · Mar 24, 2015

Karadjgne :

Thanks for the clarification.

By doing a quick reinstall, I think you mean reinstall Lightroom, right?

Guest · Mar 24, 2015

The problem starting a month ago would suggest something else.

Are you having something else running? An anti-virus for example? When your cpu is running 100%, is it mostly Lightroom using the cpu?

More ram helps if your usage is high (90%), because you have less space free, so it caches less and swaps between ram and hard-drive more often.

My PC Hates Me · Mar 24, 2015

When the CPU is spiking like that, yes, it is entirely lightroom using the CPU.

I do have Avast as anti virus, but I have disabled it in the past when lightroom started acting up, and it didn't make a difference.

Also, the thing is it only goes to not responding when it is having that weird "spiking" problem.

For instance, I can PURPOSEFULLY get lightroom to use 100% of the CPU if I make lots of adjustments and grab the window at the top and quickly slide the window back and forth several times. (But it doesn't crash / hang when I do that.) Instead the CPU usage graph looks like one LONG section of 100% usage when I do that. Not like the rhythmic "spikes" you see in the photo when lightroom becomes unresponsive.

I'm starting to think that Lightroom is having a problem specifically when it is trying to write CERTAIN information to the disk.

Guest · Mar 25, 2015

So, if I'm reading between the lines here, you can trick the system to using 100% of the cpu, but that doesn't cause problems. Problems (lack of response/hanging) occurs even when the cpu isn't going 100%.

Then yes, I would say lack of ram is the problem. It can be fixed two ways. More ram, which caches more data, or a faster hard-drive, such as an SSD, that would make writes faster.

I would say that your choice of increasing ram is a good one. It's probably trying to get data, which it has to fetch from the hard-drive, then it processes it (the spike), then it sends it back and asks for it again (while the cpu waits), and then it spikes again.

I'm lucky enough to have 32 GB of ram, I can tell you that even if I'm only using 6-10 GB usually my system is much faster because the rest is cached and my software doesn't have to call that data from the hard-drive because it is stored in the ram.

Good luck sir

My PC Hates Me · Mar 25, 2015

Thank you for the response, and for your wishes for success.

I will try to update this thread once the ram is installed and working.

I consider it a $45 experiment to see if it helps.

I guess the worst thing that could happen is that I end up using Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop for most of my RAW photo development (which works fine, but the workflow is a bit slower than using Lightroom), and certainly upgrading from 4GB to 8GB ram will help photoshop run better.

Do I REALLY Need More Memory? (Or a new computer?)

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