system: 1.2 Ghz Athlon 512 MB PC133 SDRAM (2 X 256) Win2k SP2 Most common applications: IE 5.5. Photoshop Unreal Tournament Mp3 ripping/burning Is there much difference between running 256 vs 512 MB of RAM? I've been monitoring CPU and memory usage in task manager and I have yet to see it use up more than 120 MB of RAM. When ripping or encoding audio, CPU is 90% but memory below 120 MB usage. My friend is looking to upgrade his machine. Should I just sell/give him on of my 256 MB stick since it does not look like it's being used? I plan to to video editing in the future. Would this utilize all my available RAM?

The more memory the better of you are, you're CPU should not be in the 90% go to performance and check you're virtual memory, also check and make sure that you're application is in foreground.

I'm not sure why one should necessarily be concerned that a process uses 90% CPU. I run a couple programs that use 100% if it is available. Doesn't hurt a thing. Maxed out CPU usage due to server-side processes is not a good thing. Maxed out CPU usage on a specific process is fine, so long as it doesn't freeze up the system. It won't hurt the system. As for the RAM question...well, I like the fact you're considering helping out a friend in need. And certainly there are times when more is nothing but window dressing...but for high end graphics work and your video editing...you might want to hold on to the 512. Experiment for your own sake...remove a stick for a couple days and see if you notice an appreciable difference. -MW

If you monitor Processor:% Interupt Time and find out processor time is more than 90% and the value is greater than 15 % the processor is probably overloaded with interupts processing, do you agree Mike?

If you monitor Processor:% Interupt Time and find out processor time is more than 90% and the value is greater than 15 % the processor is probably overloaded with interupts processing, do you agree Mike?

I would say if that value exceeds 20 to 30 percent. Below is from a Microsoft article: "Also, the Processor(_Total)\Interrupts/sec counter value might rise dramatically if you've recently added many new applications or users. During periods of low activity the only source of interrupts might be the processor's timer ticks; these are periodic events that increment a processor hardware timer. These occur approximately every 10 to 15 milliseconds, or about 66 to 100 interrupts per second. Interrupt rates vary depending on system workload, including network packets per second and disk I/O operations per second. Watch for interrupt values that fall out of a normal range (expect these to be in the 1000s of interrupts on Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server and from 200 to 300 on Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Professional). If Processor\% Interrupt Time exceeds 20 to 30 percent per processor, it might indicate that the system is generating more processor interrupts than it can handle. If this is the case, you might need to upgrade some of your components." From another article which points to the reasoning behind my first point: "When you examine processor usage, consider the role of the computer and the type of work being done. Depending on what the computer is doing, high processor values could mean either that the system is efficiently handling a heavy workload or that it is struggling to keep up. For example, if you are monitoring a user's computer, and that computer is used for computation, the computational program might easily use 100 percent of the processor's time. Even if this causes the performance of other applications on that computer to suffer, this can be addressed by changing workload. On the other hand, values around 100 percent on a server computer that processes many client requests indicate that processes are queuing up, waiting for processor time, and causing a bottleneck. Such a sustained high level of processor usage is unacceptable for a server." Looking at Processor - % processor time and System - Processor Queue Length for values above 90% and 2.0 respectively is a better indication of processor deficiency. I've sent more info from these articles to your e-mail address. Hope you find it interesting and useful. -MW