That's a false conclusion.  The answer is based upon the OS and the number of utilities
running in the background and applications running.  More RAM means less chance of having to
swap to/from hard disk virtual memory. (VM swapping).  SETI uses a dedicated 16MB memory
block.  Once allocated, additional RAM will make no difference to SETI.

What makes a difference is using a faster CPU or faster RAM.  For example if you are using
PC100 RAM on a motherboard that can use PC133 RAM, using the faster RAM would make a slight
improvement.  Another example would be if a motherboard has a 2.4GHz CPU but with a BIOS
upgrade the motherboard can use a 2.8GHz CPU.

Then there is the question of client.  the SETI commandline utility is faster than the GUI
utility.

On Win32 platforms, adding more RAM to a NT platform is always beneficial but won't affect
SETI.  On Win9x/ME platforms, add RAM equal to or above 512MB means tweaking the OS to work
with the RAM.  However, Win9x/ME has limiting memory pools are finite.  More RAM doesn't
affect the pools so adding more RAM won't provide more benefits as with a NT OS.

Dave



"DD" <ddgamer@cogeco.ca> wrote in message news:NRxXb.3171$Fp5.2036@read1.cgocable.net...
| Increasing memory always makes your system faster. Whether it will speed
| SETI up on your computer or not depends on what you do with your computer.
| On my P3-1GHz laptop, which has 512MB of RAM, SETI normally consumes 99% of
| my CPU cycles, but only 16MB or so of RAM.
|
| If your computer is heavily used, upgrading to 1GB will definitely increase
| your overall performance, because you are giving the whole machine more
| breathing room, but SETI uses so little RAM that the effect will probably
| not be very significant, unless your idea of "heavily used" is
| simultaneously calculating pi to 1 million decimal places and playing Unreal
| Tournament 2003 or DOOM 3 (is that out yet?)
|
| All in all, a memory upgrade will probably be worth it to you, but it's not
| going to turn your Celery into a Cray and lob you to the top of the SETI
| ranking ladder :)
|
| "john czarnuszewicz" <jaczar@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
| news:ufvXb.1334$aH3.37515@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
| > improve speed of calcs in an XPhome edition Celeron 2.4G cpu?
| >
| >
|
|