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I have gone through the articles here, here and over other sites.However, unable to glean any actionable details for my issue.

I installed additional RAM in my old laptop for performance improvement - still dead slow(approx 5 mins to boot, another 5mins to open chrome). I believe the low amount of usable RAM is the reason here.[Installed RAM:6GB / Usable RAM:2.8GB]

TaskManager shows the RAM usage to be 100% almost all the time.

I am attaching few screenshots. System Information 0 System Information 1 SLOT1 SLOT3 WMIC

As per my understanding, P6100 can go up to 8GB of RAM. Before I add another 2GB of RAM, I would like to know whether it will really make any difference.Or is it the P6100 which is the cause of slowness here. Please advice.

Soumya
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    You bought the wrong RAM : https://superuser.com/questions/1250578/what-exactly-is-the-cause-of-ram-incompatibility – harrymc Apr 27 '19 at 13:57
  • What OS? For Microsoft's Windows some are knobbled to not work with much RAM, and 32bit MS-Windows will not work with much more than 3GB (including video RAM, maybe less). – ctrl-alt-delor Apr 27 '19 at 17:33

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From your screenshot: X86 based system.
This is a 32 bit system (and not x64 based 64 bit system).

On a pure 32 bit system you can use max 4GiB of memory, and part of that is used by PCI peripheral space etc. 2.8GB left is pretty normal.

You can use more memory if you use a 64 bit based OS (and firmware support and CPU support). This is more of less the default for the last decade. Or if you have a CPU and OS which support PAE.

The first is a no go: Your CPU is from 2010 and for some reason it does not support 64 bit more. (see https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/50175/intel-pentium-processor-p6100-3m-cache-2-00-ghz.html).

AND PAE... going from memory that was removed in win10. (Everybody could run x64 by then anyway)

So you might be stuck with max 2.8GB usable,


Side note on speed:

That system is old. It will have many slow parts. Before upgrading it find out what is causing slowness and then fix that part first. If could be eMMC on the motherboard, or a 10 year old rotating rust laptop disk, or ..... Not neccessary low RAM.

Hennes
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  • Why do you think the CPU is not 64bit capable? It has a 64bit instruction set and wouldn't be capable to address more than 4GB if it wasn't. The main problem is the 32bit OS and maybe a slow old harddisk. – Freddy Apr 27 '19 at 15:27
  • There is no such thing as an x64, (80664 etc), note the old one was not an x32, it was an x86 (so doubling that would be x172). I know Microsoft thinks there is, but where have they been a good reference for anything? – ctrl-alt-delor Apr 27 '19 at 17:36
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    X86 and x64 are generic used terms. But for AMD and for Intel. x86 for the *86 architecture (8086. 8088, nec v20, nec v30, 80186, 80286, 80386, ... up to modern core i7x in old mode. And x64 for AMDs 64 bit architecture, like used on AMD, intel Core2 etc. There is no doubling of these numbers involved anywhere. – Hennes Apr 27 '19 at 19:31
  • @Hennes Thanks a lot for the detailed answer. Got to know new things. – Soumya Apr 28 '19 at 05:11