Don't be too technical, but be comprehensive.  I mean the computer cache.  Is it how fast your processor can transfer stuff to other parts of the computer?
138115
cache is memory, just like any other memory on your computer.\nThe difference between RAM ( random access memory) and cache\nmemory, is the location and speed, and how it is used.\n\nIt was discovered that by PREDICTING what memory locations\n" Were GOING to be used ", the computer could speed up the\nthe process of reading the next set of memory locations,\nby having a "predictor" program load the memory into VERY\nfast memory, close to, or inside the CPU ( Central Processing UNIT ie the Pentium chip ). There are different levels of Cache RAM, usually called L1, L2, L3 etc. (Level 1, Level 2etc. ) with\nL1 Cache being built right on the chip itself, or on chips\nbuilt onto the CPU chip module at the factory. L2 Cache ram\nis usually added in slots very close to where the CPU ( Pentium), is located on the motherboard. Believe it or not,\nthe computer chips run so fast, that electricity, moving at the speed of light, takes TIME, to travel across the circuitboard, so that the L1 cache is in the heart of the CPU, and the L2 add on cache is as close as possible to the\ncore to speed up the transfere.\n In early Pentium ( and AMD, Cyrix, IBM, etc. clones,) the\nL1 cache was controlled by what can be considered an entire computer WITHIN the CPU. This "computer" had a program, with\nits own ram, and rom, and it was pre-programmed at the factory. Its job, was to watch what the (big) computer was doing, and predict, what the computer was going to do NEXT. For example, if you were running a program that used program lines 345, 346, 347, 348, then it would predict that you\nwould use lines 349, 350, 351, 352, etc, and load them from the " SLOW" ram cards in the ram slots, into the blazing fast Cache ram, right inside the CPU itself, where the\nCPU could access it immediately. There are different kinds of cache ram within the "Cache" " Predictor" program, such\nas TAG ram, Dirty ram, etc. which are used to keep track of what ram is loaded, used, and changed, by the running software that the CPU is currently using. Tag ram would keep  a list of the ram locations that were loaded into the L1\ncache, and the Dirty ram, would keep track of which L1 cache\nlocations had CHANGES made - when the "predictor" program\ndecided that NEW locations of slow RAM were going to be used, it had to put back the old RAM locations' memory contents. It Could ignore memory values that WERE NOT CHANGED ( saving time otherwise spent writing the information BACK to the slow RAM ), but would have to write\nback any CHANGED ram back to the slow ram (marked dirty).\n AMD invented very clever and powerful "predictor" programs in some of its early chips, and this made such a dramatic difference that it out-performed the much more expensive Pentium chips. The "predictor" computer program component is now extremely important in achiving faster speeds. CPUs typically have 64k ( K is one thousand (( 1024 bits) ), 128 K, 256K, or 512K of cache built in, and many motherboards can have slots near the CPU that the user can add more\nL2 cache ram, for use by the predictor CPU program section.\nCache ram is typically much faster, but much more expensive to construct in the factory, so that chips with more cache are usually a lot more expensive. Since CPU speeds are reaching a limit for the moment, the manufacturers are increasing the L1 CACHE to 1 or more MEGA BYTES, on the high end chips.\n SOOooooo... cache is not "just" fast memory. It is a program, inside the CPU, running constantly to predict what memory is "going" to be used. This program goes out to the slow ram, and grabs the memory contents, and loads it into\nL1 cache BEFORE the computer asks for it, to speed up memory transfere. If the predictor is correct in GUESSING the next memory locations, the entire computer speeds up greatly....\n\nHope this clears up "cache"...
391128
This is a laptop processor that is midrange of all the M processors. It is quick with 1.70GHz (the clock speed), and is probably a good processor for everyday use, but not great if you're into gaming. It has only one core, like most laptops, so running more than one high capacity program will definitely slow the computer down. It is a good processor for everyday use though, and if it's for school it's a good choice.
515143
What these programs do is occupy your entire RAM so that all the stuff in your running memory is pushed onto the page file. This may improve performance if you are opening a memory hungry appliciation immediately after "defragging" your ram. Any programs already open will be sluggish as they are on page and will take a few minutes to get back into RAM while being used.
494168
Not unless you're running them at the same time.  Computers are only as slow as the memory you have or use.  Hard disk space should never be used to it's maximum, always leave a Gig or two of free space to keep your system running smoothly.  Secondly, your Ram, as long as you are not running all the bells and whistles on your mac at the same time, it should be fine.
103173
What you are referring to is when the motherboard has built in video.  What it does then is shares the RAM between the processor and the video.  If you are running windows XP, you will definitely see better performace with more memory.  You are getting along right now at the bare minimum.  I would recommend getting 1gig of memory if you can afford it.  Then you can change your shared memory higher, which will also increase your speed.
90915
Do you mean Virtual Memory or Cache Memory?\n\nCache Memory does not depend upon your operating system, or your current running condition. Cache is available on your processor and is put there by the manufacturer when he made your processor. For example the Celeron processor has 32kb of L1 Cache and 128 kb of L2 Cache. The Pentium IV has 16kb L1 and 1 MB L2. You cannot change the amount at it is on the die of the processor itself.\n\nIf you need to find out how much cache you have, you need to know which processor you have and just look up the specs on the net, possibly on the manufacturers website.\n\nIf on the other hand you mean virtual memory, this is an operating system specific setting and can actually vary with usage or how many programs you have open. At default settings windows manages the virtual memory size. you can find out the size at any moment by opening the task manager (press ctrl-shift-esc)and go to the performance tab, the page file usage gives you the size of your current vitual memory. This becomes higher if you have a lot of programs open at the same time.\n\nYou can fix the upper and lower limits on this memory and also which partition it is saved on :\nright click "my computer" and choose properties\ngo to the "advanced" tab and hit the properties button for "performance"\ngo to the "advanced" tab, Hit the "Change" button and make your settings. If you are not sure what you are doing, i'd recommend leaving these settings alone, you can seriously destabilize your system.\n\nHope that clears things
269845
yeah i would recommend incrase the ram as much as possible since not worth upgrading the cpu/motherboard\nthis show help in video editting. \ni use 1.5gb of ram and a 2.8ghz cpu and still find a bit slow when doing non digital as well.
102210
Absolutely.  The Core Duo processor cut's processing speed in half, thanks to it's internal processing capabilities.  It's also the latest processor out there, so the chances of it becoming obsolete anytime soon are very small to nothing at all.  You probably want it if you are a gamer, too.\n\n\nHope this helps,\n-----------------------------------------\nFrom,\nThe Realm of Goliath Web Design Team
365466
there is no set answer to this it depends on how often you use your PC, how many new programmes you install / install, how much stuff you download / delete etc..... If you are a heavy user once a week is fine. Average user once a month. In the old days defraging your PC was not good for your drive as it makes it work very hard and would shorten the drives life, technology is much better now but a drive still gets an extreme work out when you defrag....this must shorten its life a little
442952
ok you only want the system to surf the net, i pressume you will at some point want to watch video files?\nso you want a system with a minimum 512MB 333mhz or faster (higher numbered) DDR or DDRII RAM(Minimum).\nprocessor speed of 1.8GHz (1800Mhz) is a little slow but will work adequetly (i built a system for a neighbour with similer requirements to yours)\nas much cach level 1 and level 2 as possible (the higher the number the better)\n\nfor your needs as a beginer 120GB (unformatted) 111GB approx (formatted) should be a good starting point, however make sure the hard drive RPM is above 7200RPM and if the system has SATA capability even if the system has no sata drive installed will enable you to upgrade to larger hard drives (although you can upgrade your primary drive) SATA transfers faster than PATA/UDMA/IDE drives of the same size and RPM.\n\nif you can make sure the System has seagate brand hard drive(s) as this brand is the most reliable you can get.\nyou should also check the systems PSU (Power Supply Unit) as most budget systems come with only around a 350 to 400W this will in the short term be ok your system may (if you get the right PSU) work faster and with a greater level of system stability with a much larger PSU for example in my primary system i have a 650W PSU but then i'm running 7 internal hard drives, 1 DVD burner, floppy multiple PCI cards, AGP graphics card, AMD Sempron 3400 CPU.\n\nyour current system at 240MB? that sounds a little problem? as memory is normaly in multiples such as 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1024MB (1GB), and buffered or unbuffered you should never mix buffered and unbuffered in the same system or your system will become unstable.\nremember when you get your new system you should be able to install the old hard drive in the new system for ease of accessing your old personal data.\n\nif you were local to me i could possibly provide better assistance such as either browsing the stores with you or buying the components and assembling the system yourself.\nremember that if you do build a new computer and scrap your old one you can get away with using your old software, some of your old hardware such as your display panel keyboard and mouse etc.\nthe only think you would realy need to buy would be new main board, CPU, RAM, and possibly a new hard drive. you then just scrap your old system components. which means if money is tight why buy a complete new system if you only need the new components, by buying and building selectively you can get more for your money effectively. however unless you know what you are doing you could fry the componets as they are electostaticaly sensetive, so you need to ground yourself with a wrist strap or other device when building your system remeber to ground to any properly earthed such as a cable connected to bare copper on a central heating system or other similar instalation.
221625
With your configuration i think you will not want to overclock your computer, so what you have to look for if you want a better response, is a DDR with a low CAS delay. Look for a CAS  2 memory.
340604
the processes are to heavy for the amount of RAM you have... get more RAM. x
121995
It depends on what you mean by speed.  If your computer seems to be running slow, the frist thing to do is to clean out all those junk files and old registry entries, I like using CCleaner, http://www.ccleaner.com/ and while it cannot make your computer faster TuneXP can make your computer "feel" faster by optimizing Windows, http://www.driverheaven.net/dforce/default.php after that there are a number of tweaks explained here, http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/blog/_archives/2005/12/5/1434755.html and here, http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/blog/_archives/2006/1/12/1658713.html, follow the instructions to the letter but TuneXP will have already applied some of those tweaks but not all of them.  Also, to get your PC booting faster, set your hard drive as the first boot device (through the BIOS) and then get BootVis, http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=664 BootVis was a program designed by Microsoft to cold boot Windows XP in less than 30 seconds (I got mine down to 25 seconds without disabling any major components/drivers).  Of course my PC is also faster than the average.\n\nUnless your motherboard supports it, you might be able to overclock your CPU (AMD processors are very overclockable in most cases) but if your motherboard doesn't support it, don't try it.  My Gigabyte motherboard came with EasyTune 5 so I used that to test overclocking and my Athlon 64 3700+ is overclocked to 2.6GHz (stock heatsink/fan) up from 2.2GHz.  It's fast...\n\nAlso, consider defragging your hard drive, either with Diskeeper (my personal favorite) or the one that is built into Windows, my personal opinion is that Diskeeper does a better job but it cannot defrag the paging file.  In order to defrag the paging file you will need to get a free program called PageDefrag, http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/PageDefrag.html which will be run at boot time.  The paging file cannot be defragged while you are in Windows.  Diskeeper is not free by the way but they do have the freeware Diskeeper Lite floating around out there, though it is no longer officially supported or available on the Diskeeper site, you really have to look for it.
309760
INTEL® CELERON® D 336 @ 2.8GHZ 533mhz FSB/256K <--- Programs will suffer from lack of cache\n\n512 MB DDR400 PC3200 WITH LIFETIME WARRANTY! <---  this needs to be a gig\n\nHIGH END ASUS® MOTHERBOARD WITH DUAL DDR, 3 PCI ETC. <---  No PCI-X for video expansion is not good!\n\nSIX USB 2.0 PORTS (4 REAR + 2 FRONT)\nSATA 80 GB HARD DISK @ 7200rpm 8mb cache <---  SATA is 150mbs its the older version SATA 2 is 300mbs\n\nCD/DVD Writer\nINTEGRATED SIS REAL 256E GRAPHICS <---  pretty crappy video on board or not\n\nHIGH END ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL SOUND (RECOMMENDED)\n56K MODEM\n10/100 NETWORK CARD FOR BROADBAND - AS STANDARD <---  old tech new standard is 10/100/1000\n\n1.44MB FLOPPY DISK DRIVE\nBeige Stylish Case + 2 Front USB\nStandard 350W PSU + 80mm Fan] <---  not really powerfull enough\n\n\nAMD® ATHLON® 64BIT 3000 (Winchester) 512kb L2 Cache (939 pin) <---  works great but to take full advantage you need 64bit Windows XP\n\n512 MB DDR400 PC3200 WITH LIFETIME WARRANTY! <---  need a gig for the true power of 64bit you need 2gig\n\nATI CHIPSET RS482-M: DUAL DDR, SATA, x16 slot, 3 PCI ETC <---  has x16 that should be PCI-X if so its upgradeable much better then the intel\n\nSIX USB 2.0 PORTS (4 REAR + 2 FRONT)\nSATA 80 GB HARD DISK @ 7200rpm 8mb cache <---  SATA is 150mbs its the older version SATA 2 is 300mbs\n\n16X DVD ROM WITH 48X CD ROM <---  for 40$ u can get one that does both from newegg.com\n\n52X 32X 52X CD WRITER <---  for 40$ u can get one that does both from newegg.com\n\n128MB INTEGRATED ATI RADEON X300 PCI Express (SMA)\nHIGH END ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL SOUND (RECOMMENDED)\n56K MODEM\n10/100 NETWORK CARD FOR BROADBAND - AS STANDARD <---  old tech new standard is 10/100/1000\n\nINTERNAL 7 IN 1 CARD READER WITH 1.44MB FLOPPY DISK DRIVE\nBlack Stylish Case + 2 Front USB\nStandard 350W PSU + 80mm Fan <--- not really powerfull enough\n\nIn general both systems are base line with the AMD being the better of the two.  The power supply will be a limiting factor down the road if you put a powerful video card in these machines.  Ram should be at least a gig.  And in every system I ever build I include a 2nd Harddrive for games or music, videos, etc.  It keeps the system drive from being cluttered and fragmented.\n\nHope that helps
96835
not sure, but if you have too many programs running at once it can slow your pc down considerable
384250
From Windows, go to the Control Panel. Click on System icon.\n\nHere you'll find out the processor speed and amount of RAM you have.
214014
Those sites have people that research motherboards and the amount of RAM and types of RAM they can handle, and they design a database and web interface for that database around that information.  It would be a whole lot of work on your part, but if you got a few contractors to help you out with the workload, it might work out for you.  There's really no "easy" way, since there are always new motherboards coming out.  You've certainly got your work cut out for you!