Andrew McLaren

Hi Paul,

Yes, incredible as it may seem (especially to those of us who remember
multi-user systems running on 128k of memory), 512MB is pretty much the
lower edge of acceptable, for Vista. Web browsing, email and office apps
will all run fine in 512MB but you won't see blazing performance. A score of
2.0 sounds about right to me.

It can also be affected by the speed of your memory - faster memeory will
get a higher score. 512MB of PC5300 memory will get a higher score than if
you had 512MB of PC2100 memory. Also the speed of the memory bus (ie,
Front-side Buss or FSB) - a machine with a 1066MHz FSB will get a higher
memory score than a machine with a 533MHz FSB, becuse the performance test
can perform more read-and-write memory operations per second.

The Sempron is a "budget" processor, so is usually found in machines that
are assembled with a goal of economy rather thanr blazing performance. For
the common uses I mentioned, I suspect your machine will run just fine, you
won't be frustrated by it. But it won't be a speed-demon.

Just for comparison, my deskktop box has 3GB of PC4200 RAM, and gets a
memory score of 5.4 (and overall score 5.2). I'm usually running a couple of
Virtual PCs, and compiling in Visual Studio - both memory-intensive
activities, so the extra memory performance helps. It's wild overkill, for
email and using Word :-) When I first installed Vista I had an overall score
of 2.4 - I had a pretty basic video card which was anomolously low-scoring.
I replaced the video card with a (still pretty moddest) 7900GS video card
and the score leapt to 5.9!

Hope this helps,
Andrew