What exactly is the point of having faster RAM when older and slower RAM (and my whole older PC) loads things faster?

rado84

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A friend of mine recently "threw" himself at the new and cheap, just like everybody else, and got himself an entirely AMD computer (desktop PC, not a laptop) with 16GB DDR4 RAM and RX 6600 XT. Which RAM, if I'm not mistaken, runs at 2400 MHz. This new PC of his is supposed to be at least twice faster than mine and yet we keep seeing instances where my older PC runs and loads things faster.
One such instance is Euro Truck Simulator 2 which has this map mod called ProMods. That map is huge (5-6 GB compressed, if I recall correctly) and requires fast RAM, if you don't wanna wait an eternity for it to be loaded. All logic dictates that his brand new computer should be a lot faster at loading this map mod and yet my computer (see my signature) does that about 3 minutes faster than his. Sure, he's using Crapindows 10 which we all know is slow as hell, but that can't be the only reason.
ETS2 isn't the only game that loads faster on my end than his. We recently bought on Steam a new survival game in order to play it together. The first time we played it, his old computer loaded it slowly and I figured the reason for that must have been his old hardware. But the performance of this game didn't change a bit with his brand new computer.
There are a few other games examples with the same performance differences on my computer and his.

On some telegram groups and discord servers people keep telling me I should upgrade my computer but I see no reason or logic to do that. I can play any latest game that I want (not long ago I played (on Linux) the latest "Hitman III") and I can play it at its maximum settings. But that's beside the point, I'm just mentioning why I'm still using this old hardware (except for the video card whose model was released in 2020).

So, if my computer is older and my RAM is 1600 MHz (that I know for sure bc I put this computer together personally part by part), altough being 32 GB, instead of 16, whereas his is 50% faster regarding frequency, then what's the point of having a faster RAM when the old DDR3 RAM works and does things a lot faster than DDR4?
 


RAM doesn't make your computer go faster...it's the CPU and of cause these days an SSD.
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I created an Image of my HDD and put it on my SSD and Boot time was slashed by half and everything opens like lightning...of cause the more RAM the more you can multi-task...my Tower is 9 yrs old.
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It's the CPU Freq and power that make the unit faster, not ram, except if your going from say 2 gbs to 4 or so. that will do away with most swapping on the HDD and speed things up a bit. As @bob466 has said an investment in an SSD will also speed things up nicely.
 
An SSD makes a big difference...on the same Tower...with a HDD it took 36 seconds from pressing the start button to the Login Screen and after entering my password 16 seconds to the Desktop.

With an SSD...18 seconds and 4 seconds an as I said everything...Folders...Documents...Browsers all open in a flash...for me HDDs are a thing of the past.
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What exactly is the point of having faster RAM when older and slower RAM (and my whole older PC) loads things faster?



Bragging rights and nothing more like the old "Ken-L-Ration" commercial.

 
I've never seen that ad or dog food.
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It's the CPU Freq and power that make the unit faster, not ram, except if your going from say 2 gbs to 4 or so. that will do away with most swapping on the HDD and speed things up a bit. As @bob466 has said an investment in an SSD will also speed things up nicely.
If that were true, nowadays we stiill wouldn't have RAM like some old computers from the 80's. And if you still believe that, downgrade your RAM speed to 800 MHz and play games like ETS2, FarCry 5 or 6, or any other game with a large map that is being loaded the whole thing at once before the gameplay starts. Then compare the loading times of 800 Mhz with the loading times of your regular RAM speed and you'll see how wrong you are.

An SSD makes a big difference...on the same Tower...with a HDD it took 36 seconds from pressing the start button to the Login Screen and after entering my password 16 seconds to the Desktop.

With an SSD...18 seconds and 4 seconds an as I said everything...Folders...Documents...Browsers all open in a flash...for me HDDs are a thing of the past.
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We both have SSDs, so that's not it.

Mint has always been one of the slowest distros out there, so don't use it to compare performances. I used Mint for 4 years before I switched to Arch. On SSD and on HDD always with the same performance - 16 seconds to boot to desktop and without any autostart programs. On top of that the more things you install, it would eventually become as slow as windows (30 seconds). Whereas Arch does that in 5 seconds with at least 6 autostarting programs, no matter SSD or HDD.


My apologies @rado84 for being off topic. :oops:
Np.
 
We both have SSDs, so that's not it.
Not all SSDs are created equal. If you want an objective comparison of your hardware versus your friend's hardware, both of you should install Phoronix Test Suite and run some benchmark tests. This may be the only definitive thing you can achieve.

But that may not answer all your questions either. There are many factors determining "how fast" something happens. The same game (or any application) compiled for different platforms, Windows versus Linux, may give one or the other unknown limitations or bottlenecks, slight though they may be and such that most people do not notice them.

Consider the entire motherboard and all the I/O traveling through many circuits and chips besides the CPU and RAM. Consider cooling differences. Consider how much overhead each OS, Windows versus Linux, contributes to speed differences during use. You may not can measure these things, but they all play a part.
 
There is some truth in this. Windows 3.1 used to come on a floppy disk. I used it on a 386 with 8 meg of RAM.
(not a typo... Meg) and 266Mhz RAM. A few years later, I got another computer. A pentium with 128 meg of 667Mhz RAM.
Now Windows came on a 650meg CD. It was 10 times bigger. So even though my computer was faster. It took longer to load.
Somewhere along the line. Windows started coming on 4.7GB DVD's. So we moved from a 1.5meg OS to over a Gig.
So your i7 4core CPU, with 3200Mhz RAM loads windows almost as fast as that i386 running windows 3.1.

NVME hard drives make the biggest difference these days as far as how fast things load. I do still have a computer
with SATA spindle drives. If I run the same OS on both computers, there is a huge difference in speed.

I think Most Linux distro's these days on average are around 2GB. A few notable exceptions are Debian and Knoppix
which come with everything including the kitchen sink. I still have an Slackware 1.2 floppy. I tried running on newer
hardware a year ago. It wouldn't run. But it was only 1.4meg for the entire OS. I was able to get it to run in a VM.

My Mosaic browser used to be a 2meg download. Now Firefox takes about 500meg just to run.
MS Office first came out on 4 floppies. I remember when it moved up to 26 floppies. (what a pain to install).

Yes computer are 10 times faster, but programs are 10 times bigger. So in the end, it about the same.
But we can do a lot more now.
 
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Mint has always been one of the slowest distros out there, so don't use it to compare performances. I used Mint for 4 years before I switched to Arch. On SSD and on HDD always with the same performance - 16 seconds to boot to desktop and without any autostart programs. On top of that the more things you install, it would eventually become as slow as windows (30 seconds). Whereas Arch does that in 5 seconds with at least 6 autostarting programs, no matter SSD or HDD.


Np.

Mint's one of the slowest Distros...really is that so.

On SSD and on HDD always with the same performance...really is that so.

On top of that the more things you install, it would eventually become as slow as windows...really is that so.
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The only time Linux Mint runs a little slow is in Vitrualbox. How can you SSDs and HDDs give the same performance when SSDs read/write speed is at least 10 times faster and saying Mint becomes as slow as windwoes over time is just pure fantasy.
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How can you SSDs and HDDs give the same performance when SSDs read/write speed is at least 10 times faster and saying Mint becomes as slow as windwoes over time is just pure fantasy.
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The question is how can Arch be 3 times faster than Mint and than anything else Debian based on the same HDD...
 
Arch is faster because It's not blotted like most debian releases. I would say that in direct comparison to Arch straight Debian would be the best as far as speed goes. But as someone has already pointed out. Only way to know for sure is to do a side by side benchmark testing. I find that often it's not the ram or even the SSD but the graphics card that is a bottleneck in many machines. With Arch you have the ability of installing and configuring your system with only the parameters you want. outside of the basic things. So it's more tailored to your needs. However not everyone wants that and is happy to get along with the default installs of Debian based systems. I would suspect if you wanted to take the time a Gentoo install could be made to be faster than Arch. But the only way to know for sure which machine preforms better than another is to do Benchmark testing.
This page has several ways to do that. testing
That way you can know for sure which machine is fastest and in which areas it may be slower or better. To make blanket statements that Mint is x number of times slower than Arch is only a perception and may or may not be true. But without figures to prove it It's just empty words. And they sometimes cause hurt feelings and rebuttals. So I guess what I'm saying is get the facts first not just personal opinions. That would sort of settle the matter. From testing not all ram labeled as 1600 is the same it will depend on other factors such as manufacture, ETC. So Test before you brag. Mint may indeed be slower but to many of us that is the priced paid for a good OS out of the box that does most of what one might want to get his/her work done in a fairly stable environment. Arch is not everyone's cup of tea.
 
Mint's one of the slowest Distros...really is that so.

On SSD and on HDD always with the same performance...really is that so.

On top of that the more things you install, it would eventually become as slow as windows...really is that so.
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The only time Linux Mint runs a little slow is in Vitrualbox. How can you SSDs and HDDs give the same performance when SSDs read/write speed is at least 10 times faster and saying Mint becomes as slow as windwoes over time is just pure fantasy.
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I switched from mint to plain Ubuntu and saw a performance increase I plan on switching to arch soon.
 
I switched from mint to plain Ubuntu and saw a performance increase I plan on switching to arch soon.

That's the beauty of Linux...don't like one you choose another...simple.
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I find that often it's not the ram or even the SSD but the graphics card that is a bottleneck in many machines.
I agree weak graphics regardless of discrete or integrated graphics or processor graphics will load the processor giving poor performance.

Low powered graphics hardware choose a lightweight GUI that doesn't require a lot of system resources.

Stay away from anything Gnome 3 based as it will use a lot of sytem resources compared to LXQT / Mate / Xfce.
 
I'm going to take a question @rado84 asked at #14 and give a little of my own recent experience.

It won't answer his question, it may raise more questions, but I hope it is of interest and not TL;DR

He said

The question is how can Arch be 3 times faster than Mint and than anything else Debian based on the same HDD...

The example I provide is from an area I have been exploring recently, in my stable of 78 distros.

In each of (some of them, so far) them, I run the command

Code:
time sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

For users of Debian/Ubuntu-based distros, and Manjaro, this is the same as

Code:
sudo update-grub

I do this with a small bash script I have written called

upgrub

In your case this may only take seconds to a minute.

In my case, with 78 distros over 3 drives of different speeds, it can take up to 45 minutes or more.

I have 16 GB RAM.

In the Spoiler (click to open, click to close) I have a few results

Linux Mint 19.02 Una Cinnamon SSD

time upgrub

user 46m6.337s

Manjaro Xfce SSD

time upgrub

user 39m10.907s

Fedora

Fedora 36 /dev/sda47 HDD

time sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg

user 43m46.351s


Xubuntu 22.04 'Jammy Jellyfish' WD

time upgrub

user 51m10.739s

Arcolinux Xfce HDD

user 38m14.704s

Linux Lite 6

user 41m55.076s


Ubuntu 22.04 'Jammy Jellyfish' GNOME WD

user 42m50.346s


Kubuntu 22.04 Jammy WD

user 44m18.683s

Zorin 16.1 HDD 220903 (77 distros)

real 45m38.342s

Pop!_OS WD 220908

user 72m56.796s

So with examples that include Ubuntu-based, Fedora, Manjaro and other Arch-based, and so on, we get figures ranging from:

38 minutes from Arcolinux through to a deplorable 73 minutes for Pop!_OS . With a number of 42s to 45s.

But what I find is most interesting, is that for a Gecko Linux - based on openSUSE and distributed by our own Member Sam @GeckoLinux .

GeckoLinux Tumbleweeds Xfce WD

time upgrub

user 19m47.654s

Less than 20 minutes, and on the slowest of my 3 drives, the WD external.

Needless to say, Gecko is one of my daily drivers.

It was @MikeWalsh who said recently

(This is, of course, where Wiz's huge stable of distros comes in so handy.....because it lets him distinguish between all those small details. ...

and

I don't know how Wiz finds the time to separately maintain all those different distros.

Well, it is a labour of love, but apart from the reasons in my signature link, it is because I can then bring you, the Members and the readers, meaningful information that will assist you in choosing what course to take in distro selections.

Cheers and

Avagudweegend

Wizard
 

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