Does freeing up memory improve performance?

oszim · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 19

Assuming more free RAM equates to better performance what files and from where can I safely consider to remove, in terms of unwanted and unnecessary files. I am thinking of such unwanted Audio/music/photo and Splash screens etc. Not to mention voice combinations and many unlikely to be used foreign language options. Or is it unsafe to delve too deeply? I currently have 13.8Mb free, but know this is variable.
Secondly I downloaded several Mp3 files, using 'Home' and see that they were added to Mp3 Folder on Internal memory, I would have thought it preferable for them to have gone on External SD card. In future can such additions, including photo's be forced to be stored on the SD card. Finally if stored of the sd card can they be readily accessed when required by the device. Rolling Eyes

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Go 720T
App v. 8.300 (9732/081830)
Western Eur v. 815.2003
Sandisk 8Gb SDHC
TMC/RDS 2V00.06
TT Antenna v.4V00.OB

dhn · Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2008 5:51 pm Post subject:

Your 720 will play the mp3s just fine if they are put in a folder called 'mp3 (lower case, no quotes) on a sd card.
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David

oszim · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 19

dhn · Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2008 6:09 pm Post subject:

You are confusing STORAGE space on a unit with MEMORY space. Moving the mp3s to a card will increase the STORAGE space on internal but will do nothing for the memory space free.

Think of this....let's say you have a 80 gig hard drive and 1 MEG of memory in your computer. If you have 1 GIG of stuff on your hard drive and move it all to a second hard drive, you will now have all 80 gigs of storage back on hd1 but your MEMORY is still 1 MEG of memory.
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David

oszim · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 19

Yep, I'll freely admit to that, 'confusion' is my middle name. I have, however, transferred all mp3 files to SD and 'behold' now find I have 17.7Mb now free. So, propose to do same with other media files by reproducing exact folder names on SD card. So returning to the 'root' of my question, assuming it will improve performance and reduce gliches, ie. occasional stuttered speech, how can I increase memory available to the device?
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Go 720T
App v. 8.300 (9732/081830)
Western Eur v. 815.2003
Sandisk 8Gb SDHC
TMC/RDS 2V00.06
TT Antenna v.4V00.OB

Oldboy · Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2008 8:41 pm Post subject:

Larok · Regular Visitor Joined: Dec 08, 2006 Posts: 79

Yep, so there are two types of memory on any PC or device;

Memory to store data, (read only memory ROM) and memory the device uses to run programs, (random access memory RAM - which has a faster connection to the devices CPU than ROM).

Freeing up storage memory does nothing to increase the memory the device uses to run programs.

In the case that your storage memory is so full it inteferres with the the device being able to access the data you may see a drop in performance. But there would be no further gains than just ensuring there is a small amount of unused space to allow file swapping to facilitate the way the device accesses data on your storage memory.

On a PC with borderline amount of RAM avaliable sometimes stopping the number of programs using the memory can give a performance advantage. However on a TomTom there really is no flexibility on turning on/off any software to make this happen. Saying that removing the number of POI's displayed on the map while you are navigating can have a noticable impact on the smoothness of the software. I always run mine with the minimum number of POI's showing, (just the speed cams). So that the device is freed up from plotting their locations and moving them around as you move.

Also other possibilities may be running in 2D mode rather than 3D would help? I like 2D anyway, you get a higher level of information. The traffic service probarbly uses up some RAM resources as well.

oszim · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 19

all comments noted and thanks for replies
_________________
Go 720T
App v. 8.300 (9732/081830)
Western Eur v. 815.2003
Sandisk 8Gb SDHC
TMC/RDS 2V00.06
TT Antenna v.4V00.OB

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