Would going from 4gb ram to 8gb increase magento speed on localhost? - magento

Question

I upgraded my pc from 2.1gh and 2gb ram to dual coure 2.6gh processor and 4GB RAM, magento runs faster but I am still not happy with it (takes 4-6 seconds to open a page).
My memory usage is around 40% alltogether.
Would upgrating to 8GB RAM speed up my magento locally?

Answer 1

I would say, by itself, No. The fact that you are sharing resources on a local machine between MySQL and PHP with Magento is inherently slow within itself. Will you get more throughput? Probably, but not enough to notice.
You will get more of a performance gain by installing Varnish, and enabling Magento full page caching AFTER you install more RAM. Magento cache stores itself in the RAM and so does Varnish. Also make sure you have APC cache installed. Those three COMBINED with more RAM will make all the difference in the world.
For Varnish .. Give it about 1GB RAM in the VCL settings .. Sounds like a lot, but it'll save your life.
For APC, give it at least 256MB of room in the APC settings ... It would probably behove you to do 512MB if you can afford it.
I am also going to include my PHP.INI magento optimized settings as well as my MySQL settings:
PHP.INI
max_execution_time = 18000
max_input_time = 60
memory_limit = 1024M
max_input_vars = 10000
post_max_size = 102M
upload_max_filesize =100 M
max_file_uploads = 20
default_socket_timeout = 60
pdo_mysql.cache_size = 2000
mysql.cache_size = 2000
mysqli.cache_size = 2000
apc.enabled = 1
apc.shm_segments = 1
apc.shm_size = 1024M
apc.num_files_hint = 10000
apc.user_entries_hint = 10000
apc.ttl = 0
apc.user_ttl = 0
apc.gc_ttl = 3600
apc.cache_by_default = 1
apc.filters = "apc\.php$"
apc.mmap_file_mask = "/tmp/apc.XXXXXX"
apc.slam_defense = 0
apc.file_update_protection = 2
apc.enable_cli = 0
apc.max_file_size = 10M
apc.use_request_time = 1
apc.stat = 1
apc.write_lock = 1
apc.report_autofilter = 0
apc.include_once_override = 0
apc.localcache = 0
apc.localcache.size = 256M
apc.coredump_unmap = 0
apc.stat_ctime = 0
apc.canonicalize = 1
apc.lazy_functions = 1
apc.lazy_classes = 1
And MySQL
MY.CNF
key_buffer = 256M
max_allowed_packet = 16M
thread_stack = 192K
thread_cache_size = 32
myisam-recover = BACKUP
max_connections = 2500
query_cache_limit = 2M
query_cache_size = 64M
expire_logs_days = 10
max_binlog_size = 100M
[mysqldump]
quick
quote-names
max_allowed_packet = 16M
[isamchk]
key_buffer = 16M
I hope that helps you

Answer 2

If your memory usage is 40% now, then no. Sufficient RAM does make a difference, but in this case the extra 4 wouldn't make much of a difference.
Magento is quite slow due do its complexity and the fact that it uses thousands of files.
To increase Magento's load speed, try to disable stuff you don't need in the admin section, and perhaps Google for other tips. Also, the load speed will differ between different browsers.