Everyone at some time or another has a slow browser experience and has had to wait an unusually long time for a new page to appear. There are many possible reasons why this might be; however, unless your computer is very old or is running a number of memory-intensive application programs when browsing the Internet, the cause will usually not be a lack of main memory in your computer system. Understanding why this is true requires a basic understanding of computer design and how data is transferred from the Internet, stored in your computer's memory and finally displayed on your screen.
Memory Transfer Operations
When you load a new Web page in your browser, that page is downloaded into your computer's memory. If that page contains content that requires significant memory, such as high resolution graphics, more memory and more time will be required to store that in the main memory of your computer. The time to transfer the data from the Internet to your memory is dependent on the speed of your microprocessor and how closely that speed matches the speed of your computer's memory. Almost all modern computers can transfer the content from a Web page through the processor to memory faster than the Internet connection can deliver it. Even a 5 Mbps connection cannot feed data fast enough to keep a 1-GHz processor busy for long.
Internet Provider Memory Recommendations
Internet providers often recommend a specific minimum memory size for reliable Internet access. This doesn't mean that all of that memory is necessary for browsing the Web, but low memory can have an indirect effect on your experience. All open programs will utilize some memory. If your main memory is nearly full and you try to download a Web page with your browser, your computer may have a memory management conflict. This will require that your processor move the main memory's contents to a different location in main memory -- or possibly even to disk memory. Both operations have the potential to slow down Web browsing or even crash your computer.
Cache Your Pages in Disk Memory
If you have a slow Internet connection, Microsoft recommends that you increase the size of your disk drive's cache memory so that your disk drive will automatically save pages that you visit the most often. When a page is saved locally on your disk drive, it can sometimes be accessed more quickly than through a low-speed Internet connection.
Video and Audio Browsing Experience
If you are doing more than casual browsing -- for example, viewing or listening to video and audio, or downloading large files while you are browsing -- more main or system memory will keep your browsing speed optimized. Video and audio files often require a great deal of data to be transferred over a high-speed Internet connection. If you have insufficient system memory, your computer may not know how to handle the incoming data or resolve the memory management conflict that arises when your computer can't find memory space or enough easily accessible contiguous memory space. In these cases, the network connection may be interrupted so that the computer can reallocate data to different memory storage locations.
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