Ddr2 sodimm upgrade from 1 gb to 4 gb?

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Blitz Blitz

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May 18, 2015
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Hi, I have ancient notebook, and wanna upgrade it, if it worth. Notebook is Hp compaq nc6400. It comes with intel centrino dual core, 1 gb ram, old hdd. I wanna add 4 gb ram total, and small ssd for os. Wanna run windows 7 starter, or later os like windows 10. It will be just for surfing, streaming video for aunt. Just asking it's good idea to upgrade it? Will it runs smoother?
 
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BFG-9000
Most of those NC6400 had GMA950 graphics, which means a Calistoga chipset for the Napa platform:
940GML
943GML
945GSE
945GMS
945GM/E <--- only this one can support 4GB of RAM (3.25GB usable)

All of the others above will only support up to 2GB of RAM. As it happens I've tried installing more than this but while the BIOS may show more, the OS can only see 2GB of it (and not just "2GB usable")

The NC6400 was also available with the 945PM chipset if it came with discrete graphics like an ATI x1300. That one can also use 3.25GB if 4GB is installed, but I should point out there are no Win 10 compatible drivers for the x1300 so you'd be stuck with the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter driver. At least the GMA950 has Win 7 drivers...
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thx1138v2

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Jun 18, 2011
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Ram may help but first find an online manual with the specs and verify that it will accept 4GB DRAM. My old Dell has a max of 2GB, 1GB per slot.

It would be good to replace the HDD since an old one is likely to crash before long but if it has Windows XP or earlier on it you won't find drivers for Windows 7 or later. If it has Vista or later it could work.

You probably can't add an SSD because the BIOS either won't recognize it or won't allow you to boot from it which would make it pointless.
 
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BFG-9000

BFG-9000

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Sep 17, 2016
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Most of those NC6400 had GMA950 graphics, which means a Calistoga chipset for the Napa platform:
940GML
943GML
945GSE
945GMS
945GM/E <--- only this one can support 4GB of RAM (3.25GB usable)

All of the others above will only support up to 2GB of RAM. As it happens I've tried installing more than this but while the BIOS may show more, the OS can only see 2GB of it (and not just "2GB usable")

The NC6400 was also available with the 945PM chipset if it came with discrete graphics like an ATI x1300. That one can also use 3.25GB if 4GB is installed, but I should point out there are no Win 10 compatible drivers for the x1300 so you'd be stuck with the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter driver. At least the GMA950 has Win 7 drivers which also work in Win 10.

Assuming you have two 512MB so-DIMMs, you would need 2GB worth of DDR2 which at ~$25 used, is more than half the value of the notebook. Considering nowadays you can get an old Calpella platform Nehalem (2009) or even Huron River platform Sandy Bridge (2011) laptop for $100 it may make more sense to set aside the money for a much larger and more noticeable upgrade.

I have a $50 Inspiron 1525 with the very next platform Santa Rosa using the 965 series Crestline chipset and the only reason it has 6GB in it was because 4GB sticks are $20ea locally. It only officially supports 4GB but many laptops with this chipset seem to accept 8, though in this case I tried every combination of two 4GB sticks they had and got only a black screen. 6GB (a 2GB and a 4GB in flex-channel mode) works fine so that's what it ended up with.
 
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