Upgrade Question

[Gary_Busey]

I want to throw some more ram into my old Gateway computer. I was looking through the Support Documents, and came across this warning:

"The motherboard is theoretically designed to support 2.0 gigabytes (GB) of memory based on 512 Mbit technology. However, this technology has not been validated on this motherboard. Gateway and Intel have qualified this board for 1 gigabyte (GB) of memory. "

This is the motherboard:

http://support.gateway.com/s/MOTHERBD/INTEL/2519573/2519573nv.shtml

It uses PC2100 RAM. I was wondering if this stick would most likely work?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820141172

 

[yourmothersanastronaut]

It should work if it's the same pin count and works at the supported speed.

But why would you put 2GB in that machine? The only reason you would need 2GB is if you're going to play the latest games with high textures and settings, or do some intense workstation/3D modeling stuff, and you won't be doing either of those with a P-4 2000.

How much do you have in the machine now? I wouldn't recommend putting more than a GB in it now. Save it for a completely new system.

 

[Gary_Busey]

It's got a P4 3.0E in it now and will have an X850XT PE soon. Currently, I have 768mb in it now. I was just going to throw in a gig stick to make it 1.5gb of RAM so Oblivion would run better. I won't be buying a whole new system until I get out of school so I'm making one last upgrade that will have to last me for a year or so more.

 

[yourmothersanastronaut]

See if you can sell the other stick and get 2 x 1 GB. You'll double your memory bandwidth by getting two identical sticks and running them in dual-channel mode, assuming your motherboard supports it. And I like to avoid running sticks of different brands, so as to avoid complications - that and the older RAM will bottleneck the newer RAM.

And since you're going to play a lot of Oblivion, stick with ATI. That card is decent, there are better, but since you're going for a whole 'nother system in a year or so, it'll do dandily for now.

 

[Gary_Busey]

Sounds like a good idea. I only have AGP also, so that limits my options severly. ATI is running a clearance on new X850Pro's for $140 with free shipping on their website. If I'm able to flash it to an X850XT PE, which I should be able to, then I'd say that's a pretty good deal on an AGP card. So should a P4 3.0E, 2gb ram, and an X800XT PE run Oblivion pretty good?

 

[yourmothersanastronaut]

Mmmmmmmaybe......

/me is mysterious