Question about memory

[blade85]

Helloooooooo

Okay, I have a simple question.....well I hope its simple, atleast for you guys...cause you seem to know almost everything there is to know about pc's.

Any who, my pc is fairly (by that i mean VERY) old. It only accepts memory till the pc2700 range and can only take a max of 2gb ddr ram. I have a 1 gb memory any way, but if I had another 1gb, would i be able to plug it in irrespective of its make and model???

My pc does not run dual channel, so does upgrading require me to get the same make and model???

Cheers in advance

 

[slicessoul]

Not a problem. But if you can find the same timing speed as you have now, that'd be better.

 

[blade85]

when u say timing speed....you mean what exactly?? sorry, memory is not my thing :lol: :lol:

do you mean the (CAS, tRCD, tRP, tRAS)??

I'll check and see if its the same. anything else I need to know???

 

[slicessoul]

Yes it's the CAS, RAS etc.

Different timings, brand and size of memory will run just fine on your board. To reduce bottleneck between two different memories is to find the same timing, but you are not oblige to find a really the same timings though.

 

[blade85]

okay kool

thanx for the help

 

[Mondoman]

All he means is don't buy an even slower RAM than what you already have, because your system runs all the memory at the same speed, the speed of the slowest DIMM installed.

 

[enforcer22]

since your not running dual channel the only thing you need to do is buy ram equal or faster then what you have the system will put them at the slowest memorys timmings and clock. if you plan on buyiong another faster system that can handle the faster ram get the best ram you can get and ditch the 2700 when you rebuild otherwise it really doesnt matter at all as long as its at least equal to what you have otherwise you can go as fast as you want with no problems.

 

[Mobius]

If you are the power user you seem to be claiming to be, then you wouldn;t have such a slow old PC. And anyway, a PC like that probably will NOT show any performance improvement with an extra GB of RAM.

Unless you are REGULARLY exceeding 1GB of physical RAM used, then you'd just be wasting your time and money.

 

[Mondoman]

If you are the power user you seem to be claiming to be

I didn't notice any such suggestion

...And anyway, a PC like that probably will NOT show any performance improvement with an extra GB of RAM.

To the contrary, an older system (with likely pretty slow hard drive) will show a bigger performance improvement by adding physical RAM in place of virtual memory.

Unless you are REGULARLY exceeding 1GB of physical RAM used, then you'd just be wasting your time and money.

Not to worry - Win XP is great at using up the RAM. 2GB will definitely help.

Of course, since RAM is pretty expensive now, the OP will have to decide if he wants to spend money on DDR RAM if he'll be moving up to a new system soon (running DDR2, not DDR).

 

[enforcer22]

I must have missed where he clamed to be a power user of sorts. As stated xp has no problems using alot of memory and paging doesnt only occure when all ram is used just for refference the closer to the limit you get the more paging that will happen. The good old rule of more ram is always better applys even if the increase is hardly noticable. Not exactly sure if ram is expensive but i havent checked in a week but when i did it was pretty cheap for ddr memory. IMO ddr2 systems for the memory side give no major advantages to the average user because of the memory timmings still being way to high. If you do alot of stuff that can use the extra bandwidth then by all means otherwise its a waste of time and money. In 100% agreement with mondoman here.

 

[blade85]

Well i got the 1 gb ram, and my system just seems alot smoother with loading applications and playing games.

some games that used to have some jitters (like FEAR), have no lag wat so ever now at higher detail settings. Dunno if thats supposed to happen with faster/extra memory.

I'm definitely seeing a major boost in performance, and for £60...i think it was worth it

Either way, im happy with the little upgrade to keep me going for another 6-7 months before getting getting a whole new system.

thanx for the info guys

 

[Mondoman]

...

Either way, im happy with the little upgrade to keep me going for another 6-7 months before getting getting a whole new system.

thanx for the info guys

Hey! You forgot to tip us!

 

[blade85]

haha :lol: :lol:

maybe next time when you help me pick a new system :lol:

 

[enforcer22]

pffft i dont think so we expect money or hardware donations. you arent getting out of it that easy.

 

[enforcer22]

I tried that and it hated me doing it in dual channel mode. alot of times i had to turn off the computer and turn it back on to get it to post instead of beep. Then half my programs couldnt even tell me the exact ammount of memory i had. My corsair dashboard said i had no ram installed and randomly it would find and lose random sticks. i wont be getting a DDR2 comp till those timings come down alot more

 

[enforcer22]

They just got tagged againg for more fixing. Now the prices are going to go up to pay for the court fees they are going to have to pay.