Upgrading RAM

Hello

I want to double the RAM on my PC from 1GB and would appreciate advice that my intended purchase will be suitable.

My current set up is I have 512 MB of DDR (PC 3200) in slots 1 and 2. The speed is 200MHz. I want to replace them with 1GB PC3200 400Mhz DDR RAM
in each slot.

Will this be ok?

Thanks.

 

Yup, those will work just fine. Just make sure your motherboard can handle 4GB. Double check that by going to crucial.com as they have an excellent application to check your motherboard's specifications.

Do you have a new specific need for 4GB or did you get a great deal as XP will work just fine on 1 or 2GB, even 512MB as mine worked just fine. I guess you're getting these off of e-Bay or similar? Kinda late to be upgrading an aged XP machine IMHO.

 

I doubt you'll notice any differenc Sorry, I misread your post though I still stand by my opinion.

 

I just did an upgrade similar to what the OP is talking about. Although I went from 512MB total (256 in each slot) to 2GB (1GB per slot) and it was a nice noticeable improvement in performance.

I went to the Crucial site and downloaded their scanner to find what would work.

 

Boy ! when I had just 512 my machine really bogged down at times and I don't run any heavy apps. Just browsing in Firefox was enough to eat up much of the available memory. I think even if he went from 1GB to 2 GB he should see a noticeable improvement depending on what he's running.

Why do you say it's kind of late to be upgrading an XP machine? Plenty of XP machines out there that are still being used for it to be going any where that soon. Still worth an upgrade IMO.

 

Thanks for the replies. Xp does what I need so I will keep it for now. I wanted to beef up the RAM as system bogs down at times, ie video editing.

System can accomodate up to 4GB of RAM so all should go well.

 

My only comment is does the mother board support the clock speed of 400Mhz. Augiedoggie had a point on up-grading an old computer. Look also on your virtual memory. Should be around 1.5 of memory installed. If you have 200 Mhz I'd be looking for something close over that speed to work. Cruical sight I'd think is a better choice to see what would work. Just my humble opionion.

 

If the version of XP is 32bit (odds are it is), then 1.5x 4GB (or 1.5x the 3.5GB XP will 'see') is impossible; the largest virtual memory size is 4092MB. 1.5x was a reasonable estimate for most users back in the days when a large number of rigs were running on 256-512MB

Depending on usage, 2GB of virtual memory is likely to be fine.

 

Actually if a system has a 1.6Ghz or faster CPU, 2Gb ram & a 256mb or higher video card, it'll run Windows 7 just fine too. Over the past year I've taken about 10 older systems with 1.6-2.4Ghz CPUs(they all had 512mb ram and ran XP) and by bumping the memory up to 2Gb (some used DDR, some DDR2), adding a 256mb-512mb video card (even AGP video card systems) and they all now run Windows 7, and run it fine for general use.

Sam

 

Hmm, video editing eh? That's a CPU hog! Some info you may may find useful to find your bottleneck. Can you hear the hard drive constantly churning or if you have a front panel light, is the drive constantly running as the older ones do make quite a bit of sound. By 'constantly running' I mean like %90+ of the time.

Check your task manager to see how high your CPU is running when you're editing. Can you surf or do anything else without extra lag time when editing is running a video file prior to saving?

I used to have an old AMD Venice 3000+ single core and converting video would basically just slow everything down so much that the machine was basically unusable. When I found out that my motherboard would accept a dual core and it was like night and day man!:eek I wouldn't even know that a conversion was going on.

I hope that I haven't muddled the topic or confused you with too much info.

 

I have run the crucial scan as suggested. My system can take up to 4GB of RAM with a max of 1GB stick per slot. I am going to follow one of its upgrade suggestions of adding 1GB each in slots 3 and 4 and leaving the existing 512 MB in slots 1 and 2, giving a total of 3GB.

I will post the results here once I complete the upgrade.

What an awesome forum...thanks all.