Upgrading my PCs RAM.

SeanW

I have a self built PC from 2006, which I'm changing soon (within a year) but in the interim I'm going to upgrade its ram from 2GB to 3GB.
Using DDR PC3200 (DDR1)
I had to get a stick of ram a year or two back in an emergency when my main set failed, this stick is 512MB and I want to reuse that and add a 2nd 512 to maintain Dual Channel configuration.

The stick I have ATM is branded Transcend.

How careful do I need to be in matching the second stick to the one I currently have, to maintain a functioning dual channel setup?

Stevo105

ideally you want the times to be the same and get the same ram. But if its PC3200 you should be ok for dual channel.

they are usually sold in pairs about 40 euro for a 1gb. Why are you getting more ram 2gb - 3gb if you are going to upgrade soon anyway?

what are you doing that you need more than 2gb.....gaming?

Stevo105

if your going to upgrade why not bring it upto 4GB ...(maybe you have vista ) Ram is very cheap now.

try
www.dvd.co.uk very good for ram....has been for me anyway
www.dabs.ie
www.komplett.ie

SeanW

A few reasons - first of all I don't REALLY need it for most things but I am working on/building a Trainz map and that seems to need lots of workspace, more than say, driving it.

The second is that I have this 512MB stick spare.

Third, using a 32 bit OS I've got a hard limit of 4GB anyway, I've already got 2GB and a 512MB graphics card, if I understand correctly, adding another 2GB of ram would leave me with a total of 4.5GB with the last 1/2 Gig being unused.

Fourth, I don't know exactly when I will be changing.

SeanW

I should also point out that Komplett, my favourite retailer has the cheapest stick of PC3200 512MB but they do not sell Transcend RAM.

Effluo

just so you know the memory in your graphics card has nothing to do with the ram.

Also (unless you have a 64 bit os) your os will only reconise a max of 3-3.5 gigs of ram.

finally i'm not 100% sure on this but i do believe that two sticks of ram when not the same brand may not be compatible with eachother... I remember hearing that it's usually just a throw up to whether it works or not.

If i were you.... I'd just hold out. 2 to 3 gigs of ram prob won't give too much of a performance boost!

Solitaire

Effluo wrote:

just so you know the memory in your graphics card has nothing to do with the ram.

Only vis-a-vis hardware parts. But in the RAM usage stakes it has plenty of relevance - first, parasitic low-end GPUs (and not just integrated video either) can want/need to steal a whole bunch of your system RAM for video, removing it from the system pool. Second, because graphics memory on the card itself can prevent system memory allocation in 32bit OS. Depending on OS the first 96-256MB of addresses is reserved for system functions (typically component cache memory) and the next 256-512MB is reserved for video. XP typically assumes the largest of both values, thus the address limit of 3.25GB system RAM in 32bit XP. Graphics solutions with addressable memory beyond this value (i.e. >512MB in XP) cuts into the remaining system address pool, so in XP32 a 1GB card will drop addressable system memory to 2.9-2.75GB regardless of whats installed.