RAM upgrade, help....

SAINTRON

I'm about to upgrade the RAM on my desktop. It currently has 2gig {2 x 1 DDR8OO} of RAM. I was going to put in 2gig to bring it to 4 in total. Can I instead put in 4 x 2 gig to bring it to 8 gigs in total or is this just a daft and pointless notion?

Many thanks in advance.....

Tea_Bag

run a scan on crucial.com to find out how much ram your board supports first. its quite dated so it wont be cheap.

most people wouldnt notice 8gb of ram. 4 gb is usually more than enough for most tasks.

SAINTRON

Thanks for that Teabag. Will have a go at it when I get home. I use the desktop for video/photo editing, hence the need for more RAM.

kfish2oo2

It would certainly be a help for video editing. What flavor of windows are you running? If its 32 bit, there's no point in going higher than 4GBs but if its 64 bit you can go much higher

SAINTRON

XP 32. What kinda costs to upgrade to 64 bit?

Tea_Bag

normally switching between 32bit and 64bit is a simple reinstall for free, but you really dont want to get XPx64. its time for Windows7 x64 for you unfortunately.

good news is that you can get it for €45 if you're a student or have kids/family in education or similar from here

SAINTRON

e45 seems like a good deal to me....The processor {2.8 gig} should be able to cope with all this movement/upheaval I'm sure, or am I???

Kavs

sorry misread this its ddr2 I have for sale!!

Tea_Bag

SAINTRON wrote: »

e45 seems like a good deal to me....The processor {2.8 gig} should be able to cope with all this movement/upheaval I'm sure, or am I???

is it a dual core or better? whats all your specs?

XP and W7 use about the same amount of resources, but W7 is far better, and i used to be a hater of it and Vista

kfish2oo2

Windows 7 will be fine with older processors - its not nearly as resource heavy as Windows Vista and if you tone down the visual fanciness, general performance is comparable to Windows XP. Really, XP is gone the way of the dodo - its time to move on up! Also with Windows 8 not too far away (sometime next year is its expected release announcement) whats left of the support for XP will vanish.

SAINTRON

System is a DELL Dimension 9150, Pentium (R) D CPU. Think its the first of the dual cores but not too sure. It lists 2 processor speeds on the system properties tab (2.8ghz, 2.79ghz).

SAINTRON

According to crucial I have 4 slots currently holding 512 each.

Memory Type: DDR2 PC2-5300, DDR2 (non-ECC)
Maximum Memory: 4GB
Currently Installed Memory: 2GB
Total Memory Slots: 4
Available Memory Slots: 0

So can I put in 4 x 1 gig or 2 x 2 gig ....or does the configuration or use of slots matter?

Serephucus

You can do either, but you board will have a limit for the total amount of RAM you can use. Given how old the board is, it could be 4GB, but more likely it's 8. Might want to find the manual for it and see.

SAINTRON

SAINTRON wrote: »

According to crucial I have 4 slots currently holding 512 each.

Memory Type: DDR2 PC2-5300, DDR2 (non-ECC)
Maximum Memory: 4GB
Currently Installed Memory: 2GB
Total Memory Slots: 4
Available Memory Slots: 0

So can I put in 4 x 1 gig or 2 x 2 gig ....or does the configuration or use of slots matter?

it runs better if you have equal amounts im each channel. (theres two channels [A&B] beside each other with two slots) dig up or download your manual. expect your ram to be about €9-13 a stick

if you buy 2 x 1gb, you can have 3gb in total
(both channels have 1x1gb and 1x512mb)

other option is to just buy 4 x1gb
2gb sticks (99% certain) will not work