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How do I find out what kind of RAM I need to buy?

signmeup

New Member
My pc is starved for RAM. How do I determine what to go buy? Do I have to actually open the case or is there a window somewhere that will tell me?
 

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New Member
I found the sticker that was on the compters box when I bought it. According to the sticker I have 1024MB PC2-4200 DDR2 SDRAM

Any suggestions on what to go buy?
 

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Thanks guys. Thanks Signage! It looks like I need 4 sticks of 1 gig each. Crucial's good stuff?
 

signage

New Member
The other thing you want to make sure is what the maximum Giggs you motherboard.operation system will accept.
 

signmeup

New Member
According to the link you gave (crucial) I can fit 4 sticks of 1 gig each. One last question; the 4200 in this "PC2-4200 DDR2 SDRAM" is the speed? Can I buy faster ram and see any advantage or just buy the cheap stuff since the machine is 3 years old? It looks like the faster stuff is only a few bucks more but can it cause issues or?
 

S'N'S

New Member
You can go faster ram but it will only go at the speed the motherboard will accept. If your motherboard will only handle speed of 4200 then it will still only work at 4200 with faster ram in the computer. Most ram is backward compatible.
 

royster13

New Member
Because I can not imagine working with only 4gigs of ram with the sort of work we do.....And 3 years old is an antique in computer years....You can put more ram in but you will still have the same slow processor...

Does your computer work with with Ready Boost? That can also be used to add memory....
 

signmeup

New Member
Because I can not imagine working with only 4gigs of ram with the sort of work we do.....And 3 years old is an antique in computer years....You can put more ram in but you will still have the same slow processor...

Does your computer work with with Ready Boost? That can also be used to add memory....
I've spent the last 3 years with 1 gig of ram. 4 is the most it will take. I was looking at AVG's analyser and it showed that doing very little with my computer was using 750 megs of ram so I thought I would try adding a bit more. Processor use was something like 2% at the time. Things get slow if I add a drop shadow on a large drawing in Corel for example.

I've been looking at new computers and it appears that it's pretty hard to find one with a parallel port. I need at least one but I guess they still have pci slots? I also would like to stick with XP because of drivers. I didn't look but I doubt my plotter has windows 7 drivers available. Maybe I need to talk with a computer guy about what I should get.

You don't thing upping the ram will do anything for me?
 

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
I've spent the last 3 years with 1 gig of ram. 4 is the most it will take. I was looking at AVG's analyser and it showed that doing very little with my computer was using 750 megs of ram so I thought I would try adding a bit more. Processor use was something like 2% at the time. Things get slow if I add a drop shadow on a large drawing in Corel for example.

I've been looking at new computers and it appears that it's pretty hard to find one with a parallel port. I need at least one but I guess they still have pci slots? I also would like to stick with XP because of drivers. I didn't look but I doubt my plotter has windows 7 drivers available. Maybe I need to talk with a computer guy about what I should get.

You don't thing upping the ram will do anything for me?

On Windows 7 you can run things in XP compatibility mode as well. That may be the way around the driver issues, however, unless your devices are out-dated, there should be updated drivers specifically for Windows 7.

As to whether or not more RAM will help you, it depends on the limitations of your processor and even your graphics card. You might be able to physically fit 12 GBs of RAM, but your computer might only still recognize only 4.

I personally wouldn't do this stuff now with anything less then 6 and having spent quite a bit of time with 12, I doubt I could even go that low anymore.
 

signmeup

New Member
I have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ processor (2GHz). I don't think I have a video card. The box sticker says NVIDIA GeForce6150 LE graphics. 4 gigs of ram is the max.
 
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