What RAM should I buy for upgrade pls ?

banger9365

it's not the cpu it's just the frequency of the ram your ram will run slower e.g. 400mhz (max speed new ram) will run at 333mhz(max speed of old ram) that’s all ,cpu will run the same,
the latency mite be different to e.g 2-2-2-5 put mite run at 3-4-4-8 put that's for experienced users

christopher_h

banger9365 wrote:

it's not the cpu it's just the frequency of the ram your ram will run slower e.g. 400mhz (max speed new ram) will run at 333mhz(max speed of old ram) that’s all ,cpu will run the same,
the latency mite be different to e.g 2-2-2-5 put mite run at 3-4-4-8 put that's for experienced users

Thanks for trying to enlighten me Banger, but I think you're right about that info being for "experienced users"

If I buy your suggested 'Corsair Value Select' RAM for the other slot in my pc will it be ok to have two different RAM sizes in each slot ? (the first slot has 512Mb) ?

EDIT: actually what the hell, the corsair one is damn cheap, I'm gonna go for that - anyone know any codes pls ?

nickmack

christopher_h wrote:

If I buy your suggested 'Corsair Value Select' RAM for the other slot in my pc will it be ok to have two different RAM sizes in each slot ? (the first slot has 512Mb) ?

With DDR Ram, it's OK.

All your memory will run at the speed of the slowest stick.

christopher_h

nickmack wrote:

With DDR Ram, it's OK.

All your memory will run at the speed of the slowest stick.

Cheers Nickmack - sorry for being stupid but what is my "slowest stick" and should I be looking to improve it's speed too so the pC generally performs better :huh:

I do sometimes get this alarm type sound when the CPU is at 100% - does that sound like a familiar problem/comment

electron_3

CPU shouldnt really be giving any alarm sounds, why do you need more RAM? 512 isnt all that bad or are you running photographic programs just get another 512 of the same RAM thats the simple solution.

Have you any spyware thats using system resources have you scanned for that?

nickmack

You say that your current Front Side Bus (FSB) is 133Mhz. This is (simply put) the bandwidth available to connect components on your motherboard such as the Processor and memory.

Your DDR Memory runs at a speed 2x the FSB (therefore 266MHz in your case)

DDR Memory at 266MHz is also known as 'PC2100'.

Other DDR Ram available can run at faster speeds:

PC2700 runs at 333Mhz
PC3200 runs at 400Mhz

If you bought for example a PC2700 memory stick to add to your system, it would not run at 333Mhz, it would run at the same speed as the memory already in your PC, i.e: 266Mhz.

The only way to get all your memory to run at a higher speed is to buy the same specification. For example two 512Mb PC2700 sticks and remove your slower DDR memory completely.

The alarm sound could be a BIOS alarm that means your system is overheating. You should check that your fans are working properly and there is adequate ventilation around your PC.

christopher_h

electron wrote:

CPU shouldnt really be giving any alarm sounds, why do you need more RAM? 512 isnt all that bad or are you running photographic programs just get another 512 of the same RAM thats the simple solution.

Have you any spyware thats using system resources have you scanned for that?

Thanks Electron......yeah strange that alarm sound :eek:

It can happen if I try to burn a CD Rom or run Spywareblaster or adaware or similar. It only started happening after owning PC for about a year......the CPU meter goes up to 100% when the alarm happens......I figured it was just warning me the CPU was peaking or summat. If I'm running outlook express/internet explorer/Word/Excell all at the same time its all fine......even playing music files or viewing video files is fine too......that's one of the reasons I thought i needed more RAm :huh:

christopher_h

nickmack wrote:

You say that your current Front Side Bus (FSB) is 133Mhz. This is (simply put) the bandwidth available to connect components on your motherboard such as the Processor and memory.

Your DDR Memory runs at a speed 2x the FSB (therefore 266MHz in your case)

DDR Memory at 266MHz is also known as 'PC2100'.

Other DDR Ram available can run at faster speeds:

PC2700 runs at 333Mhz
PC3200 runs at 400Mhz

If you bought for example a PC2700 memory stick to add to your system, it would not run at 333Mhz, it would run at the same speed as the memory already in your PC, i.e: 266Mhz.

The only way to get all your memory to run at a higher speed is to buy the same specification. For example two 512Mb PC2700 sticks and remove your slower DDR memory completely.

The alarm sound could be a BIOS alarm that means your system is overheating. You should check that your fans are working properly and there is adequate ventilation around your PC.

Cheers Nickmack......should I/Can I improve the FSB speed or is that getting in too deep :huh:

As far as I know the fans are fine (I can hear them) - lots of ventilation around their too. It only happens when I run something that eats up the CPU then I see the CPU meter at 100%. Yeah I've been wondering what causes that, PC is only 18 months - 2 years old

(pls also see my coments above to Electron)

electron_3

So we are talking Laptop ?

It maybe overheating as mentiones before I hope you do have PC on a flat surface
and not on a fluffy blanket in bed as that will cause a nice amount of fluff in the
vents of fan, I would blow out all vents with a can of compressed air.

Now I would also run an online virus check http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
and I would run AdAware spyware removal with system restore off then turn restore
back on after scan also run spybot search and destroy.

Its just about cleaning yer PC at no expense just a bit of time, also defrag your HDD.

AdAware http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

Spybot http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html

I would also run https://www.ccleaner.com to clear out any crap when installing untick the option to install the yahoo toolbar.

nickmack

christopher_h wrote:

Cheers Nickmack......should I/Can I improve the FSB speed or is that getting in too deep :huh:

Your FSB speed can increase if and when all the components such as memory and CPU are running at the same or equivalent multiplier frequency.

I wouldn't worry too much about this at the moment. Decide what memory you're going to get and then we'll tackle whether your FSB can be increased.