RAM Advice

JMurph

Hi

I've a 7 year old (I think) Dell Inspiron 3000 that has 1GB of RAM, but lately its begun to get so slow that it's difficult to do almost anything on it. In addition, watching youtube or iplayer clips is pretty much impossible. I don't know whether a RAM upgrade to 2GB (the max it seems to be able to take) will really make that much diffierence, or should I just bite the bullet and look at a new pc? It's running Windows XP, btw.

Grateful for any thoughts/suggestions. I've been reading the threads on new laptops/tablets with interest lately!

m5rcc

Give it a through clean with CCleaner and upgrade to 2GB which will be an extra fiver max.

rmg1

Have you tried the speed-up sticky at the top of this forum?
Might be worth working through that before spending any cash.

At 7 years old (I assume) you're running XP?

JMurph

@ m5rcc, a fiver max? I looked up the crucial website and their offering was coming out at £45, I only have 2 slots for RAM and they curently both used with 512MB each, so I need to buy 2x1GB.

Any idea where I'd get cheaper RAM?

@rmg1, I haven't gone through that speed-up sticky, will have a read over it and do whatever I can. I've used CCleaner though.

Thanks both

Thanks

GunJack

xp on 1GB should be no probs if done properly...1.5GB should sail by, so at most you need 1x1GB stick, at best, clean up the machine prpoerly and you shouldn't need any extra....

m5rcc

JMurph wrote: »

@ m5rcc, a fiver max? I looked up the crucial website and their offering was coming out at £45, I only have 2 slots for RAM and they curently both used with 512MB each, so I need to buy 2x1GB.

Any idea where I'd get cheaper RAM?

Why does it have to be brand new? It's a 7yr old machine. Scour eBay.

JMurph

Never thought of used RAM, it doesn't deteriorate through use?

macman

No more than any other component. It's not like it's a moving part!
Problems with streaming video indicates a possible issue with your broadband connection, not necessarily an issue with your PC. What is your line speed?
www.speedtest,net.
If that is not the issue, maybe a cheap graphics card would help, I presume that Dell has onboard graphics only?

robmar0se

we clean up loads of Dell Inspiron 3000's and 1gb RAM is ample for XP SP3 - really don't even need to spend the £5.

Just do the sticky as a previous poster said, and perhaps do a defrag at the end and you'll be fine - but get rid of all that clutter, and uninstall all that stuff you never use (browser addons, goggle updater, probabaly some old printer software thats went years ago, etc etc.)

JMurph

OK just home and did speed test, d/l 5.01 Mbps, u/l 0.96 Mbps. Certainly not the sorts of figures I hear on the adverts.

I'll go to work on it later, try to follow all the instructions on the sticky, and let you know.

Thanks all.

JMurph

Just in case this helps anyone (I know a little about pcs, but have no idea what the commit charge is) the total figure is 9888600, limit is 2522544, peak is 1074568.

Is this good, bad, normal, and what the hell is commit charge?!