ECC/ Non-ECC??

muddyfox470

That RAM from Eclipse seems decent enough.

As you have Windows Xp that will defo support the extra 512Mb RAM, however you will have to check the motherboard information which will be much harder to come by, and then it will be able to tell you whether it can support this amount of RAM, just really depends on age of PC, but you should be alright. As I said if it doesnt work, send it back and ask for a refund, under the distance selling act :P

With what you are doing, you PC may stuggle slightly, music editing, and photo editing often needs a lot of RAM and a semi decent processor, but of course there is no need spending money if you dont see the need to! lol. XP is known to hog alot of resources so the RAM will help there, it is just that you PC specs are just about the minimum on what Microsoft advises you should run it (XP) on.

If you do think that you may require a new PC semi-recently PCs can be picked up very cheaply, i.e. a new Dell PC with a 2.66Ghz Celeron Processor, 1024Mb RAM, 160Gb Harddrive and CDRW with 17inch TFT was £328 but has since risen to a little under £400. This would give a profound increase / noticeable speed up on the applications you use. However it may not be required.

If your PC is coping already why change it!

Ian

PS. A program that may be able to determine you mobo (other than the sisoftsandra as above) is CPU-Z a search in google will bring this up for you

EDIT: Campervanman, scrap that about your PC, your PC is a much more recent PC than that of Jeordies so you have little to worry about, i was getting mixed signals, (i thought your PC spec was 500mhz etc, but now found out it is a P4 1.7 - so fair enough that is more than capable of what you are using it for - no change required just RAM ) - Also as it is much more recnt any NON-ECC RAM should be fine, i bought some second hand for my P4 1.7 Fujitsu (well my parents) and it worked, just put it in and voila, no problems. Should be as simple on yours! Have you checked inside your PC case to check there is a slot free?

blinky

If it's speed which is the problem then throwing more SDRAM memory won't help much on P4 1.7.

The early P4's (Willamette) weren't actually very good - they got trounced by a 1GHz PIII. Additionally SDRAM just doesn't have the bandwith a P4 needs.