General Questions about RAM

[joosie]

I'm new to working with computer parts. I want to upgrade my ram. I work
with Paintshop Pro 9 and it is excruciatingly slow.
Currently I have 256mb installed. I want to buy either 512mb or 1gb.

CPU
P4 1.6Mhz (3 years old)

Motherboard (Gigabyte GA-8SIMLP)
-supports up to 2gb of ram in total
-2 DDR Dimm slots
-supports 2 unbuffered double-sided DDR266(PC2100)/DDR200(PC1600)

Currently this is the ram I have installed:
Kingston KVR266X64C25/256 256 MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM (2.5-3-3-6 @ 133
MHz) (2.0-2-2-5 @ 100 MHz)


My concerns are:
-Does this info mean I can install either SDRAM or DDR ram
-I cannot find anywhere that has DDR at 133Mhz (PC2100) only SDRAM
-Can I buy higher speed ram eg PC3200 and it still be able to work?
-If I buy a stick of 512mb will it work together with the already installed
256mb I have (totalling 748mb) - which I'm hoping for due to my budget but
have read where it's better to have the ram modules installed in pair (ie
chucking out the 256 and buy 2 lots of 512 rather than buying a 1gb stick

I would appreciate any help on this thanks
Deb

 

[Tony Hill]

I'm new to working with computer parts. I want to upgrade my ram. I work
with Paintshop Pro 9 and it is excruciatingly slow.
Currently I have 256mb installed. I want to buy either 512mb or 1gb.

CPU
P4 1.6Mhz (3 years old)

Motherboard (Gigabyte GA-8SIMLP)
-supports up to 2gb of ram in total
-2 DDR Dimm slots
-supports 2 unbuffered double-sided DDR266(PC2100)/DDR200(PC1600)

Currently this is the ram I have installed:
Kingston KVR266X64C25/256 256 MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM (2.5-3-3-6 @ 133
MHz) (2.0-2-2-5 @ 100 MHz)


My concerns are:
-Does this info mean I can install either SDRAM or DDR ram

No. Only DDR SDRAM. Regular old SDRAM won't physically work of even
physically fit into the slot.

-I cannot find anywhere that has DDR at 133Mhz (PC2100) only SDRAM

Uhh, it shouldn't be THAT hard to find... Note that DDR SDRAM
operating at 133MHz is often referred to as "DDR266" memory or
occasionally even "266MHz" DDR memory, though the latter isn't really
accurate and might be confusing given that there now is some DDR533
memory that really does operate at 266MHz. Anyway, here's a link to a
few stick so of 133MHz DDR SDRAM:

http://www.crucial.com/store/listmodule.asp?family=DDR&tabid=DDR+PC2100

http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/con...=DDR+PC2100&subtype=184-pin+DIMM&SUBMIT1=Find

http://www.memman.com/category.asp?catid=4#100

-Can I buy higher speed ram eg PC3200 and it still be able to work?

It should work. Note that memory density is going to be more
important that speed. If you memory that works, just go to:

www.crucial.com

Plug in your board make/model and it will show you what will work.
Kingston has a similar configuration tool.

-If I buy a stick of 512mb will it work together with the already installed
256mb I have (totalling 748mb) - which I'm hoping for due to my budget but
have read where it's better to have the ram modules installed in pair (ie
chucking out the 256 and buy 2 lots of 512 rather than buying a 1gb stick

Your system board does not use it's memory in pairs, so there would be
no performance advantage to buying them as such. The only trick is
that a lot of bargain basement no-name memory tends not to play very
nicely with other types of memory. If you want something that just
works, www.crucial.com. Or, since you've already got some Kingston
memory in the system you can pair it up with more Kingston memory at
www.kingston.com.

 

[joosie]

Thank you very much Tony
That helps alot
Deb

 

[dawg]

Less than 512MB of ram is not enough. Even with an older system using
Win98/ME. But if you are using 98 and get 512M+ ram then there is a small
registry addittion you need to make. Check MS knowledge base.