How much RAM

[Craig HB]

Hi

What there a limit to how much RAM you can add to a PC before you stop
getting an improvement and end up just wasting you money ?

The PCs I want to add RAM to are a P2 300 and a P3 700.

Thanks,
Craig

 

[BarryNL]

Hi

What there a limit to how much RAM you can add to a PC before you stop
getting an improvement and end up just wasting you money ?

The PCs I want to add RAM to are a P2 300 and a P3 700.

Depends what software you're running and how many apps you have running
at a time. I'd say for general use that 512Mb is probably the most it's
worth getting - certainly for these older machines.

 

[philo]

Hi

What there a limit to how much RAM you can add to a PC before you stop
getting an improvement and end up just wasting you money ?

The PCs I want to add RAM to are a P2 300 and a P3 700.

Thanks,
Craig

If you are running win98 and no heavy apps such as photoshop

you should get good performance with 64- 128 megs of ram

and past 256 it's not likely you'll notice any difference.


OTOH: if you are running win2k or XP *and* heavy apps such as photoshop

512 megs up to a gig may be quite useful

 

[Al Dykes]

Hi

What there a limit to how much RAM you can add to a PC before you stop
getting an improvement and end up just wasting you money ?

The PCs I want to add RAM to are a P2 300 and a P3 700.

Thanks,
Craig

Yes.

It depends on what applications and OS you use. For someone running
Windows with Internet Explorer, an email client, and MS office
256MB is OK, and 512MB is generous.

 

[jaster]

Hi

What there a limit to how much RAM you can add to a PC before you stop
getting an improvement and end up just wasting you money ?

The PCs I want to add RAM to are a P2 300 and a P3 700.

Thanks,
Craig

It depends on the motherboard and bios but I would guess the most would be
2x256 for a total of 512.

 

[DaveW]

It also matters what operating sytem you are using. Win 98 CANNOT use more
than 512 MB of RAM or you'll get system lockups and freezes.

 

[KCB]

It also matters what operating sytem you are using. Win 98 CANNOT use more
than 512 MB of RAM or you'll get system lockups and freezes.

Win95, Win98, Win98SE, and WinME can be configured to use more than 512 RAM
without crashing. See this article and other links from it:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;253912

 

[Pee Pee Firefighter]

(e-mail address removed) (Craig HB) said:

What there a limit to how much RAM you can add to a PC before you stop
getting an improvement and end up just wasting you money ?

For general computing...

The PCs I want to add RAM to are a

P2 300

128 MB

P3 700.

256-512 MB

--
Pee Pee Firefighter

_\ _ /_
____|_|______ __________________________
|| @| | | ||_________________________ |
||_/| |___| || | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| PeePee Fire || """""""""""""""""""""""" |
| Dept || OOO |
| ___ "" !!! ___ ___ |__
|___/ \_____________________/ \/ \___(_|
\___/ \___/\___/

 

[Craig HB]

Win95, Win98, Win98SE, and WinME can be configured to use more than 512 RAM
without crashing. See this article and other links from it:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;253912

Thanks for the advice.

The operating systems are :
p2 300 - win2000
p3 700 - winXp

But from your replies it sounds like 256mb RAM for the p2 (that
doesn't have many apps), and 512mb RAM for the p3 with winXP and quite
a few apps

cheers,
Craig

 

[Phisherman]

Hi

What there a limit to how much RAM you can add to a PC before you stop
getting an improvement and end up just wasting you money ?

The PCs I want to add RAM to are a P2 300 and a P3 700.

Thanks,
Craig

This really depends on the application. Some will run better and
faster with more RAM. Most don't see much improvement over 512MB, but
that's a generalization.

 

[Toshi1873]

Thanks for the advice.

The operating systems are :
p2 300 - win2000
p3 700 - winXp

But from your replies it sounds like 256mb RAM for the p2 (that
doesn't have many apps), and 512mb RAM for the p3 with winXP and quite
a few apps

Also, Win2000 is a bit lighter then XP (I find that XP
runs roughly +128MB over an equivalent Win2k box).
Win2k boxes were okay at 128, good at 256, great at 384.

(For the machines we order at the office, running WinXP,
512MB is the minimum that we order... 1GB for the
"heavier" users. That extra memory really helps keep
the machine viable 4 years down the road, moreso then a
fast CPU would. We go with a slower CPU and trade-off
for more memory.)

 

[Erez Volach]

Hi

What there a limit to how much RAM you can add to a PC before you stop
getting an improvement and end up just wasting you money ?

The PCs I want to add RAM to are a P2 300 and a P3 700.

Thanks,
Craig

As SDRAM (non DDR) price is very high now (almost no production and still
demand from upgraders and fix / replacments) you should check the change of
linearity of price/module size... somewhere it would steep high with price
for the next size of module that would make it less advisable to buy. Other
than that., it very much depends on your pattern of memory usage- how many
apps and docs and background tasks you have open at once... heavily
multitasking, or specialty software (photoediting with filters that require
a lot of memory).
The more the better is true for most cases... but a) in win98 there is a
cache issue above 512MB b) 512MB is sufficient for most office / internet /
mild multimedia uses on 9x/NT/2K. maybe XP would be happier with 768.

IIRC 95 memory imprint is about 24MB after loading, 98SE is about 32-40MB,
NT about 64MB, and 2K slightly more than NT (depends on which services are
loaded at boot-up)
availability of low density PC133 or PC100 might be limited to medium sized
modules, and you might just NEED low density modules for your motherboards,
atleast that P2. So while 1.5GB might be theoretically beneficial for you
system, you might not find 3x512 modules that your motherboard can work
with...

goodluck !