memory

dubtom

My dell dimension 8300 has 1 gig of ram. Checking out a memory site i see it can accept up to 4 gigs costing a little over €200.Is it worth upgrading. Although it works fine, startup is quite slow and rfactor occasionally runs a little glitchy.
I won't be changing it anytime soon. Is their any real benefit to having so much memory or is it still the case,as in the old days,where windows can only use so much memory and the rest is a waste?

radiospan

I think there's a RAM limit in XP. Something around 3GB? Someone else will know...

deckie27

4 gig would be over kill for now but with 2 gig u would see a hugh improvemnent

Ruu_Old

Yeah, you will need XP 64 bit to recognise anything more than around 3GB as far as I know. 2GB should be plenty for you. Where are you buying from? Try shop4memory.com or crucial.com.

TerrorFirmer

If startup is slow, make sure primarily that you've run Spyware and virus scans and then, start->Run-> msconfig and from there configure windows to start up with only the applications you need.

dubtom

Thanks for the replies. Shop4memory was the site I looked at,€57 for 1 gig.They also say this ' Modules can be installed one at a time; however they must be added in like pairs to take advantage of dual-channel. Chipset:Intel 875P', so it looks like 2 gig it is. I should have asked before, it gives a choice of ddr 333 or ddr 400, i assume 400 would be a better choice, same price btw.
Havoc,thanks for that,I'll give it a go.

i just had a look at msconfig, the list on startup is as long as my arm. Is there certain things that must be loaded for xp to run properly. I don't know what most of the list is so would be afraid of stopping vital stuff from starting, or is it the case that I can just disable everything.

rrpc

dubtom wrote: »

Thanks for the replies. Shop4memory was the site I looked at,€57 for 1 gig.They also say this ' Modules can be installed one at a time; however they must be added in like pairs to take advantage of dual-channel. Chipset:Intel 875P', so it looks like 2 gig it is. I should have asked before, it gives a choice of ddr 333 or ddr 400, i assume 400 would be a better choice, same price btw.
Havoc,thanks for that,I'll give it a go.

If you're matching the RAM already installed make sure that you get the same because it will default to the lower speed, also your Mobo will only support what it's set for, so you need to check that as well. €57 a gig is expensive!

i just had a look at msconfig, the list on startup is as long as my arm. Is there certain things that must be loaded for xp to run properly. I don't know what most of the list is so would be afraid of stopping vital stuff from starting, or is it the case that I can just disable everything.

It really depends on what you've installed and what you're using it for. Plain Vanilla XP without addons, doesn't load that much, so anything extra has been put there by you or Dell. Dell are real good at installing loads of crap you don't need and are generally there to help them with support calls. I've also seen Dells with proprietary boot partitions using FAT32 and which have the effect of slowing your PC down quite a bit.

If you really want it to fly, you should reformat and install Windows on a single partition without all the other Dell crap in there. (That's if your PC is set up as I described above).

dubtom

If you're matching the RAM already installed make sure that you get the same because it will default to the lower speed, also your Mobo will only support what it's set for, so you need to check that as well. €57 a gig is expensive!

I did the memory scan on crucial and they are telling me that I can load 2 1 gigs along with my 2 512's to get a total of 3 gigs. I understood your statement about matching the same size memory to be standard practice,has it changed,or are crucial pulling a dodgy one on me.BTW,whats mobo?
Another question,is 64 bit xp still available?

rrpc

dubtom wrote: »

I did the memory scan on crucial and they are telling me that I can load 2 1 gigs along with my 2 512's to get a total of 3 gigs. I understood your statement about matching the same size memory to be standard practice,has it changed,or are crucial pulling a dodgy one on me.

No I didn't mean the size, but the speed. If you have 333Mhz RAM installed, installing 400 will gain you nothing because all the RAM will run at the lower speed (333). There's no problem doing this, but there's also no point in installing faster RAM if you're keeping your slower stuff.

BTW,whats mobo?

Motherboard. If the mobo only supports 333 RAM, then again there's no point in having 400.

Another question,is 64 bit xp still available?

AFAIK yes, but you'll have to hunt for it. I use it myself, and if you have a 64bit chip, it does make a difference.

dubtom

Thanks for that rrpc,talk about getting the wrong end of the stick. I had thought for years that you couldn't mix different capacity ram, as in 512 and a gig, never occured to me it refered to ram speed:o.

Around the €50 mark per gig seems to be the standard price in my searches,crucial,shop4mem and memoryC all charge around that mark,have you seen it cheaper,shop4memory deliver free which is why their probably dearer.

rrpc

Re XP64, I checked the Microsoft website and it seems to be still available. You can download a 120 day trial version for free.

Stephen

I don't think the Dimension 8300 came with a 64-bit CPU so therefore a 64 bit operating system is a no-go on it.

Am I right in thinking it has something like a 3GHz Pentium 4?

dubtom

Processor x86 Family 15 Model 3 Stepping 3 GenuineIntel ~2992 Mhz

Whatever that means,I read a bit on the 64 and it seems a bit too much for an out of date novice like me.I'll stick with the ram upgrade,might as well go for a 3 gigs. I may throw in a new graphics while I'm at it. Could I trouble the guru's for a recommendation.
3Dmark06 says a nivedia geforce 7600 would fit the bill,thats a 256. Would a 512 be overkill?

Stephen

Memory really isn't what defines the performance of a graphics card, although more is always better, especially with the high quality textures a lot of new games have these days. The 7600 is a bit old by now. If I was buying a mid range bang-for-buck card today I'd get a 512MB nvidia 8800GT. They were so popular a couple of months ago that you couldn't get them in stock anywhere. I don't know if this has changed. If you can get one though it should cost less than €250.

TerrorFirmer

With a 7600gt in regards to best performance, make sure that its ddr3 rather then ddr2 memory - most of the 512mb cards are ddr2, which owing to the fact that such a cards can't utilize beyond about 256mb, makes them poor performances in comparison to a ddr3 model. Though, that said, with such an old system the difference between ddr2 and ddr3 isn't going to be such a big deal. No point really in talking about cards like the 8800GT for that reason. Not to mention, it's an AGP system anyway, and your power supply won't be able to cope with anything beyond a 7600GT or similar. I would get either of these two:

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=327299

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=343398

You could also ask on adverts.ie, always old AGP cards lying around, as well as ddr memory.

dubtom

Thats excellent lads,thanks a lot for the tips.

Stephen

Ah, didn't consider the dell not having PCI-express

dubtom

Thanks again lads,I ordered the PowerColor Radeon HD 2600 PRO 512MB DDR2 ,AGP8X and 2 gigs of ram from komplett, all for under €200, I'm pleased,thanks again.