RAM ???

Scrambled egg · 26-07-2009 8:56pm #1

Lads Ive got a shortage of RAM apparently and need some more for gaming. Im a complete tool when it comes to computing etc and im wondering what RAM etc I should buy and how to actually install it. the specs are:

AMD Athlon (tm) 64 X2 Dual core processor 3800 + 2.00 GHZ
RAM = 1022 MB
System type = 32 Bit operating system

oh and its Vista, help appreciated
thanks

Solitaire · 26-07-2009 9:15pm

What system? Need to know the system name/number or motherboard model number and, if for gaming, info on the graphics card could help (might not be just the RAM that needs upgrading...). It'd probably be DDR2 memory but the question is what speed and what amount.

Scrambled egg · 26-07-2009 9:21pm

Hopefully this is what your looking for :

Version 6.0.6000 Build 6000
System Manufacturer HP-Pavilion
System Model RT588AA-ABU t3710.uk
System Type X86-based PC
Processor AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+, 2000 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)

CourierCollie · 26-07-2009 9:25pm

I'm fairly ignorant computerwise, but I've found this site http://www.crucial.com/index.aspx very helpful when it comes to upgrading RAM anyway.

Solitaire · 26-07-2009 9:35pm

What games do you intend to play and what graphics card do you have? I have a bad feeling that if you want to play any recent games you'll be stuck upgrading the graphics card (that Pavilion usually bundles a GeForce 7300LE which is practically useless) and even then have a barely-capable rig for less demanding games

Maximum memory is 2GB (2x1GB) PC5300 (i.e. 667MHz DDR2), which means that to add injury to insult HP have crippled that motherboard. Usual maximum for an old nForce4 is 4GB (2x2GB) PC5300. Do you know if you have one stick already, or two? If the former you could just get a second 1GB PC4200 stick to go with it, but more likely you'll have to bin the two 512MB PC4200 sticks you have and get two 1GB PC5300 sticks.

ronkmonster · 26-07-2009 9:48pm

Solitaire wrote: »

What games do you intend to play and what graphics card do you have? I have a bad feeling that if you want to play any recent games you'll be stuck upgrading the graphics card (that Pavilion usually bundles a GeForce 7300LE which is practically useless) and even then have a barely-capable rig for less demanding games

Maximum memory is 2GB (2x1GB) PC5300 (i.e. 667MHz DDR2), which means that to add injury to insult HP have crippled that motherboard. Usual maximum for an old nForce4 is 4GB (2x2GB) PC5300. Do you know if you have one stick already, or two? If the former you could just get a second 1GB PC4200 stick to go with it, but more likely you'll have to bin the two 512MB PC4200 sticks you have and get two 1GB PC5300 sticks.

Vista will also be a bit of a memory hog too. Games that require 1GB in XP, need 2GB in Vista.

Scrambled egg · 26-07-2009 9:53pm

Solitaire wrote: »

What games do you intend to play and what graphics card do you have? I have a bad feeling that if you want to play any recent games you'll be stuck upgrading the graphics card (that Pavilion usually bundles a GeForce 7300LE which is practically useless) and even then have a barely-capable rig for less demanding games

Maximum memory is 2GB (2x1GB) PC5300 (i.e. 667MHz DDR2), which means that to add injury to insult HP have crippled that motherboard. Usual maximum for an old nForce4 is 4GB (2x2GB) PC5300. Do you know if you have one stick already, or two? If the former you could just get a second 1GB PC4200 stick to go with it, but more likely you'll have to bin the two 512MB PC4200 sticks you have and get two 1GB PC5300 sticks.

As for games, strategy . For graphics card I think its a Ge Force 7300 LE .
Thanks for the help lads

Solitaire · 26-07-2009 10:03pm

ronkmonster wrote:

Games that require 1GB in XP, need 2GB in Vista.

Exactly

Most apps have a minimum requirement of 2GB in Vista for a reason. Another bottleneck this system really doesn't need.

Scrambled egg wrote:

As for games, strategy

Great... but which titles? How old? As if that mattered - some new strategy games don't need half the system requirements of even the original SupCom

Ge Force 7300 LE

In the words of Powerthirst: UNACCEPTABLE. You'd be darn lucky to get a 5-year-old game to run on that with half-decent fps. To make matters worse it only has 64MB DDR.

Scrambled egg · 26-07-2009 10:08pm

Right ok, so will I need the graphics card too or just the RAM ?

Solitaire · 26-07-2009 10:14pm

Most likely both, although which games has a bearing on this (i.e. very not-demanding ones means the GPU upgrade is less urgent although it will probably be neccessary unless all you want to play are less demanding 7-year-old games and maybe The Sims :P)

If you want to play very demanding games and/or lots of newer ones be warned: nothing in that system is all that great. You're on the brink of needing a whole new build

Scrambled egg · 26-07-2009 10:22pm

Ahhh crap, I just got Empire: Total War and its as slow a snail. Hmmmmm with this recession and all that hoop la I think ill try hold out a little longer with this piece of shiit for the time being. Thanks for all you help lads, yez are heroes beyond measure.

Solitaire · 26-07-2009 10:44pm

€350-400 could at least get you something servicable. I prefer €450-500 for decent budget gaming builds but something even cheaper could get E:TW and similar new titles running at some fair speed, plus you could save further dosh by "recycling" parts from the old HP...

Out of curiosity, what size monitor do you have? More important, what's the max resolution?

ronkmonster · 26-07-2009 10:45pm

Double the ram anyway

Does the PC have a PCI Express port? You'll have to open the pc to check.

A card like this
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=480506

would probably be enough and isn't too expensive.

Solitaire · 26-07-2009 10:52pm

Wait a sec!

For some reason there are different motherboards floating around in these machines depnding on exact sales region! (wtf have you been up to today HP? :rolleyes: ) Can you open the Pavilion up and see how many DIMM slots there are? The crippled versions have two, but some UK-spec t3710s have better-spec motherboards with 4 DIMM slots and a non-crippled chipset! Which means you can bump up the RAM to 4GB and there's no urgent reason to bin the mobo anymore! Although the graphics card (and soon the CPU too) will still need upgrading.

Scrambled egg · 27-07-2009 5:01pm

Ehhh lads im really sorry but I can't keep up with what you are saying. Ive no what a DIMM slot is or what it looks like. But I think its a UK model. It says t3710.uk so im assuming that.

Another question on the RAM, in order to install it, will I have to take the hardrive apart ?

Unregistered. · 27-07-2009 5:39pm

Scrambled egg wrote: »

Another question on the RAM, in order to install it, will I have to take the hardrive apart ?

No.

Solitaire · 27-07-2009 5:42pm

If you mean the big silver box thing then "yes", the side needs to come off to give you access to the guts of the PC so you can change the RAM and/or graphics card.

If you mean the actual HDD inside said box, god no. No-one in their right mind disassembles a hard drive :P

jonny72 · 27-07-2009 5:59pm

RAM costs nothing nowadays, I am not sure what goes into the Pavilion but it can't be too hard to buy

You need 1 gig of ram

When you get it, go to youtube and look up how to install ram, will be easy from there

Then you need a graphics card, the one you have is awful and its causing much more slowdown than the ram. I would recommend an ATI 4670, because you don't need some fiddly power cord connection, it just slots in and goes. You won't suddenly get super smooth gaming but it will run most of the latest games on low-ish settings quite fine.

The graphics card should be about 60 or 70 euros

The ram should be next to nothing, maybe 10 or 15 euros

Use youtube to find out how to install, don't be worried, its just like putting a sim in a phone or whatever, quite easy when you can see what to do.

A lot of people here are very technical and used to super fast gaming, but your PC can be used for modern strategy games (playable on low graphics settings) An extra gig of ram and that graphics card would probably be the cheapest easiest upgrade. To get better than that you'd maybe have to buy a new machine.

Solitaire · 27-07-2009 6:19pm

Are you sure a second gig would be enough? This is Vista we're talking about here! :P

HD4650 GDDR3 or HD4670. Easy peasy, won't break the bank or the PSU.

CPU will just about suffice for now, but it will become a problem in the future. I had a 3600+ and had to OC it from 1.9 to 2.5GHz to get any grunt out of it... and you can't OC a HP mobo! Retardedly the crippled BIOS also prevents upgrading to a 65nm Athlon, much less an Athlon EE 45W or Athlon2 or something decent :mad: So that would also see the motherboard hit the dust...

Scrambled egg · 27-07-2009 6:30pm

Solitaire wrote: »

What games do you intend to play and what graphics card do you have? I have a bad feeling that if you want to play any recent games you'll be stuck upgrading the graphics card (that Pavilion usually bundles a GeForce 7300LE which is practically useless) and even then have a barely-capable rig for less demanding games

Maximum memory is 2GB (2x1GB) PC5300 (i.e. 667MHz DDR2), which means that to add injury to insult HP have crippled that motherboard. Usual maximum for an old nForce4 is 4GB (2x2GB) PC5300. Do you know if you have one stick already, or two? If the former you could just get a second 1GB PC4200 stick to go with it, but more likely you'll have to bin the two 512MB PC4200 sticks you have and get two 1GB PC5300 sticks.

Ok so Solitare will the two 1 GB sticks you have in the link work for my machine or is it just an example? Think I might just order them and see if it makes any difference.

Solitaire · 27-07-2009 7:20pm

They will. There's a question mark over whether your PC will support faster PC5300 DDR2 (667MHz) but even if it doesn't the PC 5300 memory will still work; it will simply run at the maximum speed the motherboard can support (eg. 533MHz)

Scrambled egg · 27-07-2009 7:22pm

Solitaire wrote: »

They will. There's a question mark over whether your PC will support faster PC5300 DDR2 (667MHz) but even if it doesn't the PC 5300 memory will still work; it will simply run at the maximum speed the motherboard can support (eg. 533MHz)

Im an absolute simpleton, so your saying the RAM you linked to will probley work?

AIR-AUSSIE · 28-07-2009 12:23am

CourierCollie wrote: »

I'm fairly ignorant computerwise, but I've found this site http://www.crucial.com/index.aspx very helpful when it comes to upgrading RAM anyway.

Bought 3GB RAM from them last month. Would def recommend, great website & quick delivery.

You should check how many slots for memory you have, tends to be four I think for new machines. So you will have to check how many free slots you have. I would guess you have x2 512MBs (as I had). But check by opening up your case or using belarc advisor - http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

A good choice would be x2 1GB bits of memory. Will bring you up to 3GB. Remember most Windows can only use up to 4GBs so not usually worth going over it.

Putting your new memory into your system is also easy, you just slot it in - crucial.com have a good step by step guide.

Solitaire · 28-07-2009 2:43am

Scrambled egg wrote:

Im an absolute simpleton, so your saying the RAM you linked to will probley work?

Sorry, rambling too much lately!

Yes, that RAM will work in your machine. If its too "good" for it then it will still work in your machine, just slower than it could go in theory. No big deal. Its no more expensive (cheaper actually!) than the slower RAM anyway

This does not solve your Graphics card woes though!

Scrambled egg · 28-07-2009 4:48pm

Solitaire wrote: »

This does not solve your Graphics card woes though!

We will cross that bridge when we come to it. Thanks for all the help lads.

RAM ???

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