I'd like to make my current PC faster....
- Thread starter Ron in Regina
- Start date
In some older ones I have used a 256 strip and a 512 and they worked fine. The guy where you buy the ram should know, as long as it is the same speed it should work.
I think the sticks should be matched...to find out what he has and to optimize his system there is this little application I have on a usb stick..took me a while to find out where I had got it in case you want to download it... Memory upgrades from Crucial.com - About Crucial:Media Toolbox
no no no Das..... he just needs ta slap in 2 -1 gig sticks and he's good ta go.... MHZ said so.
LOL Don't do it Ron! :lol:
Just take your CPU or laptop to the friendliest most knowledgeable computer store you know (ask friends if not sure) & they'll tell you what size of memory sticks you can add & will slot them in for you for minimal $$$'s while you wait.
When I worked at WTC I added it to every computer on the first 88 floors. Worked great.
Where I live there's a store called RCE (Regina Computer Exchange) and
if you buy the RAM from them, they'll install if & test it for nothing....and if I
do have an issue....they're local.
Just Thermite? Not Super-Duper-Nano-Thermite?
Ahhh.....I just knew the truth would come out eventually.
Mismatched memory sticks might work (unlikely), depends on the motherboard, but even if they do that's not the way to get the best performance. It's better to have matched sticks, and you also have to make sure the BIOS can handle their timings. If you don't know what that means, take the machine to Regina Computer Exchange and ask for their advice, it's the best shop in the city in my experience, I don't go anywhere else anymore. I don't buy computers, I buy components from them and build my own, and they know what they're doing.
1 Gb of RAM's a bit low for XP, and adding RAM to the configuration you have is almost certainly the best bang for the buck to improve performance. XP won't see 4 Gb though, it'll probably tell you it sees 3.5 to 3.7 Gb, owing to some peculiarities in the way XP addresses memory. Second best thing to do, and by far the cheapest ($0) is to kill off some of the extraneous processes. Over 50 processes is probably about 20 more than necessary. That's an HP system, and they come bundled with all kinds of stuff from HP that isn't necessary. Check out this guy: Black Viper's Operating System Guides. He's probably forgotten more than I'll ever know, and his advice is sound. On his site you can find lists of all the services XP runs, what they do, and what you can safely stop. Anything you see in your process list that he doesn't mention is something proprietary to HP, or part of some of the apps you run. Some of them may be necessary, like if you have an HP Lightscribe DVD drive there'll be a driver for it (but it'll be necessary only if you use the Lightscribe feature), but a lot of it is likely to be stuff you don't need to have running. HP has a "PC Health Check" app, for instance, and an updater for all the HP software on the machine, and online gaming processes, and apps for managing photos and videos, and so on. If you don't use them, you don't need those processes to be running.
And seriously, if you want some on site assistance, PM me, I'd be happy to come to your house and talk with you about your machine. After the advice you gave me about furnace service last winter, I owe you one.
Ron, I would check with your motherboard manual to see if it can support 4GB of RAM. You might be able to physically install 4GB, whether it can utilize all 4GB is another story.
If you know the chipset in your PC, you can compare to this site here, which will show you the maximum RAM supported. http://www.memoryupgrade.pro/intel-chipset-maximum-memory1.html
Chipsets for the Pentium D vary from a max of 2GB-4GB, make sure yours isn't one of the 2GB versions before plunking down for 4GB.
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So what did your computer guy say Ron?
One 2gb stick for $60 or toss the 1gb you have and ass $120 worth of new ram where that 4th gb sped up your tasks by 0.003 % on average over the initial 2gb rise that sped things up 2.087x on average?
One 2gb stick for $60 or toss the 1gb you have and ass $120 worth of new ram where that 4th gb sped up your tasks by 0.003 % on average over the initial 2gb rise that sped things up 2.087x on average?
Honestly, I haven't had the opportunity to do anything with my Computer yet.
That whole work'n for a living really gets in the way of some of the other
stuff I'd like to do at times.
This is my computer: HP Media Center m7277c Desktop PC Product Specifications HP Media Center m7277c Desktop PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)
Most likely Saturday, I'll be able to haul it out & get some RAM installed. Then
I'll take the advice here & turn off some of the processes I really don't need.
I have called, and it sounds like I'm looking at $39 per 1GB stick of RAM
for this computer, so $116+Tax to Max it out. That's installed and tested.
That whole work'n for a living really gets in the way of some of the other
stuff I'd like to do at times.
This is my computer: HP Media Center m7277c Desktop PC Product Specifications HP Media Center m7277c Desktop PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)
Most likely Saturday, I'll be able to haul it out & get some RAM installed. Then
I'll take the advice here & turn off some of the processes I really don't need.
I have called, and it sounds like I'm looking at $39 per 1GB stick of RAM
for this computer, so $116+Tax to Max it out. That's installed and tested.
Actualy when using the Black Viper web site...it's "services" that you either turn off or put on manual and that in turn shuts of processes... I found that it also helps your PC start up and shut down faster.
Don't forget to print a copy of the instructions on the web site (several dozen pages) and mark down every service you change just in case you run in trouble...It has never happened to me yet from making those changes....but I always tend to be careful when I'm not absolutely sure of what Im doing.
Don't forget to print a copy of the instructions on the web site (several dozen pages) and mark down every service you change just in case you run in trouble...It has never happened to me yet from making those changes....but I always tend to be careful when I'm not absolutely sure of what Im doing.
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Right you are; it seems the old brain sometimes slips back into the terminology of the first systems I ever worked with... Good thing they weren't IBM systems, nobody'd have a clue what I was saying.
Ron do you want an address as to where those 2 512 chips should be sent, I know somebody that has two open slots for that type of ram. No sense throwing it out.