More RAM wanted, go for total 2GB or 3GB?

[[JiF]rix]

Thinking of replace some of my RAM with bigger modules.
Have today (according to CPU-Z)
2x256MB (PC3200 (200Mhz))
2x512 (PC3200 (200Mhz))
=> Total 1.5GB
Thinking of replacing the 2x256 with either
2x512 (=>Total 2GB) or
2x1GB (=>Total 3GB)

Pros and cons?

Cesar have 2GB and it would be nice to have more than him:)

This PC(Compaq Presario 8000) is like 7 year old but I'll probably keep it until something really bad
happens to it. (It has win XP which I think is good compared to V*¤%%&ta). I use it mostly for gaming
and no other "heavy" programs for now.

I can afford both alternatives but dont want to "throw money in the lake" (Swedish saying).

/rix

[[JiF]Cesar]

I have 2.5! Taste that!

I'm not sure if there is a point in buying up to 3GB. It will be a difference, but i think it will work perfectly fine with 2GB too.

And! If you get 2GB, i have 500MB more than you! Everybody wins!

There's no games that needs you to have more than 2GB RAM, without you having to buy a new video card and eventually a new computer.

[[JiF]corn]

If you can i would say upgrade 2 X 512.
If the price is right go to 3GB.
Once you get over 2GB it's not much difference at least not any i can tell.
My XP only recognizes 3.5 GB out of the 4GB that i have.
It's my understanding that unless you have XP 64 bit system it will not see anything over 3.5 GB
Maybe someone else will post on this and clear it up.

[[JiF]BloodGod]

This is true, I have 4GB and mine also only recognizes 3.5. I'm running 4 sticks of Hyper X and they work great for cheap priced sticks. Here is a real nice deal Rix http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... u=C13-2024

[[JiF]rix]

Now I have 3GB of fast and furious RAM and hope to be able to tune up some graphics settings in BF42, and especially BG42.
Thx for the advices.
/rix

[[JiF]lini]

corn, bg: Yup, that's pretty normal, 'cause with the 32 bit operating system the address room is also limited to 32 bit, but the system also needs memory space for other stuff (onboard hardware, PCI cards...), so the usable range will be reduced by that, even if you have 4 GB installed... Sometimes it doesn't even work to install 4 GB without some hardware going on strike - in other cases, BIOS & OS may feature a couple of reallocation tricks to increase the usable range, but afaik that can be pretty hard to get it to work properly...

rix: I'd think 2 GB in total should suffice, but that always depends on the individual usage and software environment. But maybe you don't need to buy anything at all (as an investment in older RAM types doesn't seem really smart in general...): Modern Windows software often often installs a lot of extra helper programmes and services on doesn't really need - just one example for that is Adobe's Acrobat Reader. So, if you until now were just happily installing stuff, there should be a fairly high chance that you could free up a good bit of RAM and also speed up your system quite a bit (especially on boot-up) with a thorough clean-up.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

[[JiF] General WarHawk]

It's cheaper to put in 2 of the same type. And down the road if you boost to 64-bit OS, then your that much farther along. I Would go for 2 1-GB sticks, of the same voltage and Cas Latency as your system requires. Once you get past 4GB, unless your doing server applications, there isn't any noticeable difference. It's the Video RAM that makes the difference, as well as the bit-size of the memory on the VRAM, as a 64-bit card will run less pixels per pipe than a 256-bit video card.