Inevitable. A RAM question you have probably seen before.

[cabbs]

Blast it. Forum search is chocolate-tea-pot in its usefulness, and no amount of thread or internet searching will yield me a result. And its so damn simple.

I have 512 mb of DDR SDRAM on this dell pc, and want to up it to 1gb.

As far as i can tell, its standard stuff, as AIDA32 wont give me any further details.

Would i be better off getting another 512, or taking it out and getting a 1gb stick?

 

[Ennui]

2 sticks of 512 will run faster than 1 stick of 1gb

 

[DrDevin]

Well I need a few more details.

First of all how many ram slots does your motherboard have? How many slots does it have free? Is your 512mb a single stick or 2 256mb sticks?

Does your motherboard support dual channel memory?

What is the speed of the ram you currently have? PC3200 PC2700 (also DDR400 or DDR333).

 

[cabbs]

Ahh, thanks. But. I have just used the Crucial system scanner, and it has told me this:

i have 2 sticks of 256 (Non-parity DDR PC3200) D:

Would this mean that whatever I do, ill have to take these out?

 

[cabbs]

Well I need a few more details.

First of all how many ram slots does your motherboard have? How many slots does it have free? Is your 512mb a single stick or 2 256mb sticks?

Does your motherboard support dual channel memory?

What is the speed of the ram you currently have? PC3200 PC2700 (also DDR400 or DDR333).

4 RAM slots, 2 free, 2 256 sticks as above

I honestly dont know about the dual channel, going to try and find out

EDIT: BAH, should have edited last post

EDIT: it supports dual channel memory, its a Dimension 4600i. Actually, dual is the bus type.

 

[DrDevin]

Dual channel memory doubles the rams performance.

So in your case, for the best performance you want two or four identical types of ram (ie 2 or 4 sticks of PC3200 so they run in dual channel making them perform like PC6400).

So you can either buy 2 new sticks of 256mb PC3200 ram for 1GB total or stop using your current ram and buy 2 sticks of 512mb.

I would buy the 2 256mb sticks so you dont waste anything but if you will need more then 1GB of ram in the future then buy the 512 sticks, to leave you with 2 slots free for future upgrading.

 

[cabbs]

Thanks! thats damn helpful. So there is no performance difference between 4 x 256 and 2 x 512?