RAM question

[Kenshin]

I am planning on buying ram and going from 64mb to 320mb. Will I get a significant performance increase?

Also, I live in Canada and at the local Futureshop the three brands of RAM they have are Kingston, Azen and Cicero. Which are recommended and which aren't? Which is the best quality?


-thanx

[Metalmurphy]

from 64 to 320 you will absolutly notice a big Diference!!!

but I always had a filosofy for RAM!!

You can't ever have too much!! :p

No really, I think u should do that upgrade... upgrading from 64 to 260 worked for my but 320 it's even better :D

[campaign2016]

when i moved from 256 to 512, i noticed a significant decrease in crashes and BOS's so that should also help with you

as for the brand, i have never had any problem with memory and i always get bulk RAM from a local dealer who i trust because he is my freinds dad. i know other people probably have had problems with RAM but i have never in 5 years (thats when i got my first comp) had a problem

[Kenshin]

Thanks Metalmurphy and campaign2016.

Another question. If my computer has 64mb of ram that's pc100 and I add on 256mb of pc133 will it cause any problems? Does combining the two have any negative effects? The person at the store said it wouldn't.

Sorry, I'm kind of new at this. Just to let you know so my question doesn't appear as stupid. Still, any opinions will be appreciated.


-thanx

[Betamax]

The only negative effect us that the system will run at the speed of the slowest chip ie in this case pc 100. Its more of a cost issue as pc 133 costs more and you would get the full benifit.

[campaign2016]

actually betamax, the price differance isnt that much
for example, at www.comcapital.net (my freinds dad's store shameless plug ya know) it is 46 dollars for both pc100 and pc133
for a 256MB chip.

[Betamax]

Well I'm not all that clued up on the us/canadian prices:emb:

[Kenshin]

Whoa, 46 dollars? Great price.

Thanks Betamax and again to campaign2016.

[kairi00]

Up here in Vancouver, BC, a PC133 RAM is cheaper than a PC100... go figure.

[hoyoyo80]

Yes it will increase the your performance...My p3 800 mhz is slow with 64mbram( waiting for game loading is boring)...but after upgrade it to 256mbram...wow,its simply amazing,i am slimmer and trimmer now, and i do not exercise at all!!!
But i have a quest.,
Do 1 slot of 512mbram for pc133 exist?
If it so,can we use 2 slots of 512mbram for the pc so it will be 1024mbram in total?
Is it?

[campaign2016]

if you check the previous link, yes 512 does exist and yes if your mobo supports a 512 chip, then you can have up to 512Xhow many slots you have
in my case, i can have up to 1.5 GB of memory:eek: :eek:
my brothers MOBO has 4 slots so it can have up to 2 GB

[hoyoyo80]

Oh my god really?
i have 3 slots so that means i can get up to 1536mbram?
I should have known this before i buying 2 slots of 128mbram, poor me:(

[Betamax]

Originally posted by campaign2016
... so it can have up to 2 GB

I think I read somewhere that 2Gb is the maximium that win 9x can support. Can anyone verify this?

[Adair]

2GB???
I wonder if a highend home PC would even be able to use all 2GB. I guess a few programs would, but not too many right?
BTW wouldn't windows have to support 2.048GB(technicality)?

[Betamax]

Ok time for some nitpicking:D

Correct. The actual scientific definition of a Gb(Gigabyte) is 1000 MB, a Mb(megabyte) being 1000 Kb etc...

However computers work in binary and the closest to 1000 is 1024 (or 2^10)

Thus the S.I. units KiB (Kibibyte), MiB(Mibibyte) and GiB(Gibibyte) were invented. where you have 1024 KiB in a MiB etc... However by a bizare twist of fate what everyone now calls Gb, Mb and Kb is actually KiB, MiB, and GiB.

[Adair]

Geez.
Sometimes you get the most interesting info by nitpicking.
Thanks Betamax.

Adair

[hoyoyo80]

i know what you mean,betamax...we need to use prefix/extension for high value right?giga,mega,kilo....yes i know that,since i am taking mechanical engineering course...but i just want to be more specific about it, that's all, m'kay?!!!

[takwu]

Originally posted by Betamax
I think I read somewhere that 2Gb is the maximium that win 9x can support. Can anyone verify this?
Yes. In fact that's the limit of the addressing of the CPU. From a programming point of view (particularly for assembly programming), that means you can never have a program that is bigger than 2GB at a time.

Windows can do _virtual_memory_, therefore the programmer do not have to worry about how much physical RAM is installed; if the program takes more than you have, Windows will simply swap the real memory with the virutal memory, which is stored in the harddrive of course, and is divided into _pages_. And that virtual memory's limit would be... you guessed it, 2GB.

I explained that, so that you can do a little verification yourself. Open up dxdiag, on the first tab, you should see your "Memory" entry and "Page file" entries (used + available) add up to exactly 2GB.

In my case (see attached screen shot), I have 384MB memory + 120MB used page file + 1543MB available page file = 2047MB ~ 2GB.