PIII 733 with Windows XP running abit slow

[Cristatus]

I have a system that is a PIII 733 Mhz system and seems to be running abit slow as of late, but it has only 256 MB of RAM.

Windows task manager is telling me (with a VNC session) that commit charge: 438,000K / 633,080K. Don't know if that tells you anything, but hope it helps.

Is it worth adding some extra ram to this system? If so, what kind? Is there anything else that I can do to update this system? I'm not planning on building a new system to replace this, because of Vista.

 

[Maximilian]

My bet would be no. Having ran a Single and dual pIII 1 ghz system with windows XP, its never as fast as the likes of an athlon or p4, it just lacks the snappiness. But if its severly lagging then an extra 256 would definately help out. Dont spend too much on getting it though.

It would most likely use SD RAM which came in PC 66/100/133 flavours, if your definately gonna upgrade get the PC 133 stuff, as the price difference between them today wont be much. Your mobo may not actually support pc 133 but its fine as it will downclock the ram to the speed it does support. Did that with my old pIII rig anyways.

 

[Cristatus]

Well, I just want to add an extra stick of RAM, and in the best case, I want both sticks to match, right? How do I figure out the speed of the existing RAM (that is what the 66/100/133 is, right? Speed, right?).

I'm not even sure how many sticks make up the 256 MB, and how many slots I have on the mobo. I'll have to check in a bit.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Use a program like CPUz or Everest -- they can provide the RAM speed and the number of RAM slots.

 

[furballi]

No need for matching RAMs. Use PC100 or PC133. Add at least 128MB.

 

[Cristatus]

Originally posted by: furballi
No need for matching RAMs. Use PC100 or PC133. Add at least 128MB.

Sweet, done.

Loaded up CPUz anyways, and I assume the channels # is the number of number slots. Am I right, or wrong?

 

[Maximilian]

No channels# indicated whether or not the ram is running in single channel or dual channel mode. Pretty much irrelivent for a PIII system as i dont think dual channel was even around back then.

The tab called SPD should have a pull down menu with slot#1/slot#2 etc, this indicates how many slots there are. I think. Anyways under the same tab it tells you the memory speed and the size of the actual ram module in use in the selected slot.

Personally i would just open up the thing and look since your gonna have to open it up to upgrade anyways but there ya go

 

[Cristatus]

Originally posted by: Soviet
No channels# indicated whether or not the ram is running in single channel or dual channel mode. Pretty much irrelivent for a PIII system as i dont think dual channel was even around back then.

The tab called SPD should have a pull down menu with slot#1/slot#2 etc, this indicates how many slots there are. I think. Anyways under the same tab it tells you the memory speed and the size of the actual ram module in use in the selected slot.

Personally i would just open up the thing and look since your gonna have to open it up to upgrade anyways but there ya go

Good point, but it's worth figuring out what this program can do.

From what I saw, in the SPD tab there was only 1 slot mentioned. I'm going to open it up pretty soon. Doesn't matter now.

 

[phaxmohdem]

Lol, I'm typing this on my work compy (Dell PIII 733/256MB) It is slower than all hell. However it has so much crap that needs to load off the bat that all the memory is gone once Windows loads. (When I first got the compy it had 128MB in it, and I donated an extra 128MB to it so I wouldn't go completely insane)... I'd say more ram couldn't hurt at all. I've got a PII 450 Computer at home I've been "souping up" that has 384MB RAM and a fast 7200RPM Seagate 40gig HDD and it is very usable/snappy. Actually feels faster than this POS 733 i'm on now.

On old machines, the BEST two upgrades you can do to increase speed (aside from the CPU) is RAM and a fast modern hard drive. Older 5400RPM hard drives commonly found in most of these machines slow the computer down considerably.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: phaxmohdem
On old machines, the BEST two upgrades you can do to increase speed (aside from the CPU) is RAM and a fast modern hard drive.

QFT. Don't bother with a 128MB stick of RAM, get a 256MB at least. HDD may be more troublesome to upgrade but will be worth it if you plan to stick it out a while longer.

 

[berserker]

P3 733 uses PC133, IIRC.

 

[superHARD]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: phaxmohdem
On old machines, the BEST two upgrades you can do to increase speed (aside from the CPU) is RAM and a fast modern hard drive.

QFT. Don't bother with a 128MB stick of RAM, get a 256MB at least. HDD may be more troublesome to upgrade but will be worth it if you plan to stick it out a while longer.

I agree with the ram part...but adding a newer 7200 rpm drive with 8+ mb cache would sure help out os load times and the sort.

 

[996GT2]

I've got legacy system similar to yours, and it runs Windows as fast as my NW P4. It is a 1 GHz PIII, but I think its speed is more due to its 512mb RAM and 7.2K RPM 60GB HDD.

So in your case, I'm sure that 256mb extra RAM would help quite a bit.

 

[mellondust]

RAM and hard drive speed will make the biggest difference for your system. I had a system similar to yours and 512 of ram made a big difference. I did a "huge" budget upgrade to a p1000 for $20 off ebay and that made a noticeable difference too. I am not sure what kind of hard drive you are currenty running, but my friend (P3 system) traded out his lowly 4gb and slow hard drive for a new one and said it made it seem like he had a new computer. You can get cheap ram off e-bay and even a cheap cpu that would make a world of difference for you for around $40. A new hard drive is not so cheap. My system in my file runs just fine for everything but newer games.