Upgrading My System

[Marimuthu]

Hi,
I have a P4 1.6 GHz processor with 256 MB SD RAM,
a Mercury Motherboard VIA V845 with AGP & Sound.

I am planing to upgrade the RAM to another 1GHz (i.e 1GHz + 256 MB).
Will my Mother Board recognize this 1GHz RAM.

What are the issues which I am likely to face when I upgrade to 1GB RAM.

Regards,
Marimuthu R

 

[trOver]

um first of all are you talking about 1ghz ram or 1gb OF ram to add on? is this new stick of ram going to be 1 stick or 2x512? you also have to make sure its going to match the speed of your old 256. If your running your 256 not at the highest that your mobo can go, then i would reccomend running dual channal 2x512, as it will be much faster, but as old as hardware as you have, i doubt it will support dual channal, much less anything over 512mb. may i ask what you need the extra 1gb more for? i mean that system aint gona be playing any games soon...

 

[Marimuthu]

It 1GB is an Add-on. It is a single piece and not 2x512.
I was planning to install Vista trial version on my PC and as you know the minimum
requirment for Vista is 512 MB RAM.
Would my motherboard recognize this 1GHz RAM.
Please guide me. Please give me alternatively also.

Regards,
Marimuthu R

 

[Roguestar]

Vista won't run well at all on the "minimum" requirements. For such an old PC it's not even worth the bother; keep windows XP. Your PC will not benefit from Vista. Your PC is rather old indeed and there's very little point in just adding RAM to try and keep it afloat if you install Vista on it. I can't tell you whether your motherboard will support the extra RAM or not for definite because I don't know which model but I would certainly think it could support at least 2Gb. HOWEVER, you should really check inside your PC before making this purchase. If your motherboard has only 2 DIMM slots (memory slots) then you'll be finding yourself with the 256 stick to spare. Find out a little bit more about your motherboard (brand and chipset) and you can find out more about your upgrade options (thought to be honest at that stage I'd "upgrade" your current PC into the bin and get a new one).

Instead of buying 1Gb of RAM and having barely sufficient CPU, hard drive space (given the age of the PC I'll assume 40Gb total) to install programs after the OS to even "enjoy" Vista, I'd say spend your hard earned money on buying a cheap but new PC. Buying a totally new PC won't cost too much if you're not after something to run the latest games on, something basic to run Vista (Basic) won't cost you very much.