i'm planning to upgrade my PC. i'm wondering what's the biggest(or largest) memory size on the market and also the cheapest..
Printable View
i'm planning to upgrade my PC. i'm wondering what's the biggest(or largest) memory size on the market and also the cheapest..
Their are many things you have to take into consideration before you actually upgrade your computer's RAM.
1. What type of RAM will you be purchasing (DDR,SDRAM)?
2. What OS are you running (older Windows have a max)
3. Is it worth it?
- Is buying a new box worth your time, money, and effort?
After you consider all the questions above, head on over to http://www.crucial.com/ and purchase your memory.
1- What's the max can ur motherboard support? Bus speed etc..Quote:
Originally posted here by kryptik0n
i'm planning to upgrade my PC. i'm wondering what's the biggest(or largest) memory size on the market and also the cheapest..
2- Want to ADD to ur RAM or simply remove old ones & put in new ones?
- to add u have to check for compatibility issues.
- to replace, look at question #1
3- And most importantly, what's ur budget?
So far the current ones available on the market (speediest too) are the dual-channel RAMs, which are lightning fast, check out: www.crucial.com
www.kingston.com
those sites are my personal favs, g'day :)
Hi kryptik0n, and welcome to AO.
I have a few thoughts that might help?
1. If your operating system is not Windows 2000 or NT 4.0 or XP, it is not worth getting more than 512 Mb of RAM.................the OS will not use the extra memory, and you might make it unstable.
2. It depends on what your machine is doing. If it were a server (multitasking) I would go for a higher volume of slower memory (given a $ limit?). If it is a stand alone machine, I would prefer less memory, but faster.
3. A memory upgrade is the best thing that you can do for your machine, unless it has a 1Ghz processor and at least 256 Mb of RAM already. In that case, you might consider upgrading to XP?..........watch the flames for that one :) but it does work!
4. The memory type/capacity is determined by the motherboard, so you have to check out the manufacturer's site to see what it will support.
5. If you can have a single strip, this is generally better than multiple ones (OK...nanoseconds, but the theory is supportable)
6. If you are getting large strips, please consider ECC or registered........the cheap stuff (which I use) will "die" totally.........the more expensive modules will still use the remaining "good" memory?
Good luck my friend
If I remember correctly, Windows 98 stops effeciently handling ram memory after 256mb. Now if you are going with Windows 2000 or XP put as much as you want in there. XP and 2000 were both designed to hand a lot of memory effeciently.Quote:
your operating system is not Windows 2000 or NT 4.0 or XP, it is not worth getting more than 512 Mb of RAM
I might be wrong on that, but thats what I remember hearing a long time ago in a pc repair class.
As far as teh largest memory size on the market, I believe that right now its 1gb of ram. You will pay a hefty price for that much but thats the largest out there right now. Unless your running some sort of server, you should do very well with 512mb or maybe even a gig if you do a lot of editin such as movies, and photos. Most of you high powered servers these days will run anywhere from 5gb of ram to 32gb of ram.
Hi Cheyenne!
You have refreshed the memory of an aged mind :) I think that 256 is about ideal for 98 first edition.
Me will certainly go to 384 (greedy it is!)
I picked up an ex-corporate IBM PC300 GL the other day...........$20, with mouse, keyboard & IBM G54 15" monitor. It has a PIII 533Mhz and 256Mb memory.........booting 98 second edition.
I found I had a compatible memory strip and increased it to 320Mb............I have seen it get to 282Mb memory in use, so I would guess that 384Mb applies to 98 Second Edition as well as Me? OK the problem is memory leaks, but it still does not crash.
You are spot on with NT4.0/2K/XP...........I have done a fair bit of work with CAD/CAM systems, and they need all you can give them. I guess I would not consider building a machine with less than 1Gb these days, unless it was PC3200 for gaming.............then I would probably settle for 512 and spend the rest on a better graphics card?
A word of advice to newbies: I keep banging on about ex-corporate machines.....they sell them off to staff at next to nothing.........I got that one for $20 thanks to a neighbour.......be nice to people and they will sometimes do the same back :D
Cheers all
looking on www.pricewatch.com it shows alot of different hardware categories and compares their prices... (hence the name) ... anyways as for the largest memory size is actually 8GB!!!! now you won't want to pay for it but i thought it was neat to know anyway, largest common size is 1GB stick
almost forgot! www.corsair.com , this stuff is expensive but its very top end for gaming!
thanks for the info guys.. i'll be considering all your inputs... thanks for the help..