I Just noticed my PC was using over 80% of it's 512MB of memory, so it seems like it's time to double or quadruple it. The specs. say my PC supports DDR2, PC2-4200 or PC2-5300, at 400MHz. Newegg has some Mushkin it shows as DDR2 667(PC2 5300). Doesn't that 667 indicate MHz? I'm assuming the PC2 5300 spec is all that matters, and that it will work fine, I just want to make sure. Thanks. Alan
You should run the CPU-Z utility (it's free) and check the voltage and timings of your current RAM. It would be safe to buy more of that. Or, you can use the online "RAM configulator" at Corsair, Crucial, etc... they will even list some upgrade speeds and models which should also work.
Do you have the Page File disabled? If so, you might try turning it back on. XP is pretty good at paging out lower priority functions and leaving plenty of physical RAM left and at the ready.
The Page File is enabled. It uses 60 to 70% when I have my charts up, so I guess it will benefit from an increase. I have a half dozen things running right now and notice it's using about 90%, the highest I've ever seen it. It supports dual channel, but came with only one stick, so I'll be curious to see the improvement. I went to Crucial's site to see what would work. FYI, all DDR2 memory is backwards compatible, you can apparently use the faster stuff without any problems, although it said it must be non-ECC. Thanks.
I was just wondering about your Page File. Seems no matter how high my Total Commit Charge, I always have 400MB or more of Physical RAM left... You'll probably see a little improvement with 1G... but I doubt you'd see an even greater increase with 2G.