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memory stick

Asked by nasrullah

my pc machine has a sempron processor 2800+ and a 256mb ddr memory stick.I see my pc is a bit slow , what type of memory can I add to make my pc to go fast;
thank u;

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Rouben (rouben) said : 		#1

It would appear that you are using a motherboard compatible with DDR RAM. Theoretically, any stick of DDR RAM greater in capacity than 256MB (e.g. 512MB or 1GB) should do the trick (DDR, not DDR2!) provided that your motherboard supports that much RAM. The best way to find out what your options are in terms of RAM (memory) upgrades is to check with the manufacturer of your motherboard. If you want I can double check that for you if you tell me the exact name of the manufacturer (e.g. ASUS, Megabyte, A-Bit, AOpen, etc) and model of your motherboard. If you're not sure, check inside your PC case, usually this information is printed on the motherboard itself. If you can dig up the manuals for your motherboard, even better, but it's best to check the motherboard itself by opening your PC, because sometimes motherboard manuals are printed for multiple models and it's hard to tell which exact model you have.

Finally also keep in mind that Sempron CPUs are known to be fairly slow. They are economy CPUs with very little on-board cache when compared to an Athlon XP CPU, for example. For this reason, even a major RAM upgrade may not speed things up as much as you'd hoped...

I hope this information is useful.

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nasrullah (uhuru) said : 		#2

thank you for your kind information, my motherboard is an ASUS A7N8X-X.
Tha

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nasrullah (uhuru) said : 		#3

thank you for your kind information, my motherboard is an ASUS A7N8X-X.
Thank you

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Best Rouben (rouben) said : 		#4

Glad to help! According to the ASUS website ( http://tinyurl.com/39hl8c ), your motherboard, A7N8X-X has three 184-pin DIMM sockets and supports up to 3 gigabytes of unbuffered PC3200, PC2700, PC2100, and PC1600 non-ECC DDR RAM. You can download the manual for your motherboard here: http://tinyurl.com/w3u6p which should tell you whether or not you can mix different types of RAM together. Also, depending on how many sticks of RAM you already have plugged in (you have 256MB already, is it 1 stick, or 2 sticks of 128MB each?) it may be worth just buying new RAM altogether (e.g. 2 sticks of 512MB). At the same time, examine your existing stick of RAM, what speed is it rated at (i.e. is it PC3200, PC2700, PC2100, or PC1600)? Your motherboard can take up to PC3200, so if what you have at the moment is super slow, that may be reason enough to invest in brand new RAM (i.e. forget about what you have and buy brand new sticks).

Another thing to keep in mind (please read the manual to doublecheck) is that generally it's not a good idea to mix different speeds of RAM. Theoretically it should not be a problem, since the faster stick will slow down to the speed of the slowest stick of RAM in the group so they are all in sync, but to avoid potential issues, I suggest making sure that all your RAM is the same exact speed, preferably PC3200, since that's the fastest your motherboard can go.

Finally I'd like to reiterate, that Sempron CPUs are slow by nature. A Sempron 2800+ would be slower than an Athlon XP 2800+, even though they have exactly the same speed. That's why Semprons are cheaper. Keeping this in mind, and the fact that you're running Linux, which doesn't care about RAM as much as Windows, in terms of speed, don't expect a huge speed increase if you upgrade your memory.

I hope that this will help you make a better informed decision. Please let me know if you have any more questions. Good luck and take care!

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nasrullah (uhuru) said : 		#5

thank you for great help.

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nasrullah (uhuru) said : 		#6

Thanks Rouben, that solved my question.