I have decided to upgrade my RAM, on 512 at the moment. I am running Norton 360 and Spyware doctor, Norton is very resource hungry, and has slowed down my Pc.

To find what make of RAM I needed I went to this Site and found them very good, so will now be running 2512.

Thought this might be useful to others who may want to upgrade their RAM.

just make sure ur motherboard can support that much memory.

i've used nortons and mcafee and i found that norton used up alot of resources and made the pc lag, whereas mcafee is alot better, it hardly affects the performance of my pc

That's why I logged onto that site, My PC has 4 slots and can use a maximum of 4GB, but why pay silly money when 2512 MB will be plenty ( I hope )

If you are running windows XP ... that will be more than enough mate.

If you are planning on upgrading to Vista ... I'd say 2gb is pretty minumum and should get 4gb really.

Memory is normally best applied to motherboards in matched pairs
or at least keeping the values of the RAM the same...
(that's what I have been told by a guy who builds his own pcs + servers.)
2Gb on WinXP is normally plenty unless very high demand applications for
video + music editing or possibly some gaming are used.
On Vista as Ahmet suggests 4Gb would be great.

ie:-
4 slots + 4 gb max
512
512
512
512 = total 2Gb all slots used.

or
1024
1024
1024
1024 = total 4Gb all slots used


or junk the 512 and get 2 sticks of 1Gb
2 slots still free should you need it for further memory expansion. .

I have always been advised against putting uneven memory in like this
1024
1024
512 = total 2560mb 3 slots used and 1 free.

I'm sure other peoples opinions/advise may be different,
and I'm not pretending to be a computer anorak, or I know
better than everyone else, just passing on the best advice
I can as I understand it to be.
I hope it helps you .
Sorry to hear Norton 360 is resource hungry as I was led to belive it was far less
resource hungry than previous versions of Norton Firewall/Anti-Virus/internet Security.

Regards
Wozza

Wozza, 4 slots doesn't mean max 4gb

You are now able to buy 2GB sticks, so 4 slots = 8GB

Peter,

Get rid of nortons antivirus ........ and use something like NOD32 ......... it's tiny, not resource hungry ... and just as good, if not better than nortons !

PM me if you need advice on 'how' to get it

What you first need to do is get the motherboard part number search over the net, and in the spec it will give you the amount of memory that can be put into the board,

If not post the motherboard part number on here and i will check for you. If you are running Windows XP the maxiumum memory regardless of the motherboard is 4Gb. Windows XP cannot handle anymore than 4Gb. Not sure if Vista can or not.

If you get stuck just drop us a message and i will help, i do nothing all day at work so more than happy to help

Unless you're running a 64bit version of the OS, then 4GB is your limit anyway. 2^32 = 4GB is the maximum addressable space with a 32bit OS. (1)

I'm sitting here running Vista on a laptop with 2GB of RAM, have a few apps open and am running the Aero interface, and it's only using 1.17GB at the moment. For anything other than video editing or CAD (ie 'normal use'), 2GB should be more than ample. Most of the extra RAM is just used as a disk cache rather than being used to hold apps.


(1) Advanced and Enterprise versions of Windows Server can use more than 4GB, but there are disadvantages to doing so depending on the apps your running.

Agreed

To all, please check with your motherboard manufacturer how much RAM it can support.

Nowadays motherboards come with 3 slots capable of holding 3Gb... this does not mean that a motherboard with 4 slots will support 4Gb (although still possible).

Also check out the FSB, as it would be a waste of money buying memory that is capable of faster speeds if the motherboard cannot use it.

Also bear in mind, that XP OS can support up to 4Gb, and their are even fewer applications that will support the use of more than 2Gb RAM.

I currently have Vista on a 2Gb desktop and a 1Gb laptop, and the difference is minimal if any.

If you have further questions, just post them up

PC will still be able to keep the original 512 RAM stick in as long as it is not moved to another slot and still incorporate the two new 1 GB sticks, according to that web site, if not I just remove the 512 and play with 2GB instead, which will still be faster than what I have now.

Ahmet, thanks for the Offer, my Norton account ends Oct and will take you up on your kind offer. I also hear that Norton is a b i t c h of a programme to delete from the system.

To be fair, you could stick a nuclear reactor in the computer to power it and Norton would still single handedly suck it dry of power.

Keith

Wozza, 4 slots doesn't mean max 4gb

quote what I had referred to "My PC has 4 slots and can use a maximum of 4GB"

nuff said

Does anone know details about Norton 360 ?
I have never been a Norton fan as I felt it clogged up my system, but I was led to believe
Norton 360 was far less resource hungry than previous versions of
Norton Firewall/Anti-Virus/internet Security.

Or you could be really wild and try using an OS that has no need for antivirus and antispyware crapware in the first place?

CPU cycles should be used for the USER and not for protecting software that YOU paid for from being violated.

WHY do people put up with this?

And as for UPgrading to Vista - I would take a look around on the web and you will soon see that it is a DOWNgrade.

Stick with XP at LEAST until Service Pack 1 (read Bugfix Pack 1) is released later this year - it may be almost useable then.


http://www.crucial.com/ is the place for RAM


http://www.apple.com/getamac is the place to open your eyes and see how a computer SHOULD work.

By reading the replies to this posting, it is fairly obvious that not every poster has clicked the link in my first post.

The link leads to......................YES crucial.com/uk.

@ Tyger I have, at the moment no intention of getting Vista. XP is fine for me at the moment, as I don't play virtual games, too long in the tooth.

The wife spends more time on the PC than me at the moment, on her two Equine Forums, and chatting to her friends.

Norton = for people who dont know better.

it doesnt do well in virus tests and slows the system down.

Get Kaspersky or DR.web its cheap - dont bother trying a key gen it wont work 4 long.

No offence, but I strongly disagree mate.

I do perform thorough testing of operating systems, before implementing them in a corporate environment, and I would suggest as a business & home user, that Vista Home Premium upwards is far more stable and adequate (compared to XP Pro SP2) to provide a platform to exercise applications that are both leniant and demanding on the processor and ram.

Granted, that some vendors of 3rd party hardware are not able to support the OS, but as a general home user, Vista is most definitely (in my opinion) the best move forward.

Don't start him off, Niraj - you'll never hear the end of it....

Kingston or Crusical memory is brilliant. I bought some Kingston memory for my macbook as it was cheap and I now run Mac OS X and Windows XP and they both work together blissfully with 1.5 ram!

Yeah as if.....


No offence but Vista sucks!

Best Windows they ever did was 2000 Professional. Wipes the floor with XP and Vista. Much more stable and nice and easy to use. I know there's going to be lots of people who disagree, but hey ho.

Keith

Yep, such as life! lol. Think most Windows sucks but 98 I thought had less probs.

Was just about to mention 32bit kernel memory management with PAE extensions and boom you beat me too it mate

A fair chunk of memory is wasted when you've got 4GB in anyway due to reservations needed for the bus etc..

Was impressed with Vista on your machine when I saw it at work that time, still not touched it since, spent this week battling with HP-UX, command lines are all starting to look the same!

@ Wylie, yeah I was happy with 2000 Pro, XP with the latest services packs and hotfixes on the right hardware with the right drivers can be good too though. I had an IBM T43 that was trash but now running a T60 and it's a different world, never have any problems really and I do give the system some abuse just never play games or anything silly like that!

Maybe we had a dodgy batch of the T43's but they'd just randomly lock up, it used to absolutely do my head in!