Page 1 of should i buy some more RAM

My PC is about 3 years old
It`s a pentium 3 650MHz processor
20GB hard disk
128MB RAM
I had a virus so I`ve just had to reinstall windows, so i`ve only taken up about 1.5 GB with all my programs, I was just wondering whether there was any point in sticking in some new RAM, seeing as how it`s pretty cheap, will it speed thigns up or will it just be a waste of money, oh and I think I need 100MHz RAM so which do I buy, is it backwards compatible?
Cheers
Urban

Crucial.com are the best memory shippers and on their site you can select your model PC / Motherboard and it will tell you exactly which RAM you need.

RAM will definately speed things up, put in as much as possible. I have 1gb and it`s about right for general surfing, gaming and web design.

Three years old, you say? You might find that you have difficulty matching up new RAM with your old. Speeds change as well as specs. Have you considered treating yourself and your computer to an upgrade?

You currently have a P3 650MHz processor, 20GB hard disk and 128MB RAM. I presume your case is ATX standard, so why not pick up a motherboard/processor/memory package - Watford Electronics do anything from a 1GHz Duron up to a 2.53GHz P4 with 256Mb memory package (currently £233.81 tested). Add £70 for an 80Gb hard drive (which you can run as a slave to your original 20Gb which would keep all its programs on it while the new drive was for data) and for around £300 you`ve got a new computer.

J Mark Oates

You should have no bother at all fitting and getting ram to work in your PC.

133 Mhz SD-RAM is backwards compatable and will just run at your bus speed of 100MHz. Your P3 is running at 6.5 x 100MHz = 650.

You should be able to slip in an extra 256mb Dimm in your motherboard.

If you are just surfing the net and doing general day to day things with your PC then your P3 650 is more than capable. If your into graphics or Picture editing then the extra ram is needed anyway, its only when you need to run high spec games your PC will suffer a little.

Do not go installing above 512mb if you are running Win 98 / 98se or Win me. It isn`t compatable to run more, and windows will start throwing up errors. With Win 2000 or WinXP though the skys the limit.

In the past few weeks i have been upgrading many peoples PC, who just wanted some extra Ram installed.

Don`t be fooled into thinking you need high spec memory either, generic ram will work just fine.

Crucial memory is good, but if you want the best try Corsair or Twinmoss with Winbond chips. OCZ are pretty good as well.

This item was edited on Monday, 2nd June 2003, 12:27

"Do not go installing above 512mb if you are running Win 98 / 98se or Win me. It isn`t compatable to run more, and windows will start throwing up errors."


This isn`t exactly true. There`s a file cache bug which causes problems if the cache size increases over 512MB, but if you make a manual adjustment to the win.ini file there`s absolutely no issue with using more than 512MB of RAM on Win98 or ME.

Basically, under [vcache] type:

maxfilecache = 524288

and your problem is solved.

Mike

Cheers for that lads, very informative and very speedy replies
Urban

Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 253912

SYMPTOMS
If a computer that is running any of the versions of Windows that are listed above contains more than 512 megabytes (for example, 768 megabytes) of physical memory (RAM), you may experience one or more of the following symptoms:
You may be unable to open an MS-DOS session (or command prompt) while Windows is running. Attempts to do so may generate the following error message:

There is not enough memory available to run this program.
Quit one or more programs, and then try again.
The computer may stop responding (hang) while Windows is starting, or halt and display the following error message:

Insufficient memory to initialize windows. Quit one or more memory-resident programs or remove unnecessary utilities from your Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files, and restart your computer.

WORKAROUND
To work around this problem, use one of the following methods:
Use the MaxFileCache setting in the System.ini file to reduce the maximum amount of memory that Vcache uses to 512 megabytes (524,288 KB) or less. For additional information about how to use the MaxFileCache setting, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
108079 32-Bit File Access Maximum Cache Size

Use the System Configuration utility to limit the amount of memory that Windows uses to 512 megabytes (MB) or less.For additional information about how to use the System Configuration utility, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
181966 System Configuration Utility Advanced Troubleshooting Settings

Reduce the amount of memory that is installed in your computer to 512 MB or less.

Above from Microsoft.com.

So all you are doing when altering the MaxFileCache is letting windows only use 512mb ram and to ignore the other memory installed.

As i said DON`T install more than 512mb in Win9x as it isn`t needed and wont be used, no matter what tweeks are used.

"As i said DON`T install more than 512mb in Win9x as it isn`t needed and wont be used, no matter what tweeks are used."

Like I said, this is not the case! Altering the MaxFileCache setting only reduces the maximum amount of memory that Vcache uses - it doesn`t stop other programs from using memory above 512MB.

The other suggestion they make (reducing the amount of memory using System Configuration) clearly *does* stop other programs from using this memory, but I see no reason why you would need to do this.

Mike

"Use the MaxFileCache setting in the System.ini file to reduce the maximum amount of memory that Vcache uses to 512 megabytes (524,288 KB) or less"

"Use the System Configuration utility to limit the amount of memory that Windows uses to 512 megabytes (MB) or less"

"Reduce the amount of memory that is installed in your computer to 512 MB or less."

They suggest using msconfig to reducing amout of memory, and also to reduce the amount of phsical memory in your PC as it can cause problems.

If the fix is that easy, that just by editing Vcache in sys.ini and then you could use 1gb of ram, why wasn`t a simple patch produced?

This problem was known in Win 95 , win 98, Win 98se, and win Me, and was never fixed in any of the updates either. Do you think it could be due to the 32bit operating system its bases on, and that many of its progs had to run or be ran in ms.dos, so there had to be some compatability.

From MS

The Windows 32-bit protected-mode cache driver (Vcache) determines the maximum cache size based on the amount of RAM that is present when Windows starts. Vcache then reserves enough memory addresses to permit it to access a cache of the maximum size so that it can increase the cache to that size if needed. These addresses are allocated in a range of virtual addresses from 0xC0000000 through 0xFFFFFFFF (3 to 4 gigabytes) known as the system arena.

On computers with large amounts of RAM, the maximum cache size can be large enough that Vcache consumes all of the addresses in the system arena, leaving no virtual memory addresses available for other functions such as opening an MS-DOS prompt (creating a new virtual machine).

This is the type of problem questions you get in the MCP exams.

Why Microsoft haven`t issued an official patch, or an updated version of Vcache without these problems, is beyond me.

I suspect it`s more to do with marketing - i.e. `if you want to use 1GB of RAM, spend £££s on our lovely new Windows XP` - but then again I`m cynical ;-)

Mike