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Thread ID: 120938 2011-10-03 21:34:00 Ram upgrade.. bazmeister (3216) Press F1
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1235270 2011-10-03 21:34:00 I am "doing up" a Dell Desktop for family. The processor (according to Belarc Advisor) is 3.20 Gig Pentium 4, which appears pretty
reasonable for the use it will be put to.

After cleaning out all the crud, I found it to be still a bit slow. I was pleased to see that it only has one stick of 256MB Ram ( according
to the handbook it is DDR2.) which goes some way to explaining the speed.

Question is what should I replace it with. I assume it will again need to be DDR2 (?) and am happy to put in two sticks, but what configuration
and what size...e.g. DDR2 533MHz.

I see in my own set-up I have 2048 and 1024MB's and this is working really fast for me, however I am on AMD.
Just want to "do it once and get it right."
bazmeister (3216)
1235271 2011-10-03 22:07:00 You need to research the model and find out what it supports. Usually you can put faster RAM in than specified and it will just clock slower but not always so it pays to try and find the right RAM.
For Windows XP 256 is really low, Ideally you wan at least 1024 and preferably 2048 or more (32 bit XP can't use more than 3~4GB so 4Gb is the most you should ever use for that).

Depends on usage but I think 2048 might be a good target for hardware of that vintage, don't worry about the speed too much as long as it is supported by the motherboard.

edit www.pp.co.nz might be worth considering.
dugimodo (138)
1235272 2011-10-03 22:23:00 Thanks for that, a big help. The manual suggests "pairing" is the way to go, so your recommendation looks good...much obliged.

This seems to identify the model, seem ok to you....support.dell.com
bazmeister (3216)
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