Upgrades

[Billyman]

I wanna/am gonna get some more ram for my puter. How do I know what's capatible and what's not? I have a pentium III processor. It's a Dell comp. It takes a 168 pin (DIMM) mem. chip thingie. I want to do some shopping and don't want to get something that wont work. How do I tell?

Same goes for a video card upgrade. What's some of the good stuff? How do I know if it'll work on my puter?

?????????

[Koliedrus]

Ha! I was not one of those half-dozen!

I'll get Mrs. Kol to suggest a memory upgrade. When we upgraded ours, she opened one system, identified the mem type (SDRAM) and EA searched for a decent price. I didn't want to wait so Circuit City (http://www.circuitcity.com) turned out to be my best bet. If nothing else, call up your local store (there's a store locator at the site) and tell them what you're needing. Better yet, once you set your location at the site, search for DIMM and it'll tell which stores in your area have memory in stock. I just tried and came up with 10 search results.

I'm not sure if this is applicable to your machine but lemme detail a bit about our upgrade.

Both systems came with 128M Ram. We decided to add 256M to each. There are three slots for memory upgrades. The greatest amount of ram needs to go in the first slot so the 128 was moved to slot two and the 256 went in slot 1.

As for the vid card, I'll have to leave that to the hardcore gamers. I'm a NOOB in that area but the latest issue of Popular Science has an article that deals with upgrading your system. Hit the newsstand. Vid cards and ram are discussed.

There. I don't suck :p

[MrsKol]

Ok, from what I understand, since about the Pentium II, just about all RAM chips are DIMMs. That just really in reference to the number of pins or contacts it has. There are some other things involved, but let's keep it simple. The other thing is, your RAM is probably SRAM, since that is the type of memory is the memory of choice during the last couple of years. To be sure, go ahead and open your case, and take out the RAM chip. Your motherboard may have releases on both sides of the slot. Press those down and out it comes. You probably already know that, but I'm pretending you don't for my own benefit. I'm trying to take the A+ certification test, so the more I spit out, the more it sticks in my mind.
Anyway, take the stick to your local computer store, we like Circuit City, and show them what you have.

For the video card, go to your my computer icon on the desktop.
Right click, select Properties, then go to the Device Manager tab.
There is a whole list of the hardware that is in your computer.
The video card would be under display adapters. Copy the info down and when you go to your computer store, again tell them what you have and what you want to do.

Now I didn't do this is the chronological order it should be. But just so we are clear, look up the video card first. Shutdown the computer and UNPLUG it, then set the case on some sort of rubber/anti static mat (this keeps the static electricity down to a minimum), then open the case and procede.

Good luck.

[Billyman]

Originally posted by Koliedrus
*snip*

Danky Kol. Yes, I am going to do the 256M upgrade and it is SDRAM. Gonna do some shopping and hopefully make some purchases this weekend. w00t!

Oh, the Pop. Sci mag thing.....news stand? HA! The folks over at the magazine place likes me enough to send me then in the mail and have for years. :p

[Billyman]

Originally posted by MrsKol
*snip*

Dank you too. I want to have your babies! :D

I love it when people gives my instuctions. Me fallow good. :)

This kind of information is getting me closer to building my own system everyday.

Danks again.

[Mudflap]

You didn't thank ME you looney fucknugget.

[Billyman]

Originally posted by Mudflap
You didn't thank ME you looney fucknugget.

Sorry man, I'm just so sorry, I never meant to hurt your feelings and you are not forgotten. Your tutorial was right on! Your technical expertise blows me away at times. Forgive me sir for my oversite of thank you's. So let me just say........Thank you.

I got my RAM it's installed, no prob. Video card coming!

[Skeet]

Video Card: Asus GeForce 4.

Or: Asus GeForce 3

KEEP IN MIND that Any GeForce isn't good. It all depends on who made it.

ASUS

[Laslow]

If you are upgrading your video card, you must first identify what type of expansion slots your motherboard has. If you buy an AGP vid card, then make sure your motherboard has an AGP slot. Most ATX (regular sized) motherboards should have one. If you have a Micro ATX case/motherboard (smaller size), then definately check, they usually only have PCI slots. There are some good PCI video cards out there, but the majority of them are AGP. I attached a pic below so you can tell what the slots look like. I'm just making sure that you don't buy the wrong card.

[zim]

You have a Dell.

What model number?

You can get all the pertinent information off of their web site.

[Mudflap]

Originally posted by Billyman


Sorry man, I'm just so sorry, I never meant to hurt your feelings and you are not forgotten. Your tutorial was right on! Your technical expertise blows me away at times. Forgive me sir for my oversite of thank you's. So let me just say........Thank you.

I got my RAM it's installed, no prob. Video card coming!

Now that's more like it! :D

[Billyman]

Turns out (with the help of EA) that all I needed was a driver update and up and gaming! It's all good. Still gonna do a vid. card upgrade soon, so the info givin is muchly appreciated.

Thanks guys!

[fujimo]

some of intels boards used the 815 chipset. This one was pretty compatabile with most stuff but was a little picky on the ram.

A neat site I saw when I was on a budget was at www.newegg.com you can check out the refurbished stuff at some neat prices too.

Right now they had an abit board for the P-III flip chip for 39.00 and I saw an Asus V7100 card for 45.00.

G-Force 4 cards are out now but are around 300.00.

TV out seems to be a big thing but when the day comes that I watch my computer from a TV.......eh.....not gonna happen. Sometimes it works ok and sometimes it sucks ass.

[skalie]

The G-Force 4 cards are cool cos you can run two monitors, like twice the size of your desktop, or split up graphics programs and things.

Problem is that you've got to explain the sudden appearance of another monitor in the house, "How much did you spend on that thing this time?".

Long time no see, fujimo, thought you'd forgotten 'bout us, glad you popped in again.

[fujimo]

Hi Skalie

I believe the Matrox G450 allowed ya to use daul monitors too.
The advantage here was the cost factor.

I have heard of some pople who had a built in video chip......like abit SL-6 (asus has one too) and they put a agp video card and used dual monitors.

Had a few things to work out here in Floriduh. You have a long memory. I must have made an impression. Then again, I don't always say a whole lot.

[Mudflap]

Quick question about RAM:

I'm currently running 128 MB. What advantages are there to adding more RAM and at what point does added RAM become overkill?

[SatansLeftHand]

additional ram becomes overkill when the number of megabytes you have available outruns the number of megahertz your cpu has.
and not before.

i need 1.3 gigs of ram, dammit!

[Billyman]

Originally posted by Mudflap
Quick question about RAM:

I'm currently running 128 MB. What advantages are there to adding more RAM and at what point does added RAM become overkill?

Personally, I do not know. But, not to long ago I added 256 megs to my already 128 and I can run multiple programs with out slowing down a damn thing. Sometimes the 384 MB's of memory isn't even noticable, sometimes it is. I still think it was money well spent.

[MAC]

Ok, I am gonna repeat what I have been told by ppl I trust.
Your puters ability to utilize ram is dependant on several things.

The first is the OS
9x OS's ar elimited in what they can use base don how they allocate it.

NT systems (such as XP) should be able to use as much as you give them (based on the rest of your system)

The next is the type of ram, speed of the motherboard, CPU, etc.
I am not sure what is what here so I will leave it be.
But suffice it to say that unless you have a serious application much more than 500M RAM is serious overkill.

I would encourage you ALL to go download th ebelarc advisor and get a list of EXACTLY WHATS ON YOUR PUTER.
It will list all hardware and soft ware and ther will be little question about what you have to work with.
I ain't postin the link again, go to www.belarc.com and look it up your selves.
ALSO....XP users.....check your damned task manager(right click anywhere on the bar at the bottom of your screen) to see your system usage while different programs are running and SEE for yourself whats demanding on your puter.

BTW
MHz of processor speed and MB of RAM are two totally different things.

Note:
I have a 1.5 GHz P4 with 528M DDR RAM on a 100MHz mother board at werk and I can run autocad and adobe photoshop and play music without a hiccup. But if the guy on the server is playing pinball I can't open shit no matter how bad ass my puter is. Your system is only as good as its weakest link.