I have a very old PC...

[IwantanewPC]

and it's very slow.

The specs were something like,

AMD Athlon 900mhz
256mb(x2 128mb sticks) Infineon RAM
Geforce 4 mx 440 Graphics Card

I have a much better PC but I still use this one quite a lot for general web-surfing and listening to music etc, but the problem is it's sooo bloody slow, even after a fresh install of Windows. It's at it's worse when you have more than 2-3 windows open..

I decided, in hope more than expectation, to buy some more RAM to see if it'd speed it up some. I managed to get hold of 3x 256mb Kingston RAM after checking my mother supported it, and that each slot could hold that much memory etc.

I removed the old RAM, and put this RAM in and booted up my PC but I don't see any increase in speed at all, nothing. I wasn't expecting a miracle but surely going from 256mb to 768mb was going to give me some kind of performance boost?

Is the rest of my PC just a terrible bottleneck or is 768mb RAM a dodgy number to have? Will removing a stick, and thus having 512mn RAM, speed it up at all?

Thanks.

 

[Talbs13]

Your looking at a CPU bottlekneck i would have thought. I Presume your comp is recognising the added RAM?

 

[IwantanewPC]

It is indeed.

 

[Pookie Bear]

I have an Athlon 900, 512mb RAM and an FX5200 and it runs with three or four windows open and can even run some older games like Medal of Honour and C&C Generals without too much bother, so I don't think the CPU is the bottleneck.....other than that, I can't offer much advice, but thought I'd at least show that it's not necessarily the problem...

 

[MrWhippy]

what's the make and model (and age) of the hard drive?

and just out of interest, if you can, download and burn a DSL bootdisk and see if the old rig is any quicker browsing the web and general tasks using that. i suspect it will fly.

 

[t31os]

I had a Duron 1000mhtz, with 512mb ram and a geforce2mx, and it would also not have a problem opening multiple windows or hosting a few basic RTS games, like AOM or C&C.

 

[semi-pro waster]

Since you say it is after a fresh install I'd probably be looking at the hard drive also and probably how many processes you have/need running. My old laptop is a PIII 850mhz with 128mb Ram and it takes a while to start up and boot fully into Windows but once there it is still reasonably nippy and easily capable of some light gaming, internet, music or word processing.