Memory upgrade on a 4-5yr old machine

[DaveyD]

Hi guys,

A colleague of mine wants to upgrade the RAM on his machine for doing a little bit of video editing, his system is an older HP machine with the following currently in it:

LGA775 P4 3.0Gz HT
512MB RAM (2x256MB) DDR 3200
Windows XP Pro 32bit

The motherboard has 4x slots available for RAM and the HP site says it will take up to a max of 4GB (4x 1GB sticks), however this is where I need the advice.

I'm currently looking at replacing the 2x256MB with 2x1GB to improve the system. Would 4GB work OK on Windows XP 32bit? Or is that past the limit?

Or can 2.5GB work OK keeping the old 512mb in there?

Thanks,

Dave

 

[mk17]

4'll be fine, but you won't get all of it usable - probably looking at 3.5+ available. Depends on whether or not you really need the extra memory, I don't think I'd like to go down the mixing-memory route - but that's little more than personal preference.

 

[DaveyD]

4'll be fine, but you won't get all of it usable - probably looking at 3.5+ available. Depends on whether or not you really need the extra memory, I don't think I'd like to go down the mixing-memory route - but that's little more than personal preference.

I wasn't planning on recommending the mixing route, I'll just say to bin/sell the old 2x256.

I think best bet is to go for 2GB and see how much of an improvement is given to the system.