Upgrading an old PC and not sure what to match with the old ram.

Cutshaw · 14 Nov 2007 at 14:17

Hey guys and gals,

I'm hoping some of you will take pity on me and give me a rough idea what I should be looking at. My machine is getting long in the tooth, and I'm getting some bits for it here and there.

I've got a ga-k8nxp-9 mainboard and 1gb of corsair twinx 3200xlpro ram. I'm just not sure what to put in with the old ram. I've been reading up, but to be honest, I still don't fully understand how it works. I'm not sure if I should just chuck in 2 two sticks of whatever ram, and feel the benefits of the extra memory, or will the current memory suffer because the new stuff isn't twinx?

Thanks.

Cob · 14 Nov 2007 at 16:39

Corsair have a great IC list here.

But they don't actually list the 3200XL sticks because they all use Samsung TCCD chips. Thankfully the TCCD chips became quite popular, so there's a pretty big range to choose from. Tho whether you can get your hands on some is another matter as PC3200 is becoming quite rare these days.

Are you after another two 512mb sticks or two 1gb sticks?

Cutshaw · 14 Nov 2007 at 18:04

Two 1gb sticks would be great, but after looking into the CPU situation, I realise I'm working within certain boundaries. I was looking for a X2 4800+ 939, and it's looking pretty bleak, unless I want to pay a fortune for it, which defeats the purpose of the exercise. I've never upgraded an old machine before, when I wanted an upgrade, I pretty much started from scratch.

I'm going to have a proper look through that list and see if it will shine some light on the matter. It's certainly interesting what I've been learning along the way.

oh and thanks.

Cutshaw · 16 Nov 2007 at 17:51

I'm certainly missing something here. I looked through the list, should I be matching the chips? I'm still not sure what I should be keeping in mind when looking for ram.

Cob · 16 Nov 2007 at 18:43

I would try to locate a model that uses the Samsung TCCD chips to avoid any compatibility issues.

gamesaregood · 17 Nov 2007 at 04:49

Hello Mate,

Which CPU are you using? some of the more early S939 CPUs had problems with using 4 sticks of ram, even the later ones required using T2 so ran at looser trimmings to reduce overall speed. Your best bet it going to be to repalce the current ram with 2x 1GB sticks although this is also the more expensive options.

You would be best of looking at the Member Market but as you don't have enough posts for that and your trust is not enabled so that rules that out....

Michael

Cutshaw · 17 Nov 2007 at 14:20

I had no idea there was this much to ram. I've got a athlon 64 3000+, but I'm planning on getting a x2 as soon as I can get my hands on a socket 939 at decent speed, probably a 4200.

Cutshaw · 17 Nov 2007 at 14:32

Is it going to make things a lot easier if I just do away with the old ram and replace it entirely? I'm selling a above average Warcraft account to fund it, so within reason, I don't mind it costing a bit more.

gamesaregood · 17 Nov 2007 at 14:45

Cutshaw said:
I had no idea there was this much to ram. I've got a athlon 64 3000+, but I'm planning on getting a x2 as soon as I can get my hands on a socket 939 at decent speed, probably a 4200.

To make this more confusing AMD did more than one revision of the Althon 64 3000+ on the Socket 939 there was three versions, first one was the newcastle which used an older manufactureing process I don't think it supports 4 sticks of ram but not 100% sure, the second was a Winchester and the third was the Venice. The Venice had an updated memory controller and can handle 4 sticks of ram at DDR400 (PC3200) at the looser T2 latency. The Older Winchester could only manage 4 sticks of ram at DDR333 (PC2700) T2 which again hits performance even more.

Cutshaw said:
Is it going to make things a lot easier if I just do away with the old ram and replace it entirely? I'm selling a above average Warcraft account to fund it, so within reason, I don't mind it costing a bit more.

That would be the best solution but its also going to cost more, also tracking down some High preformance DDR Ram is not easy these days.

If you use MSN feel free to add me (My Address is in my trust - Light bottom right of this post) and I will try to help you find some suitable.

Cutshaw · 17 Nov 2007 at 16:40

I've added your msn, thanks for the help. I'll probably be getting the new cpu at the same time as the ram, as I said, it'll be one of the x2 939 chips, hopefully a 4200 or higher, so hopefully that'll makes things a little easier.