Upgrading PC RAM from 1GB => 2GB

I'm finally making the decision of upgrading the RAM on this 5 year old computer I use. It originally came with 2x 512MB DDR RAM sticks (it's an HP Pavilion 792c motherboard in a new ATX case with upgraded audio/gfx hardware). I'm looking to replace them with 2x 1GB RAM sticks, having 2GB of RAM.

Now, I've heard of all different types of RAM out there: DDR, [SIZE=-1]SDRAM, etc. Which ones should I go for? Which ones are of great/decent quality but at an affordable price? Is it better to search on eBay, or online stores?

Here are the motherboard specs:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph07557&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=83496

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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go to crucial.com, put in your system details and it'll tell you exactly what type and how much RAM you need. Then shop around for a better price.

 

Thanks the_steadster!

Looks like I'll be heading off to eBay then.

==========EDIT==========

Ahh, bummer. Seems like the max I can have is 1GB, which is what I already have :/. Thanks anyway!

 

I was gonna say, sounds like your board may be too old to upgrade any further!

To be honest, 1Gb is fine for most things.

Damn, I just looked at the spec - that's a pretty horrible P4! You can't stick much in that board, either - not that you can get the chips any more! I'd say think about saving up for something more modern if your needs are outgrowing it, and sell it on to recoup some costs. It is still a fine machine for general word processing, browsing etc.

 

I hear ya man! The only things I've upgraded were its case (from that ugly HP model), upgraded the gfx card to an nVidia 6800 GTOC AGP, and upgraded the sound card to a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum. I just have those filling the PCI slots + a SCSI card for the Dreamcast Development Box. 1GB RAM is definitely not enough, especially for my video capture hardware.

Once this PC turns 5 years old in a couple of months, I'll make my decision on upgrading it.

 

If you're doing anything much with video editing, that PC is going to be holding you back. If you've got the cash, even a baseline PC will wipe the floor with it performance-wise. I guess you'd be looking to keep the VGA and sound card, so your mobo choices might be limited since most of them are PCI-Express these days. Either way, spending money on 2100 DDR would be a waste, even if your board could take more (I'd be surprised if it couldn't, to be honest; don't know what you've read, I might be wrong).

 

Nah, it's not bad really. It's just troublesome when I try to run Counter-Strike Source. Other than that, everything's good.

Here's footage from the Dreamcast version of Sonic Adventure that I captured with the card (32.9MB DivX):
http://segakatana.com/multimedia/videos/sonicadv.rar

 

has PCIe replaced ordinary PCI bays completely?

 

I was looking into mobos recently, seems like most of them have a couple of legacy PCI slots. No AGP though, although there are some oddball (and probably none-too-stable) crossover boards with AGP/PCI-E, I remember looking into those about 18 months ago and not wanting to touch them with a barge pole.

 

heh, cyrix

 

PCI express is mostly for graphics, and as a result has replaced AGP, not PCI.

PCI is old hat now, though, so it probably won't have much more of a shelf life.

You can get cheap and cheerful AGP boards that take modern processors, but I'd still say think about selling your current machine and starting afresh. You can build a pretty decent machine really cheaply nowadays - particularly if you go along the AMD route, which tends to offer quite a saving.

 

PCIe 16x is for graphics. PCIe 8x, 4x, 1x are for everything else, market penetration for products using these are extremely limited as PCI is well known and more than enough bandwidth for things such as sound cards and ethernet cards. 1x gets used for ethernet cards right now and a handful of other items.

As soon as mobo manufaturers stop including PCI PCIe will rise in it's place.

 

I haven't felt so left out since they removed ISA from mobos

 

LOL!!!

Actually, although it has been a good 6 years since you've been able to readily get an ISA slot on a motherboard, they are still manufacturing (modern) boards with ISA slots.

 

having ISA means putting those old dev boards to use

 

Sorry to bump this old thread, but Karsten said one thing, about PCI vs. PCIe (in another thread) and now ISA is mentioned. I just did a search for modern motherboards with ISA slots, and they still make them and the same goes for PCI slots, so what Karsten said, is not a big fat lie. But it is like he hasn´t been looking into it. So PCIe hasn´t replaced the old PCI slot, and ISA slots are still on some modern motherboards. Damn I hate correcting moderators mistakes.
And yes I know PCIe is faster than PCI, but PCI isn´t dead, it just smells that way to some.

 

You'll probably find that the motherboards with old slots like ISA slots are motherboards meant for industrial use, not for Joe Sixpack. Sure you could use them, but i dont think you'd want that. And im not sure you'll have a lot of driver support for consumer OS's either.

 

Perhaps not, but there is always a way. And yes I know they are used in industrial use, and not normally for Joe Sixpack. Or else maybe there is an PCI/PCIe to ISA converter card, thingy . But who knows ?

 

There are PCI to ISA bridge cards but they still require you to write a device driver for the ISA card you are trying to drive.

You can buy motherboards that have PCIe, PCI and ISA that can run Intel Core Duo CPUs but they cost several hundreds of dollars, still be fun to have one with a full length ISA card it it. Still here is a Intel Core 2 Quad compatable motherboard with 2 ISA slots and RS-232 Serial and Parallel port. http://www.commell.com.tw/product/SBC/P4BWA.HTM

I remember the days of running a dual monitor set up with a VGA and MDA card under Borland Turbo C++

 

Another issue you might have is that support for all ISA devices has been dropped from Vista, and a lot were removed from XP.