mba101

HP a1742n with Asus A8M2N-LA mobo. Upgraded cpu to AMD Athlon X2 5400 2.8Ghz from stock 3800. Upgraded psu, graphics(evga 9500 GT), sound card and coolers. Running 4 X 1Gb PC4200 533 ram. HP says 533 or 667 and 1Gb max per slot. They have been wrong before. Thinking of trying to go with 2 X 2Gb PC6400 800Mhz. Lower voltage load on board and room for more ram later. Also thinking of going to 64 bit O/S. Have had conflicting advise on this and am looking for a little more input.

magnethead

I vote 2x2 667

linderman

I vote 2 x 2 800mhz ram ......... the 800mhz will drop down to your boards spec of 667 and the 800mhz will possibly be a viable option on future builds or motherboard upgrades

linderman

if you already are running 4 one gig sticks ...... then save your money you wont see a worthwhile performance increase

magnethead

what he has now is 533. Board supports 667.

Carson

A very interesting question indeed. mba101, you are running Vista Home Premium. Your hardware question, as the others suggest, simply will not show much difference at all. I think you would just love to upgrade your system, and you are considering the boundaries. But No. It ain't gonna work the way you want it to.

A LOT of people would point out that you would get a bigger improvement going from Vista to XP. That would be XP-32. Of course it depends what you use your system for, but you are certainly using up a lot of power running Vista, and you have faster file management in XP. (I use Vista, XP, and XP-64.)

In my opinion, most of the improvement you would see in trying out your hardware ideas would be nothing more than wishful thinking. I had an old, slow system that I had to use for years and years, and I was very dissatisfied—BUT, I became very good at making it work as fast as it possibly could, so it taught me a lot in the long run. Now I have a beautiful, powerful machine I built myself. The old one, which I almost hated, has become rather a fond memory, strangely enough.

linderman

the diff going from 533 to 667 is the same minimal improvement you see when you go from 667 to 800 ............... you dont really see much at all until you start overclocking ............... IMHO anyway



system performance comes from the "package" as a whole ........... its not a one part solution to seeing worthwhile performance gains........ kind of like a race car .......... putting a new high performace engine into a frame with poor suspension or tires will get you no where ....... same with computers ....... the performance comes from the collective .......

wrench97

And to add since HP and Crucial seem to think that the board will only take 1gig per slot I would be tempted to believe them.

http://www.crucial.com/store/listpar...ilion%20a1742n