DDR2 Memory Upgrade

Question

I have a Dell E310 that runs with an Intel 3.2GHz CPU and an 800MHz FSB and I'm wondering if I can upgrade the 400MHz DDR2 to a higher speed. What would be the maximum ram speed that I could use with this combination without running into instability?   Bill

ltop · Answer

Changing RAM speed may show up in a benchmark, but real-world performance change will be invisible. If you are upgrading anyway- then the faster RAM can be used as long as it's compatible (eg same type/pinout). Unless you can change the clock of the FSB, you won't even see a change on a benchmark score. If you overclock the buss, you'll also have to experiment with timings.

I don't have a Dell desktop - but I suspect the BIOS doesn't give you many options, unlike Asus eg.

Enough RAM is another matter - for general home/office use 1G is pretty decent. 2G overkill on XP, though on Vista a select few may benefit with 2G.

Message Edited by ltop on 02-15-2007 05:04 AM

techmad · Answer

yes dell lock the BIOS, if you buy faster ram it will only run at 400MHz as set in the BIOS. If your running Vista I would definitly recommend having 2GB of ram, especially if you play games etc. My system uses up to 1GB of ram at times with almost no applications running, most notably around windows start up

White Flag · Answer

Just to clarify, Vista by design uses as much RAM as it can for its new Prefetch function so if things are working correctly then you should rarely have much free RAM. The Prefetch system is designed to pre-load regularly accessed applications into RAM to speed up access when you need it.  Contrarily, as soon as another application needs this memory it will release it for you to use.   Having said that, I've found that by upgrading from 1 to 2 GB's there is a huge increase in performance. With memory costs pretty low right now I'd strongly recommend upgrading.

Windows General

DDR2 Memory Upgrade

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