UPgrade time

[[Jett-R]-MeDiuMRaRe]

Hey guys, I've started making the plunge getting my current rig to last another year or two. I got 2 gigs of ram in the mail yesterday and I am upgrading video card today (purchasing).

I am pci-e, but I am not pci-e v2. So there are two cards I'm looking at, a 9400GT and a 9500GT. The price difference while not large, 1 is 33% more than the other.

the 9400 has a higher Core Clock, but the 9500 has double the memory clock and on board memory. I am not familiar with either manufacturer.

Your Comments are appreciated

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162022

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127412

[[Jett]-Willow]

Welllllllllllllllllll what do you have now in terms of a video card? Either of those cards isn't really a "good card". They work, they're a high model number (:D), but they're not an upgrade over anything in the 8800 series. So like I said not sure what ya have already though.

[[Jett-R]-MeDiuMRaRe]

6600 gt, unable to play L4D, Fallout3, etc...

[[Jett]-Willow]

Very well then, definite upgrade, however... I'd go with

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161269

PCI-E 2.0 is backwards compatible with PCI-E 1.0, and vice versa.

[[Jett-R]-MeDiuMRaRe]

ok...didn't know that v2 didn't matter, that broadens my choices by quite a bit.

[[Jett]-Willow]

DISCLAIMER
LET ME NOTE, on some of the earliest PCI-E board's using SiS chipsets, there are issues with it, so do a bit of research into your part's before purchasing! I don't want to hear nagging if something doesn't work!

[[Jett-R]-MeDiuMRaRe]

I will. I also kinda liked the ceiling (cost wise) that pre v2 brought. I'm trying to keep this a little upgrade and not get a card to transport to a newer system down the line.

This system was built not long after PCI-e came out.

[[Jett-R]-MeDiuMRaRe]

ok, I installed my new ram that came this week, after testing it out a bit I decided trying to put my old ram back in along side it to hopefully bump me up to 3 gig, but it only bumped me up to 2.6g

Channel A Dimm 0 = 1g (blue)
Channel A Dimm 1 = .5g
Channel B Dimm 0 = 1g (blue)
Channel B Dimm 1 = .5g

the manual says just put matching dimms in the sockets of zero(0) and one(1) in both channel A and channel B. The picture shows the lower Ram in Channel 0 (the blue channel) and the higher ram in channel 1 (black channel), but it doesn't say to put the lower ram in the 0 sockets, and the blue channels are the main channels.

It's on page 34 and 35 here:
http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/c8403502en.pdf

Would switching it get me the .4 g of ram I'm missing. It shows the proper sticks when I go into set up at boot, it's just in Windows XP under properties that it's showing 2.6 g

Thanks,

[[Jett]-Willow]

Windows XP 32bit is your problem on the RAM.

[[Jett]-rush2049]

A 32-bit operating system only supports 4 gigabytes of ram total. I have also heard reports of xp limiting you to 3 GB.

Why this is a problem and it isn't recognizing it all is because everything is included in this limit.

So ram on your cpu (small) ram on your sound card (if it has any) ram on your video card (large) is all included in that limit.

[[Jett-R]-MeDiuMRaRe]

Ok, so should I take out the two smaller sticks if they aren't going to be recognized? I'm getting a new graphics card with 1g of ram next week.

[[Jett]-rush2049]

If you want to use them somewhere else then yes, but if not then it doesn't hurt to leave them in.

[[Jett-R]-MeDiuMRaRe]

ok, new ram, new vid card all installed and running. DL'ding Fallout 3 right now. I was going to wait but at half off on steam I couldn't resist.

[[Jett-R]-MeDiuMRaRe]

just finished my first run through Fallout 3. Great game. The game was a little sluggish during the robot rampage (graphics on max), but it was pretty and it was unmistakenly 'fallout'.

[Vyper]

Go with a total upgrade..lol