RAM upgrade - 2100 or 2700 or 3200? (1 Viewer)

[JayDerek]

This may be a dumb question...Does it matter what 'speed' RAM I upgrade to?

I have:

HP Pavillion 540n
2.4 Pentium 4 processor(upgraded from it's original 1.6)
(2) sticks of 256 PC2100 DDR RAM (512 total)
Original motherboard

I want to upgrade to (2) sticks of 512 ram so I can have a gig of memory. Do I have to get PC2100 sticks? Could i get PC2700 or 3200?? I went to Newegg.com and put in my computer model and it only lists 2100 as the option.

Thanks for your help!

~Jason

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Depends on the bus speed of the system. PC3200 RAM is intended to run at 400mhz, PC2700 at 333mhz and 2100 at 266mhz.

You can buy RAM intended to run faster but you wont get the benefit of it. If it's the same price or very similar it may be better to go for the faster variety as it'll be more usefull if you ever upgrade the motherboard and processor.

Just don't buy RAM that's 'slower'.

 

[Diallo B]

buy the pc 3200. it will run at slower speeds and when you upgrade you will have the benefit of faster ram.

just don't mix ram speed. although faster ram can run at slower speeds, mixing speeds causes problems.

 

[JayDerek]

Thank you both!!!

~Jason

 

[SethH]

This is good advice, but only if you plan to upgrade pretty soon. If you plan to wait awhile, DDR2 RAM will be more mainstream and the pc3200 will not be compatible with the newer system. If the price is the same, then go ahead with the 3200 though.

 

[DaveB]

Ditto what SethH said.

The 3200 will give you room for a minor upgrade, if such an upgrade is in your near future. If there's not a significant difference in price, get the 3200 anyway.

David