Upgrading RAM and maybe also graphics card

[Qyöt27]

Even though my computer is 8 years old at the time of this post (and still running great, I might add, albeit tortoise-slow compared to current standards), I really want to get the most I can out of it.

When looking at the specs for the chipset I have (Intel i810e), it said it supports a maximum of 512MB of RAM - I currently have 256MBs. I had tried once before to transplant some PC100 SDRAM I salvaged from another computer into it, only to find the stick was too big. It seems - I can only assume, anyway, I have zero experience here - that it wasn't DDR SDRAM, which I guess is what I need. Pictures on Wikipedia seem to confirm this.

So, my real question is, what do I need to know about making sure I get the right type of RAM? I don't want to order or buy some only to find out I got the speed wrong, or that it's too fast to work with my motherboard, and so on. If it helps, these are the specs I got from Speccy:



Also, does it matter if I mix and match old and new RAM, or brands? The RAM that's in here is the stick that came with the computer, made by Hyundai. I found this Kingston 256MB DDR333 stick on Newegg. Would that be alright or would I be best off getting a totally new 512 MB stick?


As for the graphics card, this isn't something I think is too integral since the onboard graphics have been working fine for me, but they do have some limitations that I'm finding really annoying now (and if it means that the system RAM the onboard graphics use can be freed up because graphics processing uses the video card's memory instead, even better). Namely, I'm stuck at 24bit color - which is a problem because some of the games I like playing use 16bit (32bit by extension, although a couple are 32-only), not 24, and I don't like having to switch back and forth between High Color and True Color, especially since High makes things look gradiated from the lack of bits. Also, some of said games run slowly - instead of 60fps, I get 20. Otherwise, the listed specs for these games are well within what my computer can handle, or could handle given the upgrade to 512 MBs of RAM.

The comfortable baseline for these games seems to be that I need at least 32MB of VRAM and it needs to be DirectX 9 capable (November 2008 update, if that makes any difference). I assume DX9 is also backwards compatible with DirectX 8, but I just want to make sure.

To summarize, the card needs to be:
Nvidia (this is because I use both Windows and Linux, and I know Nvidia is supposed to have better Linux driver support)
have at least 32 MB of VRAM (does it matter what sort of RAM the video card has on it?)
support DirectX 9 (Nov. 2008, but DX9 at all will suffice)
work with a comp this old
support 32-bit color depth at sane resolutions (i.e. 1024x768 at the very least)
run cool (I don't have the money to put in new fans or augment the cooling system that already exists)



In the end here, I'm not expecting any miracles, I just want to smooth over some of the edges and squeeze whatever else I can out of this thing.

 

[Dark_Lite]

In all honesty, you could probably spend a tiny bit more and get a new computer that's more than twice as good. At 8 years old, it might actually cost MORE to get the hardware to upgrade it (unless your idea of "upgrade" is replace all the hardware), and if something dies on you (quite likely at 8 years), then you will wind up getting a new system anyway. My recommendation to you is to just buy a new desktop for like 300-400 dollars and enjoy the benefits of not having to use punch cards!

 

[Qyöt27]

I don't have 300-400 dollars, though (and if I did, I'd be spending it on a laptop, not a desktop - any new desktop I get will have to be very high performance...multiple CPUs, possibly 4x4 Xeons, 16+ GBs of RAM, etc.). I can afford to spend something like 50-60, however.

And my general point of view is that I'm going to use something until it sputters out. We have an NEC running Windows 95 that my parents bought 14 years ago, and it still works. The only thing I've had to replace so far on this one was the power supply, and that was 3? years ago. I've swapped out or added other parts to it, though (initially a free* DVD-ROM drive in 2003, which was later swapped out for a DVD-RW in 2005, I changed out the 30GB HDD it came with for a 160GB a couple years ago and put the 30GB in an enclosure, and I also added a USB 2.0 card in 2006 or 2007).

*I salvaged it out of a Compaq we'd gotten but threw out a couple years later because it was mostly just a pain in the neck. The DVD-ROM worked/works fine, although it can only read pressed discs.

 

[Dark_Lite]

Well, for 50-60 dollars you won't get much. For RAM, brands do not matter. You can even apparently mix speeds, but it will only run as fast as the slowest speed. What matters is that your motherboard has to support the type of RAM you're getting. My GUESS is that it will support 300 MHz RAM, but you need to find the motherboard's specs somewhere and figure it out. Also, if you're trying to get 512 MB of RAM just max it out with another 256 stick; don't buy a new stick. It will be cheaper that way.

nVidia video card should work fine. Just get one of the really cheap ones and make sure you actually have a slot for it. With a computer that old the best it probably has is an AGP x8 slot. Although, if your computer wasn't all that amazing in 2001, it may only have an AGP x2 slot or even only PCI. Type of video RAM doesn't matter.

 

[Qyöt27]

Well, for 50-60 dollars you won't get much. For RAM, brands do not matter. You can even apparently mix speeds, but it will only run as fast as the slowest speed. What matters is that your motherboard has to support the type of RAM you're getting. My GUESS is that it will support 300 MHz RAM, but you need to find the motherboard's specs somewhere and figure it out. Also, if you're trying to get 512 MB of RAM just max it out with another 256 stick; don't buy a new stick. It will be cheaper that way.

nVidia video card should work fine. Just get one of the really cheap ones and make sure you actually have a slot for it. With a computer that old the best it probably has is an AGP x8 slot. Although, if your computer wasn't all that amazing in 2001, it may only have an AGP x2 slot or even only PCI. Type of video RAM doesn't matter.

According to those readouts I posted earlier, the RAM that's in here is 133MHz, or DDR-266. At least according to Wikipedia's article on the i810 chipset, it supports asynchronous clock speeds (the example being that a Celeron using a 66MHz bus can use PC100 SDRAM and still get a benefit, although this may be because the vanilla i810 supported 66MHz and 100MHz); mine is the i810e, and the front side bus runs at 100MHz, although the spec supports 133MHz.

So I'm guessing I have to stick to using DDR-266 RAM? To be more concise, are the supported RAM speeds equivalent to the supported FSB speeds of the chipset? The difference in price between a stick of 256MB DDR-266 and 512 MB DDR-266 is only about $5, so getting a brand new stick of 512 to replace what I have now isn't a huge loss - if it turns out I have to go with that option.

 

[Rhayven]

Go get yourself a AGP NVIDIA 5500, should be old enough to poop in there. For as ram goes, I don't know the prices.. Where I live, older ram = more money. New ram for like 4 gigs of DDR6400 is 30 bucks.

 

[Qyöt27]

Go get yourself a AGP NVIDIA 5500, should be old enough to poop in there. For as ram goes, I don't know the prices.. Where I live, older ram = more money. New ram for like 4 gigs of DDR6400 is 30 bucks.

I'd not updated the thread, but I ordered this Geforce 6200 PCI card before New Year's (this motherboard doesn't have an AGP port), and even though I initially had issues with trying to get it to work, I solved the problems and it's been working great for the last 3 days.

Testing out dual monitors under Ubuntu was pretty irritating and I gave up, but it worked on XP like a charm. I don't really *need* dual monitors; I just had an extra one because my grandfather got an LCD monitor for Christmas and I got the CRT he had (which, coincidentally, is also how I got the rest of this computer in the first place 6½ years ago), and I just wanted to see if I could do it.

I underestimated how good this card was, though - I can now play games flawlessly, at or near 60fps, that wouldn't even run before or would do so but hover down around 15-20fps. So I'm good on that, at least.

And the RAM, well, I went ahead and ordered the Kingston 512MB DDR266 last Saturday. Only cost $18.99 or so. Hasn't arrived yet, though.

 

[Qyöt27]

Gah, so the memory got here, and it turns out that this thing is so old it doesn't even take DDR memory. I need PC133 SDRAM, I assume of the 168-pin variety. So back to the drawing board on that.

Has anyone used memorystock.com before? They have listings for memory that's supposed to be compatible with my comp's make and model (eMachines T1110, which uses the Intel i810e chipset), but as I've never ordered anything from them before, I thought I'd see if anyone else around here has.

 

[TheReasoner]

Gosh. Sorry I didn't get here earlier
I see you already have made the purchases. Now, what I would suggest is to avoid hardware upgrades of such an old system as prices for old hardware climbs. Any increase in hardware specs are also likely to give only a marginal increase in speed. (Depending on your OS).

What's better is actually to get a new system. Or, barring that, dropping Windows and installing a Linux distro as these can be more resource friendly.

What can be a better choice is actually getting a motherboard with a cpu on it (intel ATOM for example), buy a one to two GB RAM module and attach your old hard drive. It will NOT be fast, but it will probably beat your old computer. You can get a mobo with built in CPU and graphics card for about a hundred dollars (probably less).
An example is the ASUS AT3N7A-I, which has a built-in Intel®Atom330, nVIDIA GeForce9300, a DDR2 socket, GbLAN, a PCI socket, 10xUSB plugs, SATA, and HDMI.
You can get more powerful mobos for another hundred dollars.
Plug this one into your current case. If your case is ATX, it will fit and all you need would be RAM, a HD and a DVD-ROM. This should total at much less than 400$ US

Now, if you have a source for cheap hardware and can't afford a new computer then my advice would depend on your current configuration.

 

[Qyöt27]

Gosh. Sorry I didn't get here earlier
I see you already have made the purchases. Now, what I would suggest is to avoid hardware upgrades of such an old system as prices for old hardware climbs. Any increase in hardware specs are also likely to give only a marginal increase in speed. (Depending on your OS).

Well, the only misstep I made was with the RAM. The graphics card works great, and I can play all the games I want to on this thing now, at full 60fps speed - and the couple that are still a little laggy are such due directly to the fact the processor requirement might be slightly higher than I have (1.2GHz instead of 1.0GHz) or that I've only got 256MBs of RAM, and they need a minimum of 256MBs. Upping it to 512MB should solve that (I also have an issue when posting on forums that any AAC/MP4 files I'm playing in Winamp stutter while I'm typing in the post boxes in Firefox, which I guess is also a RAM issue; doesn't happen with MP3, and I'm not sure if it happens with FLAC, Vorbis, or WMA).

What's better is actually to get a new system. Or, barring that, dropping Windows and installing a Linux distro as these can be more resource friendly.

I already dual-boot. But running those games I was talking about under Wine is not really a solution. They rely way too much on DirectX, it seems, and using Winetricks to get the DX9 stuff didn't help at all - one of the games (MegaMari, which is also the heftiest of the games I wanted to run) runs probably 97-98% full speed on Windows, but crawls at probably 25-30% under Ubuntu, even though the graphics all seem to be rendered correctly, and this is with the graphics card, not the onboard - maybe it could be a driver issue, though. The upgrades are more or less meant to smooth over a couple of annoying edges, not really because I'm worried about the system being slow.

If I was going to build my own computer I'd be in it for constructing a top-of-the-line professional workstation that would take full advantage of the features of Windows 7 Pro or Ultimate (since I figure it's also pretty much guaranteed for Linux distros to already support gargantuan amounts of RAM and multiple CPUs working in parallel). I'd estimate to be spending probably no less than $6000 on it. My projection is either the $400-800 range (in which case I'm getting a laptop because I'd need it for school and it would be more than enough for my video editing needs after cutting my teeth and learning to deal with doing my editing on this setup), or the I-don't-care-how-much-it-costs-I-want-to-host-a-mini-render-farm bracket.

Now, if you have a source for cheap hardware and can't afford a new computer then my advice would depend on your current configuration.

As of right now, the only two hardware-related issues are
A) a new stick of 256MB PC133 SDRAM - would you recommend Micron, Kingston, or Samsung? Also the question about ordering from memorystock.com still stands, since they seem to be able to match RAM to the computer make and model - at most, I'd be spending around $23 for the Kingston, or $30 for the Samsung, when I factor in the shipping costs.

B) getting a brand new DVD-RW drive because the one I have can't read dual layers anymore, and it can't write any sort of disc anymore either. Depending on the circumstances, I may be able to get this either for free or for about $35 (it only needs to be PATA). But getting a new DVD-RW drive is not anywhere near a top priority - I have access to two other computers with perfectly working burning drives, and I can tote the ISO images I create between comps with my external.

 

[TheReasoner]

Well, the only misstep I made was with the RAM. The graphics card works great, and I can play all the games I want to on this thing now, at full 60fps speed - and the couple that are still a little laggy are such due directly to the fact the processor requirement might be slightly higher than I have (1.2GHz instead of 1.0GHz) or that I've only got 256MBs of RAM, and they need a minimum of 256MBs. Upping it to 512MB should solve that (I also have an issue when posting on forums that any AAC/MP4 files I'm playing in Winamp stutter while I'm typing in the post boxes in Firefox, which I guess is also a RAM issue; doesn't happen with MP3, and I'm not sure if it happens with FLAC, Vorbis, or WMA).


I already dual-boot. But running those games I was talking about under Wine is not really a solution. They rely way too much on DirectX, it seems, and using Winetricks to get the DX9 stuff didn't help at all - one of the games (MegaMari, which is also the heftiest of the games I wanted to run) runs probably 97-98% full speed on Windows, but crawls at probably 25-30% under Ubuntu, even though the graphics all seem to be rendered correctly, and this is with the graphics card, not the onboard - maybe it could be a driver issue, though. The upgrades are more or less meant to smooth over a couple of annoying edges, not really because I'm worried about the system being slow.

If I was going to build my own computer I'd be in it for constructing a top-of-the-line professional workstation that would take full advantage of the features of Windows 7 Pro or Ultimate (since I figure it's also pretty much guaranteed for Linux distros to already support gargantuan amounts of RAM and multiple CPUs working in parallel). I'd estimate to be spending probably no less than $6000 on it. My projection is either the $400-800 range (in which case I'm getting a laptop because I'd need it for school and it would be more than enough for my video editing needs after cutting my teeth and learning to deal with doing my editing on this setup), or the I-don't-care-how-much-it-costs-I-want-to-host-a-mini-render-farm bracket.


As of right now, the only two hardware-related issues are
A) a new stick of 256MB PC133 SDRAM - would you recommend Micron, Kingston, or Samsung? Also the question about ordering from memorystock.com still stands, since they seem to be able to match RAM to the computer make and model - at most, I'd be spending around $23 for the Kingston, or $30 for the Samsung, when I factor in the shipping costs.

Whichever one has the lowest cl. I have good experience with Kingston, but as was mentioned earlier, the brand of RAM seldom matters.

B) getting a brand new DVD-RW drive because the one I have can't read dual layers anymore, and it can't write any sort of disc anymore either. Depending on the circumstances, I may be able to get this either for free or for about $35 (it only needs to be PATA). But getting a new DVD-RW drive is not anywhere near a top priority - I have access to two other computers with perfectly working burning drives, and I can tote the ISO images I create between comps with my external.

Nice.
I do that quite often too. But on my new i7 I added a sata dvd- drive. I intend to rip my DVDs so I can stream then over wifi. The issue is of course those darned regions. The SATA DVD-ROMS are cheap however, so I am considering buying another one just so we can use both regions we have DVDs from. (My wife's Texan and I'm Norwegian. So we have tons of region 1 and 2 DVDs)

 

[Qyöt27]

Well, I've hit something of an impasse. I ordered the RAM on Monday and it arrived this morning, so I promptly installed it and booted up the computer. Ubuntu 9.10 worked fine, detected all the RAM, etc.

However, when I tried to go into Windows XP, it errored out and restarted (I'll get to this later). Out of paranoia I decided to run Memtest86 - it checked out fine. I even went in and removed the old stick of RAM, thinking maybe some other wonkiness with the new stick or the secondary RAM slot was to blame. Windows booted up fine, no issues. Put the new stick in the primary and old stick in the secondary, Windows fails (Ubuntu still doesn't, though).

Which brings me to the error message given - the BIOS is not fully ACPI compliant. It then tells me I need to A) go find an upgrade for the BIOs and install it, or B) turn off ACPI. So I go into my BIOS settings and turn off ACPI - Windows still fails to boot, and even though I'd told it not to automatically restart on errors, it restarts anyway.

Obviously there's nothing wrong with the RAM or the slot because Windows can use it as long as I've only got one stick in there, and as I said, Ubuntu handles all of it no problem. Is it something deeper that's wrong with Windows (maybe I should reinstall and finally use the copy of Pro I bought a year and a half ago, instead of using the XP Home restore disc that came with this computer), or should I really go after the BIOS upgrade option? Where would I even find the right information for that?

 

[Dark_Lite]

Are you mixing RAM sizes?

 

[Sophrosyne]

try changing the ram timings, sometimes adding more ram to a board makes it harder for the ram farthest from the bus to keep up when stressed. It is possible linux isn't using the second ram stick when loading up and windows is and the bus is unable to keep pace

 

[Qyöt27]

Are you mixing RAM sizes?

Nope, both are 256MB PC133.

try changing the ram timings, sometimes adding more ram to a board makes it harder for the ram farthest from the bus to keep up when stressed. It is possible linux isn't using the second ram stick when loading up and windows is and the bus is unable to keep pace

How would I do that?

 

[Sophrosyne]

Nope, both are 256MB PC133.


How would I do that?

go into the bios not sure which screen but there is memory speed and memory timing. the timing would be something like 3 3 3 3, speed 100 133 it varies depending on bios and year. if you slowed the memory speed down a little from what it is set it may be able to run stable. higher numbers on the timing is slower speed while the bus speed settings the higher numbers is higher speed.

 

[Qyöt27]

go into the bios not sure which screen but there is memory speed and memory timing. the timing would be something like 3 3 3 3, speed 100 133 it varies depending on bios and year. if you slowed the memory speed down a little from what it is set it may be able to run stable. higher numbers on the timing is slower speed while the bus speed settings the higher numbers is higher speed.

Then no, that isn't possible. My bus speed is locked at 100MHz, with no way for me to adjust it like some newer performance-based chipsets allow. If I could, I'd have already put it at 133MHz because the chipset supports it, and the RAM is PC133. But there's nothing in my BIOS settings to control clock speed.

 

[Sophrosyne]

Then no, that isn't possible. My bus speed is locked at 100MHz, with no way for me to adjust it like some newer performance-based chipsets allow. If I could, I'd have already put it at 133MHz because the chipset supports it, and the RAM is PC133. But there's nothing in my BIOS settings to control clock speed.

hmm, I tried finding info... and they don't even have a manual of the bios setup to look at. it is possible that two of the same brand/series ram modules would work fine together some mobos are picky about memory at times and windoze and some applications stress components to the point of crashing while other stuff... no problem.

 

[Qyöt27]

Well, if it helps (I doubt it, though), here's the picture of the BIOS screens. Maybe if I test disabling Quickboot / enabling the Boot Summary, I can get more information about the problem.

EDIT: Disabling Quickboot didn't work.

 

[Qyöt27]

Well, it turns out I did have to upgrade the BIOS, because the version I had really wasn't capable of remaining ACPI compliant if there was 512MB in here. Luckily I found a site that had the upgrade I needed, I flashed the BIOS, and now Windows boots up fine and detects/displays all 512MBs in my System properties.