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2Gb RAM upgrade - is it worth doing from 1Gb?

post #1 of 20
11/2/05 at 11:03am
Thread Starter 
OK, so I have a 1gb (2x512mb) Inspiron 9300 - it's not slow by any means!

I just wanted to know if it's worth spending £190 here in the UK, to upgrade to 2x1Gb modules?

I am into photo editing, and just bought Far Cry (well it was only £9.99! - I'm a little behind in my gaming, I know!).

If anyone has already upgraded, does it make a noticable difference in everyday use?

Thanks for your help.
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post #2 of 20
11/2/05 at 11:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by kev_gordon
OK, so I have a 1gb (2x512mb) Inspiron 9300 - it's not slow by any means!

I just wanted to know if it's worth spending £190 here in the UK, to upgrade to 2x1Gb modules?

I am into photo editing, and just bought Far Cry (well it was only £9.99! - I'm a little behind in my gaming, I know!).

If anyone has already upgraded, does it make a noticable difference in everyday use?

Thanks for your help.
1 Gig used to be the sweet spot for gaming . If you plan to play a lot of the newer games then yes you will benifit. 2 Gigs is the sweet spot
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post #3 of 20
11/2/05 at 11:40am
Far Cry doesn't need more then 1GB but if you start playing some of the newer games like BF2 then the 2GB will help. You'll just have to look and see how much RAM your useing in the work you do and decide if you need it. Not everyone needs 2GB of RAM.
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post #4 of 20
11/2/05 at 1:55pm
BF 2, and Fear are the only games I can think of that would really need 2 gigs, so no I dont think its worth it, especially because you would have to replace both sticks you have know. Buying 1 one gig stick might be worth it though for a total of 1.5 gigs.
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post #5 of 20
11/2/05 at 2:01pm
this should help http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=110548
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post #6 of 20
11/2/05 at 3:05pm
2GB in BF2 is a must if you play on all-high, or even the ultra-high custom setting :-)
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post #7 of 20
11/2/05 at 4:14pm
isn't that like $400 USD? Couldn't you order 1gb of ram in the states for around $100 USD.
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post #8 of 20
11/2/05 at 10:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by blix188
isn't that like $400 USD? Couldn't you order 1gb of ram in the states for around $100 USD.
yes. you can get 1GB of Transend, or whatever the company is, PC2-4200 RAM for about $91 on NewEgg.com. I haven't heard much about it, but its the cheapest.
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post #9 of 20
11/3/05 at 4:37am
I got my 2 Gigs for just under $200. They are Transcend and work great. BF2 runs very nice with all high settings.
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post #10 of 20
11/3/05 at 5:35am
bf2 is the reason i went to 2 gigs...
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post #11 of 20
11/3/05 at 5:37am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fidget
bf2 is the reason i went to 2 gigs...
why is your auto OC such a small improvement? can you get it any higher?
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post #12 of 20
11/3/05 at 5:50am
Quote:
Originally Posted by HamTard
why is your auto OC such a small improvement? can you get it any higher?
probably if i wanted to but imm not going to manually OC my machine, i have broken the 7000 mark and that is good enough for me
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post #13 of 20
11/3/05 at 6:55am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by blix188
isn't that like $400 USD? Couldn't you order 1gb of ram in the states for around $100 USD.
Now that's a great idea! Can anyone suggest any internet retailers selling Inspiron memory that will ship to the UK?

I've only tried Newegg, as that's the one I keep hearing about, so far and they don't.

If people can make some suggestions of any good shops I can try, I'll check out the international shipping terms.
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post #14 of 20
11/3/05 at 7:09am
If you look on eBay, there are lots of people selling new modules for substantially less than £190.
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post #15 of 20
11/3/05 at 8:32am
Thread Starter 
Well, I can't see any for that price at the moment. Looking at ebay.co.uk, 1Gb sticks are about £110 -£120 each, so for 2Gb it's £220-£240 + P+P.

US ebay sellers have 2x1Gb sticks at about $250 inc P&P, that's with me adding about $25 on top for international postage.

That's about £140 at current exchange rates!

Do we live in a rip-off nation or what!?
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post #16 of 20
11/3/05 at 8:46am
I'm afraid I can't see where you see the £110-£120. They are £52-£94 each.

http://search.ebay.co.uk//search/sea...gb+ddr2+sodimm

But yes, we do live in a rip-off nation!
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post #17 of 20
11/3/05 at 11:37am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tentonine
I'm afraid I can't see where you see the £110-£120. They are £52-£94 each.

http://search.ebay.co.uk//search/sea...gb+ddr2+sodimm

But yes, we do live in a rip-off nation!

Aaaaah! Sweet! I was of course being a total dumbass and searching for 'Inspiron memory'. I should have thought to search more generically!

Thanks for your help. Looks like I'll be getting 2Gb of RAM then, £110 inc P&P. Marvelous!
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post #18 of 20
11/3/05 at 3:16pm
G'day Kev,

For what iit is worth if your running XP (or Win 2003) Microsoft wrote it just as they did back in the old DOS days. Remember the Y2K scare because DOS was written with little view to the future?

Memory was soooo expensive (until recent times) that Microsoft use a hidden file (right click > properties) - which usually takes up up to 2 gig's or more of space on the harddrive, called the pagefile.sys.

EVER wondered why it is that a PC or Notebook suddenly goes into a flury of harddrive activity even though nothing appeared to be happening, well that is Windows resizing or playing around with the pagefile.

Normally Windows installs it as a variable size but you can improve system performance just by setting it ar a fixed size. Windows XP was written with a pagefile if the memory was LESS than 2Gb in size. So as the XPS and 9300 only have a max of 2Gb of ram, so with 2 GB on board windows will fly and other programs should do so to but ehy'll trade off against each other. you may even be able to get rid of the pagefile without degrading system performance.
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post #19 of 20
11/3/05 at 3:33pm
Sorry Proud9300_OZie but you WILL degrading system performance by removing the pagefile regardless of how much RAM you have. MS Windows does need and use the pagefile and problems will arise if it's removed. If you have 1GB to 2GBs of RAM to simply set the pagefile manually to a smaller size. Try something like 500MB to 1500MB which should be fine for most. I've never seen a system run stable or faster by completely removing the pagefile.
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post #20 of 20
11/4/05 at 7:23am
Thread Starter 
Hey thanks for your replies guys,especially to tentonine for providing the search link on ebay.

I have just bought and paid for my 2Gb of RAM on eBay, for £110 all in.

Whether or not it makes a huge difference now it doesnt really matter for that much, and I'm sure it will all come good for when I install Win Vista.
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