Advice On RAM upgrade

I'm thinking of upgrading my inspiron 8100 from 256 to 512MB. Will I see a big difference. I play games quite a bit on my laptop, and I've a decent a GPU and an okay processor. Although the graphics are flawless, there is still a bit of lag when a lot is going on in the image. ie: when I fire my weapon or an explosion in the game. Will upgrading make a big difference, and are there any software problems with things like drivers when I install the extra ram? And do the RAM sticks need to be made by the same company. If I order another stick of 256Mb RAM, it'll probably be form Kingston or Crucial, but the RAM stick of 256MB I've got now is made by infineon.

Any feedback would be good, Thanks
Mayz

 

Well, 256 to 512 usually yields a pretty noticeable improvement in performance. As far as gaming improvement, I'm not the one to ask. I would say that it would make some difference though.

The sticks don't need to be the same brand, as long as they're the same bus speed. However, if one has quicker timings, then the machine will default to the lower timings.

 

yea you will see a performance increase even in gaming i had a desktop wiht 256mb ram then got another 256 ram stick and i got higher fps on my games and could set them on higher resolutions

 

oh cool...looks like it's a worthwhile upgrade. But tupa, what does speed bus mean? I havent'e come accross that before...

 

The bus speed refers to the speed of the RAM, for instance on my M60, it has 533MHz bus speed, so you will have to make sure and get the correct speed of RAM for your 8100. Your 8100 needs 144 pin PC133 SO-DIMM. That upgrade will help out your notebook quite a bit, as you will be maxing out your RAM at 512MB.

Matt

 

cool thanks Matt....I think I'll go on to the Kingston website to look up the specific model, I actually need. I don't want to make a mistake and screw up my laptop, but will there be any software problems after I've installed the RAM or will Windows automatically detect and configure the extra RAM?

 

If there are no conflicts (hardware), windows will automatically get the new configuration from the BIOS and update what needs updating.

Note: you page file will increase from 384MB to 768MB, cause windows always sets it to 1.5x the amount of RAM. Just thought I'd let you know so you wouldn't think something wrong has happened when your HDD free space decreases.

 

will it decrease a sunstantial amount - the HDD space. cause I've got a 40 gig HDD

 

As I mentioned, page file will grow from 384 to 768MB. ie you will lose 384MB of your HDD space when you upgrade ... that's it.

 

oh okay....I'm suprised how complicated a simple RAM upgrade can be!