Memory options...

Hello all. New to the forum. Had a quick question...

I have a toshiba satellite M35x-s149 1.5ghz celeron with 256mb ddr 333 (pc2700) and I need to upgrade. I want to go with a single 1gig stick to leave the other slot for another... can i go from the ddr 333 pc2700 type ram to the ddr2 667 pc5300? also, with the 1.5ghz celeron crap i have, would it even be worth going from 1 to 2 gigs later, if not i might as well get 2 512's right? thanks in advance everyone.

 

DDR2 ram is NOT backwards compatible with DDR ram.

I would go for 1x1gb.

Look in the hot ram deals thread for great prices on ram.

 

Yea! How old is notebook? Or is it a desktop?

 

thanks for the reply guys. the satellite is i believe a 04 model. out of the hot ram deals thread, what would be the best (performance wise) upgrade in ram for my system? thanks again

 

My question is, since i have a stick of 256 ddr 333 2700 in there, do i have to get ram with the ddr 333 2700 label? or is there somthing better that will fit in the slot?

 

To answer your question about being worth upgrading to 2GB in the future, I have to say an emphatic YES. Having more memory never hurts, regardless of the processor that you have. The only thing that you have to consider with CPU/Memory combos is bottlenecks in the data stream frequency. I believe a 2004 Celeron had an FSB of <500MHz, so you won't have any real bottlenecks between your memory and your CPU if you buy the DDR333 RAM.

Once again, the size of your RAM is not an issue when determining bottlenecks, and it is ALWAYS handy to have some extra RAM capacity.

 

Thanks larry. the only reason i asked is because my friend said to get the "fastest" gig stick ram i could, so i thought i should go with somthing rated higher than 333... or do i have this all wrong?

 

Your friend is correct, to a certain degree. You don't want to get RAM that is rated much higher than 400MHz (the FSB of your CPU) because it would cause a bottleneck in your CPU. If you could tell me the motherboard chipset of your notebook, I could tell you if you should buy DDR333 or DDR400 RAM.

 

No worries, I found your chipset. It is the Intel 855GM. Apparently, it was first introduced with only DDR266 support, but was upgraded in 2003 to handle DDR333. I'm assuming what you have is the upgraded version, by virtue of the 256MB of DDR333 already in it. Thus, anything higher than what you already have will not give you any performance advantages whatsoever. I'd say get a stick of 1GB DDR333 with a view to add another 1GB later.

 

where would i find that? i have an 04 satelite m35x-s149 1.5 ghz celeron m but where do i find the motherboard chipset

 

Sweet, thanks for the help man.

 

I believe CPU-Z and PC wizard(also tells you other information about your system/hardware) tells you what chipset you have as well as other information.