Upgrading RAM. 1gb ->1.5gb/2gb

My sister just got an HP L2000 (used obviously) for Christmas. Right now the RAM configuration is 1GB (512MB x 2) DDR PC2700 333mhz.

Upgrading: is it worth it?

It's about $100 a pop for a 1GB stick of PC2700. Her options are of course get two 1GB sticks (~$200) and sell her 512MB sticks for about $35 each, OR get one 1GB stick (~$100) and sell her extra 512MB stick for ~$35.

So answer the given question. Will it even make a difference? She multi-tasks like crazy and mainly uses the computer for web-surfing, office apps, listening to music, video stuffs, and light gaming.

Also I was curious, would PC3200 or anything higher work? If so, would it be worth it in that case? Would it be much more expensive?

 

Well light gaming with those other options I would say 1GB should be enough. If it is a little slow you might want to go to 1.5GB, but 2GB is usually used for heavy editing of video and Heavy gaming. Hope this helps!

About the faster ram. Well there is a little bit of a delema there. More RAM is almost always better than less/faster RAM. If that clarifys any.

The expense should be maybe $5-10 more depending on where you buy it. Check out Newegg.com

 

Yeah like Bruce said 1GB will probably be fine. I have 2GB but I game a lot.
Tim

 

Firstly make sure if it is indeed the RAM bottlenecking the performance. Upgrading the RAM might make no difference at all if it was another component causing the slowdowns.

 

That is exactly right. I dont think it would be worth it.

 

There are no slowdowns. She's only had the computer for a day, she just wants to make it the best it can be, and she wants it to last. I think she just read somewhere that RAM is the cheapest, easiest, and most effective speed upgrade for a computer, so now she wants to do it.

 

Yeah the ram is definitely the cheapest thing to upgrade on a laptop. Do you know how fast the hard drive is? Is it 5400rpm or 7200rpm? I think a faster hard drive also helps. But that is a little harder to swap out.
Tim

 

It's an 80GB 5400RPM hard drive. I think anything over 4200RPM is sufficient though. Thanks for all your help everyone!

 

Vista will definately enjoy the 2GB if you're otherwise in for it. And really, upgrading to 1,5GB wouldn't be so much cheaper than flushing it straight to 2GB, so either stick to what you got (and remain on XP based OS), or upgrade to 2GB to ready up for Vista (yes, it only "requires" 512 so 1GB "should suffice" but you'll enjoy it much more with 2GB).

On XP basis, I've only managed to push above 1GB RAM usage with some severe memory hogs (or well, just intensive programs), I doubt anyone will manage over 800-900Mb RAM usage (unless your GPU uses shared memory) with "light gaming" and normal multitasking (that's, winamp, browsers, email applications, office applications) without the use of statistical/mathematical programs or graphics-heavy CADs or 3Ds.

 

Tell her to wait until she feels that the machine becomes too slow. By that time, RAM, HD etc prices will have dropped and it would be a much better time to upgrade.

 

I've got 1.5GB for my laptop and 1gb for my desktop. Only game I play is world of warcraft and counterstrike. When I run games I only use up to 700-800mb (including all process) and there is no lag at all when I alt tab out the game.

I've got plenty running in the background, msn, skype, emule, bitcomet, mirc, ftp server, vnc, avg firewall, bluetooth, teamspeak etc. Sometimes office, adobe acrobat pro, outlook 2003. Even when all on at the same time I don't use up to 1gb.

Best thing to do is fireup all the applications you normally use and check your task manager to see how much physical memory is available (left). If you only have 50-100mb then maybe give it a bit more.

I do feel like a waste on my laptop to put it up to 1.5gb. Cos my hdd can't keep up with it anyway. But since I get free memory so I'll upgrade it to 2gb when I install vista on it.

 

Though, HDD speeds have little to do with gaming performance and such. Vista will, too, be very much more reliant on RAM, and a HDD should do "decent" and won't be the bottleneck unless it's from 1990s or so.

 

IMHO it does help speed up loading the game, also when loading up files. I've got both a 5200rpm and 7200rpm laptop with the same identical model/ specs. The 7200rpm one is much faster at loading games, movies and during windows startup.

For world of warcraft some of the texture/map data files in there are 1-2gb. Therefore in my opinion it does make a difference when loading. But of course once its all loaded into RAM, hdd doesn't make much difference into the gaming performance. But when your playing a mmorpg you do require quite a bit of reading from hdd.

 

Yes, loading times, true. Nothing else, then again. I'd really expect 1GB of RAM to hog you down on the performance of some newer games before the load times between 5400 and 7200 rpm's come as problems. I had 3200 rpm in my old, and yeah, I'm feeling the difference in loads, but to be honest, if you play light games you really won't end up with problems with huge load times, unless your light gaming involves Crysis.

 

Its right now a bad time to upgrade RAM.
Wait for a few months when RAM prices drop, then upgrade.