Entry-level system: which memory

[palantir]

Greetings

Greetings
I'm about to upgrade my system to edit camcorder DV to DVD: Funds is low, so I'm on a
tight budget.....

Asrock SiS 746 fx Motherboard
Athlon XP2200+
Lucent firewire port
Pioneer 106 DVD writer

Should this do the business, and which memory should I fit ?.... Pc 2100,
2700 or 3200 (512mb).

I'd be grateful for any advice

Pete

[thing914]

You need to get whatever the motherboard requires, don't guess or you could end up buying incompatible.

pc2100 has been around awhile and if this is a new mobo it probably doesn't use it. (my 2 year old mobo used that).

pc2700 is newer and backward compatible with pc2100 (I just added a 256m stick to my original 256k pc2100 stick, works fine. pc2700 is now cheaper than the older 2100)

You do want at least 512m as you listed.

[tigerman8u]

Greetings

Greetings
I'm about to upgrade my system to edit camcorder DV to DVD: Funds is low, so I'm on a
tight budget.....

Asrock SiS 746 fx Motherboard
Athlon XP2200+
Lucent firewire port
Pioneer 106 DVD writer

Should this do the business, and which memory should I fit ?.... Pc 2100,
2700 or 3200 (512mb).

I'd be grateful for any advice

Pete

read this http://www.ocworkbench.com/2003/sis/746fxref/sis746fx-1.htm

seeing that your system supports PC 3200 (DDR400) I would go with the faster ram (if your budget permits) for speed and for future upgrades. Hope this helps.

[overloaded_ide]

Go with high quality ram first, then the fastest you can afford!

It basically all works. faster ram falls back for slower system boards, and faster system boards will fall back to the slower ram speed. So basicaly you can use any speed 2100 and up and faster being better till you reach the max speed the board supports. You can even get faster than the board supports, but then the ram falls back to the slower speed anyway.

DDR is DDR and works with a DDR system board
Often I buy a cheap 128mb slow stick to get a system running, then add the high priced fast 512 latter. Like for a file server I don't need any more than that, but then If I want to really use the system I do need more.

Main thing is you get good ram! Ram errors with cheap junk will cause all kinds of problems if they start occuring, so get high quality ram!

If you have to make a choice, it is better to be slow and error free than to be fast and crash all the time!!!

[SaSi]

If you are on a tight budget, buy high quality RAM. This way you won't have to throw it away.

I bought 2x512 DDR 333 dims 10 months ago. At first, Win2000 woudn't even install. Once the system operated for a day or so, Windows 2000 installed and crashed with memory errors. I ended up slowing RAM speed to 266 and increasing RAM voltage at 1.7V to make it run stable.

512Mb is more than enough for what you want to achieve. Buy a single DIMM (not 2x256). In most motherboards it's faster and it's cheaper. The only exceptions are the new dual channel motherboards that can use dual DIMMs at twice the speed. Check with your motherboard manual.

[dwill123]

Stay away from the no-name 'value' ram. Look for the quality stuff from names like Kingston, Crucial, Corsair and Mushkin. Always look for mb manufacturer's compatibility charts.