3GHZ P4 RAM?

[cjb1118]

I have just got a new PC(dell) and it has a 3ghz P4 800mhz FSB.

I only bought it with 256mb RAM (v bad idea).

I wanna upgrade to 512mb or 1gb, should i get 2 sticks of 256mb/512mb 400mhz? Or something else?

Thanks
Chris

[pixel]

Well, first of all, find out if your motherboard has dual channel memory slots.

If it does you need to buy 2x256MB sticks or 2x512MB sticks depending on what your total amount of RAM you want is. (For dual channel the sticks need to be the same specification to make sure they work together.)

If your motherboard does not have dual channel memory buying just one stick should suffice because they will not work simultaneously.

It is your choice for 512MB or 1GB. I have 1GB of RAM, but find even with many vid editing programs open I only hit 300MB usage when I bring up task mananger, so 512MB will do, but if you can afford it 1GB won't hurt.

And yes it should be 400MHz sticks you get (PC3200).

With the fact that you have an 800MHz P4 the motherboard probably does have dual channel slots because I think only chipsets above the 845 support the 800MHz P4 and also have dual channel slots. So try to get 2 matching sticks because even if your motherboard doesn't have dual channel both sticks will work anyway.