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I have a Windows Vista Home Premium PC. It needs 2 new RAM chips, but I do not know what I should get. Does anyone know what is under $100 and is really good?

More PC info

Windows Vista Home Premium, Compaq Presario SR5710F, Service Pack 2, 3 GB memory, 250 GB Hard Drive, AMD Anthlon X2 4450e Dual-Core processor,

I do a lot of gaming on this PC, but I really want less expensive, good card(s). I do know it wasn't originally built for gaming, but I can't even use it until the RAM/memory cards are replaced

Chris Menard
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1 Answers1

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Your computer's RAM cannot be significantly upgraded. Crucial's memory finder reports, and HP's support page agrees that your computer is limited to 4 GB of RAM. Further, you appear to be running a 32-bit version of Windows, which for technical reasons is limited to about 3.25 GB of RAM.

If you really want to do this, I recommend figuring out which of the two sticks of memory in your computer is the 1 GB one, and replacing it with a Crucial 2 GB PC2-6400 stick for $27. I don't have experience with this particular product, but I've had good luck with Crucial memory upgrades for older computers, and importantly, they guarantee compatibility.

If you upgrade, you'll also want to switch to a 64-bit operating system to get access to all your RAM. Instructions on doing so are beyond the scope of this site, but you may be able to get useful information on SuperUser.

Community
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Mark
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    Note that due to the fact that pointers and longs are twice the size (64bit instead of 32bit) and memory accesses have to be aligned at 8-byte boundaries, 64bit software may use ~30% more memory than 32bit software. So, depending on your actual usage, while with a 32bit OS you can only use 3.25GB, you might actually have less available memory with a 64bit OS that can access all 4GB. – Jörg W Mittag Nov 26 '15 at 09:41
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    @JörgWMittag While this might be true, it is extremely unlike that a 64 bit executable will use a significant amount of memory compare to the equivelant 32 bit executable. Most data is 32 bit integers or 64 bit floats (or an array of either) and a few pointers; the real change would be the pointer size, which will -likely- increase from 32 to 64 bit. 30% or even 5% is a massive increase compare to what should be expected. – Clearer Nov 26 '15 at 11:48