Looking for opinions on adding RAM to an old system

[Buck94]

I have an older PC Gaming system (early 2004) with an Asus P4C800 motherboard and a Pentium 3.4 Mhz w/ 800Mhz FSB. The system also has two 512M RAM slots for a total of 1GB of RAM. I have already upgraded the video card to a RADEON x1650.

I was wondering what benefit I would get from adding/changing (not sure if the existing memory has to be replaced or added) the RAM to two 1GB cards for a total of 2GB of RAM.

Thanks in advance for any ideas/opinions.

 

[Dryden]

What OS? XP or Vista?

I would encourage going to 2 1Gb DDR-400 regardless, you will see a huge improvement.

If it's that old you might want to look at the hard drive too. Is it SATA or parallel?

 

[Buck94]

Thanks Dryden,
It has XP Pro and the HD is an 80GB SATA drive.

I saw that NewEgg had the memory for under $100 (Corsair is the brand).

 

[Buckeneye]

Ya know, you can pick up DDR500 (if the board supports it) the only problem is last I checked, it was ridiculously expensive.

One thing you have to know about Netburst, timings and latency do not matter. Its shear brute force architecture, the more of it and the faster is the better.

I wish I still had my old DDR match-ups, i'm sure I could pair you a couple 1GB's... alas, those days are over :(

P.S. Question, is your core a Northwood or Prescott ?

 

[Dryden]

Thanks Dryden,
It has XP Pro and the HD is an 80GB SATA drive.

I saw that NewEgg had the memory for under $100 (Corsair is the brand).

For the P4C800, I'd recommend choosing between the Corsair, GeiL, or mushkin. All three are available through NewEgg, and each run steady under the ASUS boards.