Hi,
I recently bought a Dell Inspiron 530 desktop, Q6600 Core Duo 2.4gHz, 8MB L2 cache, 1066FSB through Dell Outlet. It came with 2 DIMMS of 1 gig each in slot 1 and slot 3 (4 slots total). The OEM mem is DDR2 Non-ECC SDRAM 800MHz. This computer runs XP Pro.
I want to upgrade the Ram to 4 Gigs, and have been researching online, but need a bit of advice.
1) Should I add two 1 gig sticks to go with the two OEM sticks, or can I gain more performance (enough that it is worthwhile), by removing the two OEM sticks and replacing it with four 1-gig sticks of a higher performance memory?
2) In either scenario -- a) sticking with the 2 OEM sticks and adding 2 sticks, or b) replacing OEM with 4 higher perf sticks, please advise as to what mem sticks -- brand name plus specs etc., you would recommend.
3) If I add two DIMM's to my existing two DIMM's, should I put the two new DIMM's in slots 2 & 4 (from factory, OEM sticks are in slots 1 & 3)? Or should the two OEM sticks be moved to two adjacent slots, and if so, slots 1 & 2, or slots 3 & 4? (leaving room for the newer ram in the remaining slots)
4) With DDR3 coming out, are quicker price drops in DDR2 expected soon, and if true, would I be better off to wait a month or two to take advantage of likely significant price savings to upgrade?
I am not a gamer, but I like to get the best and fastest performance I can out of my machines, but with stability and reliability, as I spend many hours on my machine. I am not interested in overclocking. I have been shopping around online, at Newegg and elsewhere. One brand I was looking at was Kingston HyperX, which seems to review well as hi-performance with stability. I also found that at Kingston's web site, they recommend ram for my particular machine, but will not state who the manufacturer is, and they don't list the Quad Core processor, so it may not be the proper recommendation anyway.
This is a very informative forum, so thanks for letting me become a member! And thanks in advance for any assistance!
I recently bought a Dell Inspiron 530 desktop, Q6600 Core Duo 2.4gHz, 8MB L2 cache, 1066FSB through Dell Outlet. It came with 2 DIMMS of 1 gig each in slot 1 and slot 3 (4 slots total). The OEM mem is DDR2 Non-ECC SDRAM 800MHz. This computer runs XP Pro.
I want to upgrade the Ram to 4 Gigs, and have been researching online, but need a bit of advice.
1) Should I add two 1 gig sticks to go with the two OEM sticks, or can I gain more performance (enough that it is worthwhile), by removing the two OEM sticks and replacing it with four 1-gig sticks of a higher performance memory?
2) In either scenario -- a) sticking with the 2 OEM sticks and adding 2 sticks, or b) replacing OEM with 4 higher perf sticks, please advise as to what mem sticks -- brand name plus specs etc., you would recommend.
3) If I add two DIMM's to my existing two DIMM's, should I put the two new DIMM's in slots 2 & 4 (from factory, OEM sticks are in slots 1 & 3)? Or should the two OEM sticks be moved to two adjacent slots, and if so, slots 1 & 2, or slots 3 & 4? (leaving room for the newer ram in the remaining slots)
4) With DDR3 coming out, are quicker price drops in DDR2 expected soon, and if true, would I be better off to wait a month or two to take advantage of likely significant price savings to upgrade?
I am not a gamer, but I like to get the best and fastest performance I can out of my machines, but with stability and reliability, as I spend many hours on my machine. I am not interested in overclocking. I have been shopping around online, at Newegg and elsewhere. One brand I was looking at was Kingston HyperX, which seems to review well as hi-performance with stability. I also found that at Kingston's web site, they recommend ram for my particular machine, but will not state who the manufacturer is, and they don't list the Quad Core processor, so it may not be the proper recommendation anyway.
This is a very informative forum, so thanks for letting me become a member! And thanks in advance for any assistance!