Is this the correct type of ram???

[brownman85]

I just bought an hp m7757c for college and i've been really satisfied with it. However, when using some of the programs for school (photoshop, Catia, Pro-E), the computer usage gets close to 75% in the task manager and the memory gets up to 80%.

Currently, it has
"2 GB (shared) DDR2 SDRAM PC2-4200 (2 x 1024 MB), upgradeable to 4 GB (4 x 1024 MB)"

I was going to upgrade it to 4gb of ram and was only able to find DDR2 Ram PC2-4200 instead of "sdram". Are they the same? Also, if i was to upgrade it to a 4 GB, can i buy just additional 2 1-gB ram rather than buying the entire set? I'm asking this just to know if it will conflict with what's in there already. Sorry if it sounds stupid, not really too knowledgeable when it comes to this kind of stuff.

Is this the correct section i am looking at
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?Recs=10&Nav=|c:1554|c:1647|c:1649|&Sort=4

my budget it around $120-170

 

[Cromewell]

was only able to find DDR2 Ram PC2-4200 instead of "sdram". Are they the same?

Yes they are the same and you can buy any other RAM you want, you don't have to buy 4 new sticks of RAM. 2GB should be more than enough for most tasks, have you disabled/removed any unwanted 'bonus' software that comes with HP (and other OEM systems)?