Hi my friend has a pc that i built for him a few year ago the specification is as follows Intel Pentium 3 550Mhz 100Mhz Processor 192MB PC100 (3X64MB) SDRAM 20GB ATA100 Hard Drive 250W ATX Case 52X CD-ROM Drive MSI 6163 Pro Slot 1 Motherboard 32MB TNT 2 M64 Graphics Card Anyways my friend wants a cheap upgrade to give him bit of umhp! so i found 768MB PC133 sdram in my cupboard from my old pc it is working in one of my old machine's however will it show as 256mb or 128mb in this machine it's got 16 chips on both sides 16*16=256mb so any help oh also he's buying a new 350w gaming case w/lights to make it look better and a cheapo voodoo 5500 64mb graphics for to finish it off I Got A Athlon 2200+ 512MB PC133 SDRAM 80Gb Hard Drive 64MB Geforce 3 TI500 Syntax SV266A 2MBPS Broadband Windows XP MCE 2005

Are you sure that's a 768MB DIMM? I have never heard of that size DIMM. Usually they have always been 128, 256, 512, etc. That chip most likely is a 256MB DIMM and your old computer probably has another 512MB DIMM along side it. Mobo-PCChips M960GV v3.0A Video-Radeon ATI 9550 256MB DDR AGP Sound-Sound Blaster Live! Platinum 5.0

Your post was as clear as mud. I assume you mean you tried 3 - 256mb PC133 modules in your friend's computer, and each reads as only 128mb or isn't recognized at all. The ram you are trying to use is incompatible with his mboard. And that old mboard can probably only use 128mb modules max in each slot. Manual is here if you don't have it: http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/download/dld/spt_dld_detail.php?UID=113&kind=1 If he's using Win ME or less he probably won't see any noticeable improvement with more ram than he has now - but a faster CPU would help a lot, perhaps a socket 370 one on a slotket card. If he is using XP, this mboard will run much better in Win ME or less, but if he insists on using XP, a minumum of 256mb of ram is needed in order for XP to run as it should. Regarding what ram he needs to use.... See my posts in this, particularly the second last one: http://www.computing.net/hardware/wwwboard/forum/41305.html

i have a pentium 2 400mhz system which has one stick of 256mb ram in it and it recognises it fine. It is double sided ram, I know some older systems have trouble with 256mb ram sticks and it tends to be more of a problem, as I undersstand it, if they are single sided 256mb ram sticks as the computer cant handle the amount of ram in each chip on the ram stick

"i have a pentium 2 400mhz system which has one stick of 256mb ram in it and it recognises it fine." Ram compatibility varies a great deal - it working in one mboord does not mean it will necessarily work in another model. "It is double sided ram, I know some older systems have trouble with 256mb ram sticks and it tends to be more of a problem, as I undersstand it, if they are single sided 256mb ram sticks as the computer cant handle the amount of ram in each chip on the ram stick" That's can be all or part of the problem, but it can be a lot more complicted than that.

What he needs is more than halfway to a new computer. Mobo, cpu, memory, video. Have him budget more.

"What he needs is more than halfway to a new computer. Mobo, cpu, memory, video. Have him budget more." Just more ram would do for XP, or just a faster cpu for Win ME or below. Upgrading the video card won't speed it up much, but he would have more resolutions to choose from and possibly more colors at the higher resolutions - if he doesn't need either of those, he doesn't need a video card.