Hi, Some time back, I had questions about RAM and I got clarifications from computing.net users. See the post below. http://www.computing.net/answers/ha... My PC had two 512MB RAM chips of PC24300. After getting the clarifications, I bought two 1 GB PC24200 RAM chips from kingston.com and installed them in my PC. After installing this, I am not seeing any noticeable improvement in the performance. I assume upgrading from 1GB to 3GB should boost the performance to a greater extent, but it doesn't look so now. Moreover, my PC is now freezing some times and I had to do a hard reboot whenever it freezes. I ran memtest on the RAM and it doesn't find any problems. May be it is loose connection or something like that? Or may be speed issue between the PC24200 and PC24300 RAMs? or may be the RAM chips are getting overheated and I need a cooling fan? Can some one guide me how to trace the problem? The paging file size recommendation is usually 1.5 times of RAM for a PC, but I did not change my paging file size yet after upgrading my RAM, but planning to do so today. Thanks in advance, Balaji.

The performance would only increase IF there were a need for more memory to perform the tasks at hand. 1GB is sufficient to run WinXP. The extra RAM would only help if running memory intensive applications. What tasks are you performing when you don't see any increase in speed? 4200 and 4300 are both the same RAM. Just different labeling as the actual speed falls between the two. Did you use Kingston's recommended RAM? OEM computers are sometimes tweaked for certain specs on the RAM. Not necessarily better specs either. Inconsistencies MIGHT account for the occasional freezing. It is usually best to allow Windows to set the page file size. You could try running memtest86 on the RAM.

Increasing RAM brings you into the law of diminishing returns. You dont get the same improvement in performance for each megabyte of RAM you install. The improvement gets less and less until you reach a stage were there is no improvement at all. When you reach that stage is dependant on what you are using the RAM for. I agree, let Windows set the page file size itself. This 1.5 times RAM was really only applicable with Windows 98 were memory management was not as good as it is in Windows XP. Stuart

Hi, Thanks for the responses. I am not using my PC for running "heavy processes" like graphical games or Adobe photoshop etc. My normal tasks include the following. 1. Tasks with Explorer (like copy, paste etc) 2. Video format conversion (from VOB to AVI etc) 3. Install new free softwares just to try. Thanks, Balaji.

I agree that 3GB is over kill. I heavily multitask including Photoshoping large images and I find 1GB is enough. You would only need more if your running the latest games or doing some 3D rendering or something along those lines. I can page up to about 1GB and the PC remains pretty responsive. XP will page idle applications no matter how much memory you have. Vista has a higher overhead and manages memory differently I believe (keeps physical memory full - more like Linux), which is why 2GB is recommended. I doubt your Virtual memory settings are responsible for freezing. I have heard that un-matched memory can cause problems on some mobos. Have you tried running with just the two new 1GB sticks, without the old ones?

Hi, Thanks for the reply. I did not try removing the old sticks. I am going to try the following options one by one. 1. Clean the RAM chips and mobo with isoprophyl alocohol. 2. Remove the new chips one by one and see if the PC freezes again. 3. Remove the old chips both at once and see if the PC freezes again. 4. Re-install windows (not necessary, but I got the trojan virusremover 2009 couple of weeks back. Though I removed it, I still suspect whether it would have tampered any windows system files). Probably I will try sfc first. Thanks, Balaji. Thanks, Balaji.