I just purchased a 2G.B.RAM kit from Crucial and after installnig it according to the directions for DDR2 ,in pairs putting the sticks in Dimm1&Dimm2,plus I have another Gig of RAM with 2 sticks of 512M.B.DDR2 PC5300 in slot 3&4 ! I have noticed on a sperate LCD display that monitors RSS feeds and also system spec's that almost all of the time I have over 2 G.B. of RAM available. Is there a setting in the boot.ini file I should change to help the system to utilize the installed RAM ? Or any other tweak that would help the O/S WinXP Pro SP2 ? I will be browsing the internet with TV on using my ATI TV Wonder Elite ,the RSS Feed application running the backlite LCD screen, my anti virus suite running many other apps running and with all that going on still have over 2 Gig's available RAM . I was hoping that a increase in the speed would be noticable ,yet I cant say I notice any increase at all ! Any and all advice thankfully accepted !!
Take Care Nick

Extra RAM is like extra horsepower in your car. If it isn't needed then it is useless. That said, how much RAM is showing when doing nothing? The difference is what you are actually using. If you are not using memory intensive programs then 4 GB is probably overkill. If you run out of RAM the computer then uses the Windows swap file. The swap file if much slower than RAM so you would see a difference then.

Just out of curiousity, how much did you pay for the 2GB kit? I'm also curious as to why your 512MB sticks were in 3-4 instead of 1-2...or did you move them when you installed the new RAM?

If you did't notice a speed increase after the upgrade, it's probably because you don't need that much RAM...few of us do. If you have over 2GB available, I would think that would be seen as a good thing.

Hi Jam,
I paid only $45.00 & $6.00 S&H for the 2 G.B. kit ! I purchased it from Crucial ! My memory slots where all full with 512M.B.x4 RAM sticks. When reading the installation guide it said the put the higher density RAM in matching pairs in slot 1 & 2 ! I had originially recieved my system with 1 G.B. of RAM 2 x 512M.B. sticks of DDR2 PC5300 ,I then purchased a additionial G.B. of 2 more matching RAM sticks from Dell ! I believe I paid more for that upgrade then this last one with the 2 G.B. Kit! Thats what actually sold me on buying more RAM the prices have come down so much ,and I guess its the old more is better mentality ? As I stated earlier it appears I really did not need this RAM because I always seem to have over 2 G.B.'s availble ,however its not a big deal ,I may need it with a certain game I install etc. All the documentation I read said WindowsXP does not use more then 3 G.B. in some cases maybe 3.5 G.B.'s of RAM ,that would seem like a odd amount of total RAM to install ? Thanks for the reply ,good hearing from you !
Take Care Nick

"I paid only $45.00 & $6.00 S&H for the 2 G.B. kit ! I purchased it from Crucial !"

Yeah, I knew there'd be a premium since you bought directly from Crucial. Many sites sell Crucial 2GB kits for about $30.

I thought you only had 1GB (2 x 512MB) to start with, but you actually had 2GB (4 x 512MB) already & decided that wasn't enough? I'm fairly sure if you had posted you intentions BEFORE you bought the RAM, the majority would have told you it's an unnecessary upgrade.

My system came from Dell with 1 G.B. of memory 2x512M.B. sticks ,I them upgraded it 1 more G.B. for a total of 2 G.B. 4x512M.B. DDR2 PC5300 ! Then for some reason out of nowhere I figured I would install the max amount of RAM that WinXP will reconize ,as you stated it was not a nessasary upgrade I alsways have just over 2G.B. of RAM available on my system and thats with several apps running a few of them use alot of resources ! Thanks I appreciate your input !
Take Care ,Nick