Noob has video card, memory question
 

I just bought a Dell Dimension 2400 with 256MB Shared DDR SDRAM at 333MHz. I want to add a decent video card in a little while. Does shared memory prevent me from doing this? I heard that this kind of system makes it hard to add a video card later. I also heard I could just add more memory to improve the video performance. What is the best thing to do?

Also, when buying memory is it vital to buy memory that's identical to what comes with the computer?

Thanks!

For part two, it's important to buy the same pieces of RAM (and not necessarily the ones that came with your computer, just as long as they match.) From what I've been told, the reason for this is that while technically not slower, if you mis-match pieces, the higher-performing one will only go as fast as the slower performing one.

Believe it or not, I've only heard of shared memory today, but it seems like if you had a video card with enough memory, you wouldn't really use any of the Shared Ram's power. If anything, I would just buy one (or two) sticks of 512 RAM, NOT SHARED, if you're looking to buying a Video Card too. I'm guessing the Shared RAM is something built into the Chips, not the Motherboard, so it can be bypassed by just buying unShared Ram.

I'm still amazed computer companies still only put 256 MB of RAM on some computers, considering Windows XP itself needs 128, there goes half your supply.

a quick gis tells me the Dimension 2400 has no AGP slot ...

if that's the case, you're SOL. :|

(but add more mem anyways, 256 is rediculous).

Can't I use the PCI slot? Hope so...

you can use a PCI video card, instead of the onboard video.

the memory is preferred to be the same spec, but doesn't have to be the same brand.

u can use pci but pci dont work near as well as agp does. They say PCI bottlenecks ur video card

You can still get a decent PCI video card, what do you plan on doing with the system, gaming? Or video editing?, or what. If you’re into gaming your SOL, but if you just want a better card you do have some options.

The Radeon 9200 comes in PCI, as does the NVIDIA 5200.

Let us know what you are looking to get out of this upgrade so we can try and suit your needs.

~Dil




Also add more memory no matter what.

from the specs it looks like it has 2 slots for memory, and the configurations show that it comes with 256 or 512, I would hope that you have 1 stick of 256 not 2 sticks of 128. Open it and check if you can. The memory should be rated at 333 so that means pc2700. You can use a faster set but it will still only be clocked at 333, just don’t use a chip rated at anything slower then 333. I would recommend getting a stick of 512mb that will put you to 768 which is more then enough for normal people (I still run 512mb till my budget increases) as for brand, i like Kingston, I’ve never had trouble and they have a life time warranty.

PCI
 

PCI bandwidth is not so much an issue anymore... You are right when you say that PCI (limited to 133MB/s) has less theoretical bandwitdh versus AGP (in 8x mode peaks to 2128MB/s). The real issue is finding a current PCI video card that can talk all of the latest video languages (Nvidia C, directx 9, etc)

When AGP started to surpass PCI as the mainstream graphics port, the developement of PCI vid cards came to a halt. Currently the best you'll likely find is a PCI based Nvidia Chipset FX5200. AFAIK that is the most recent PCI vid card from nvidia, and it will support Directx 9, with Vertex and Pixel Shader 2.0. Bear in mind that this will not generally touch the performance of the higher end AGP, or PCI-Express cards on the market today... it will be one of, if not the fasted PCI card you can put in your system.

Well, I want the upgrade for gaming, but not necessarily the latest and greatest games. Sounds like I'm just going to have to settle for the PCI card for now. Oh well.

your kind of between a rock and a hard place, to get any good performing video card, you will need a new system. look into the 5200 and the 9200, they are the 2 most powerful pci cards i can think of. it will be better then what you have, but not quite as much as i think you want for gamming,

what games were you planning on playing?

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...102-434&depa=1
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...145-087&depa=1

if i was you i would look into upgrating your motherboard. if you are going to upgrade your comp u should start off at the biggest problem. upgrade motherboard and then upgrade ram and video. then u could go with a nice agp video card and it will cost less and perform better than any pci card. but thats just what i would do.

when i upgraded from 256 ram to 768 i seen a huge upgrade. 256 ram just dont cut it at all

My current computer is 6 years old, so I'm really behind on PC games. I do most of my gaming on my PS2. But, I loved Warcraft 2 so I can't wait to play Warcraft 3. So that kinda describes what I'm looking at playing - games 1 to 2 years old.

Thanks for all the help everybody. I've been way out of the loop for a while.

Menoman,

Since this computer has integrated video, could I get any improvement in the video area by adding more RAM?

I did an upgrade just like this for a friend. Bought a nice PCI card on Ebay for a fairly cheap price and also boosted the system RAM as well. That cheapo Compaq computer runs not too bad now and can handle more demanding games.

Adding more system RAM may help it run faster but getting a decent PCI card like a Radeon is what your really need. It's all about the onboard RAM that's built into the card and how much faster it can process it's own data rather than sending it back and forth to your system RAM.

Onboard (hardwired) videocards are cheap by their very nature. They add them in to cut their manufacture costs and to save space, not because it's the best performance choice.

Yes and no, by adding more ram you will have a system with more memory to deal with the game, right now you in effect have 192mb of ram for your system, and 64 for the video card. Some on board cards let you set how much memory is shared, I don’t think yours does but you can check inside the bios and see if you can set it. Even then giving it more memory will not allow for better processing power for the game, just let you use larger textures which will make it look better but not improve performance at all.

you probably don’t want to upgrade the mother board, it would be a big hassle, if you were to do some serious upgrades, you want to start from scratch and cannibalize parts of this computer (the memory, the hard drive, the floppy, cdrom) you would want to replace the power supply because usually companies cheep out on them so they only produce enough power to satisfy the systems needs, with out much room for anything else. For now I think your best bet is the PCI video card, and a stick of 512mb pc2700

Cool - thanks a lot Dilbert!

your welcome