Up to 512MB Ram...anyway to put in more?

[elfkin477]

I want to upgrade my computer instead of replace it, because though it is 2.5 years old, it's a great machine. It's the most stable computer I've ever owned and I'm rather attacted to it.

I figure in order to make it more suitable for my gaming "needs" (or in order for someone to make it more suitable since I'm not technically inclined), I'll want to add a second hard drive, and put in more RAM, at least- both of which my dad has helped me with in the past for this and my previous machine- and perhaps get a higher pentium (mine's 733mhz now) and maybe replace the graphics card. I really don't know about the last two being feasble, but there things I plan to look into. Even if I can do all four things, it's considerably cheaper than buying a new pc that'd have what I want (why is 128mb ram still so common in new computers?!), which is a concern. I'd love to buy an alienware, but that ain't happening unless I win the lottery. And since I don't play it...

Anyway, I've already replaced one block of 128mb ram with a 256mb one, and I guess that's what I'll be doing again to the other 128mb, since the computer's specs say it can have up to 512mb total. But I know they make higher blocks now, and some computers have over 1gb of ram. Is the limitation of 512 because that's as much as computers could have at the time, which is my wishful thinking, or because it can really not be upgraded any higher than that by any means?

The computer is HP XE783 if that helps to answer the question.

[Q.E.D.]

It's a mainboard BIOS limitation. If you need more, you'll need to upgrade to a mainboard which can handle more than 512 MB. If you put in more than what your board can handle, it won't "see" any more than the max it can access.

[astro]

Even if you could (and you can't) , going beyond 512 megs of RAM on your platform would give you almost no perceptible increase in realworld performance, gaming or otherwise. The HP mini-tower MB you have is not all that upgradable in practical terms.

Here are the tech specs for your machine

[SPOOFE]

Find a friend that knows how to select good hardware and slug it all together... you'll save a couple hundred bucks, easily.

Oh, and 512 megs of RAM (DDR, to be precise) seems to be the standard nowadays (though most companies shirk and only put in PC-2100, instead of the PC-3200 that they OUGHT to put in). Most new motherboards can handle at least 3 gigs maximum, and some can even accept 4 gigs.

I'd say that you go and get all new hardware. If money's an issue, pick up an Athlon XP, rated at around 2000+ or so. A 40- or 60-gig hard drive shouldn't be too hard to get, either.

[fauxpas]

YUP! Q.E.D, hit the nail right on the tip. It's a mainboard BIOS thing. Try to find a different mainboard and perhaps a new processor. But meanwhile, try to overclock your memory, I forgot how, but if you search around you may find it.

[Electronic Chaos]

What QED said.

And as for upgrading the processor, it may be pretty difficult to find a vendor that sells one with specs compatible to your motherboard.

[Quartz]

Given everything you want to do, you might as well buy a new PC. I concur with Spoofe as long as you're going to transfer your XP license.

[milk milk lemonade]

Actually, the BIOS doesn't really have anything to do with the physical RAM limit.

It's more to do with

(a) electrical and timing constraints and the motherboards ability to actually drive additional RAM sticks

and

(b) physical limits on the chipset's address lines. eg. the Intel 810 chipset can only use 256MByte DIMMs with 16 chips because it can't address the high density 256Mbit ram chips on 8 chip DIMMs

That explains the old single vs double sided argument and the fact that you can only have so many RAM sticks per bank.

[SimonLee]

This isn't really an answer to the original question, just a suggestion if you were looking at a really budget conscious upgrade:

I found these on ebay in about 5 minutes, you could probably do better if you looked harder.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=42013

Motherboard $12. Supports your older PC100 ram. Has onboard sound. You need this, because your motherboard has no AGP slots (you won't find a PCI graphics card that will suit your gaming "needs").

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...&category=3672

Thunderbird 1.1Ghz $32. Most expensive item, gives you a 80-100% speed increase over your P3 733, more so if it was running a 100mhz bus.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...&category=3673

Heatsink/fan, $1.75.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=40161

Geforce 2 GTS, $10.50. Keeps up with most games released up until 6 months ago. This would have been good enough on its own, but your motherboard won't support it.

Comes to a grand total of $56.25 plus shipping and the slab of beer you'll have to buy a friend to put it together for you.

[SimonLee]

oops - Just noticed the video card still had 3 days to go on it. It will probably sell for a bit more, but still should be under $20.

[mrbuddylee]

I'm actually in the process of upgrading my computer right now... Although the upgrade has slowly turned into a whole new computer....

Currently: AMD Duron 800 512MB SDRAM, 32MB Geforce2 vid card, CDRW, CD, 20G HD, 40GHD.

Just bought: AMD Athlon 2200+ ($70), New Shuttle Motherboard ($70). Thought $140 wasn't too bad for a good PC upgrade... Well, old ram wouldn't work, new 512 DDR Ram ($40 after mail-in rebate). Old case didn't have enough power for everything ($30 new case & power supply). So now, my computer upgrade cost a little over $200. Still not bad, but a bit more than I wanted to initially spend. I'd still like to get a new vid card, but that will have to wait until Christmas I think. I'm hoping that I can sell the old parts or build another computer and then sell it. But anyways, you probably can't just do a 'simple' upgrade on what you have, and really adding more than 512 won't do much for you with your current setup.

[Q.E.D.]

Also note that Windows 9x and ME will not support more than 521 MB, even if the mainboard will. You'll need to upgrade to an NT-based Windows, like 2k or XP.

[milk milk lemonade]

Actually Win9x and ME will work with RAM sizes up to 1GB.

See www.microsoft.com/technet and look for these knowledgebase articles:

using more than 512MB: 253912

using more than 1GB: 311871

[Q.E.D.]

Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 311871

[Berkut]

Well, I hate to interrupt all the frantic Googling and KB-searching with actual experience, but you guys have started to quote the same links at each other.

Microsoft themselves can't make up their minds as to how much ram Win9x/ME will support. If you look at a few KB articles (including one from above), they tend to contradict themselves.

From 181594

Although Windows 95 has the ability to address up to four GB of virtual memory, it can access and use only two GB or less of physical RAM.

From 311871

Windows Me and Windows 98 are not designed to handle 1 GB or more of RAM. 1 GB or more of RAM can lead to potential system instability.

From 304943

Windows Me and Windows 98 are not designed to handle more than 1 GB of RAM. More than 1 GB can lead to potential system instability.

Windows 9x/ME in most cases will support more than 512 megs of memory.
-Some installations won't.
-Some installations won't at first, but with tweaking of the system.ini file will work just fine.
-Some will work fine with no tweaking at all.

I suspect the 512 meg limit is just a nice safe limit for them to state, because they rarely have problems at that level and below.