Just blew up my RAM...again

This may be a dumb question but my Dell keeps destroying those 512 RAM cards or what ever you call them and now I am down to 512 RAM. My question is will SL run ok on 512 RAM?

They are sending a tech to my house next week to install new memory and a new motherboard to restore it to 1024 RAM but I admit I have no idea what that means. Should I get more RAM?

SL runs fine on 512, but it runs much better on a gig.

Thanks Chip I have been trying to run a gig but my stupid PC keeps eating up the cards. I guess my question is would 2 gigs be even better?

I'm not sure with SL. Most apps won't even address 2 gigs of ram so it's overkill for most things. It's great if you use really ram intensive applications like 3d rendering or do poster work in photoshop at 300dpi. Then again I'm not much of a hardware wiz so take anything I say with many grains of salt (followed by a shot of tequila and a lemon wedge)

Not if your going to blow it up, lol

high quality video card
1GB RAM (DDR)
fast CPU
fast Broadband

and ya shud be fine with SL

More RAM is better (to a point). But I found out the hard way that if you're going to buy RAM, invest more and get high-quality name-brand RAM. The cheap stuff, even if it seems to work fine, can cause some hard-to-diagnose problems down the line.

You need to make sure that your system will support the 2 gigs before you invest in it. Dell systems will only support up to a certain amount of RAM, regardless of how many slots you have in the machine itself.

I don't understand why they are sending a tech to come change the motherboard out, to me that sounds like you have a faulty machine period. How many sticks of 512 has it gone through? If it were me, I would insist on a new system because I know they are notorious for trying to get around that.

I have 2 gigs of ram. Honestly, I don't think it helps too much, maybe a little...and obviously it will if you like to run lots of different apps at the same time (which I do). But most people are probably better off with 1 gig of GOOD ram (never get cheap shit ram, never never...it blows).

However....all of this may be a moot point... if you have a Dell you might be crippled with some other bottleneck. Dell seems to like to get crap hardware, and that's probably more the case for components that people don't pay much attention to. i.e. power supply, or even the motherboard...bus speed... cpu cache, etc.

I think that's how they're able to offer really great sounding prices (on the surface)...but when you get down and really examine their machines... I suspect you'll see alot of crap in there. I've never personally seen a Dell not have at least one fairly major problem with it after a few months.

When running SL, does your hard drive light come on alot? If not, your bottleneck probably isn't your ram, it's probably something else.
With a crappy Dell, unless you have a nice vid card, you may be better served with a video card upgrade.
That's my guess anyway.. half a gig more memory helps too of course.

If your system isn't one of those annoying ones that need matching ram (like the stoopid IBM I'm working on) I'd suggest going with 1 gig on one stick...mine always seem to benefit...

and I agree about Dells....great prices, great cases, great tech support (so far), super crappy components that fry or blow out far too often. My company has a corporate account and 40 Dells, last week:
2 cd-rw drives, shot
1 power supply, smoked
1 heat sink fan, kaput

...but at least 20 of them are still under warranty....

It's eaten up 3 sticks of 512 so far and the battery died after a few months. It runs like a champ when it runs.

No the light doesn't come on and I have a Nvidia 6800 PCI card and I think that is an ok card for SL. I think I just got a lemon.

Insist on a replacement. If they are going to replace the motherboard, they can just replace the whole machine.

X, I know exactly what you are saying. I work in Asset Management for my company. We buy nothing but Dells and HP/Compaq. I buy them in the 1000s. For the amount we purchase, Dell still has a wayyyyyyyy better track record over Compaq. For every 100 Dells we buy, maybe 1 will need to be repaired. For Compaqs, at least 10.

If she has a Dell, I would almost be willing to bet that she will have to buy matching memory. The ones that I have dealt with have at least 2 slots. If you don't buy the matching, you end up getting some crazy video errors. Just my experience...

No, that's probably your problem actually. Do you have a PCI *Express* or just a PCI card? There's a MAJOR difference between the two--old PCI video cards are crippled... no matter how good the card itself is, it won't matter too much because there's a bottleneck between the card and the rest of the system. PCI cards SUCK vs. AGP cards...the only thing they're useful for is to use for a dual monitor setup.

PCI Express is newer (better than the most common AGP video cards nowadays)...now, if you have a PCI Express video card and you're seeing crap performance, I'm not immediately sure why...they should be pretty much cutting edge. There's plenty of other tech geeks that know more than me about hardware here, maybe they'll jump in.

whats difference between AGP and PCI-Express? i hear its better but better how? i mean its PCI for gods sake, i just need enlightening on this front

I have a PCI express card and now that the IT has replaced the motherboard it runs like a champ again. He said that I had a defective motherboard that was generating false error messages that I kept getting. I'll stick with my 1 GB of RAM I guess. He doesn't work for Dell so I tend to believe him.

Ahhh, okay.


PCI express is newer than AGP, I believe the only difference is that it allows the card to communicate with the rest of the system much faster. "faster bus speed"

I was saying that if you have a really fast video card but you're using a slow bus (like old PCI), all that power on the card is wasted because the card can't get the data it needs from the rest of the system fast enough--it'll be constantly waiting for more data to come in.

But anyway since we're takling about PCI express here, the bus speed obviously wasn't the bottleneck.

Anyone who is more familiar can add or correct...