Acer desktop AM5100-U5302A

[letshavepaneer]

Hi all,

I've just bought this desktop, this is an Acer AMD Athlon X2:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...5302A&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1214004486919

Does anyone know if I can add memory to this machine? If so, what kind should I get?

I've checked crucial.com, kingston.com, and other websites and I see no information about what type of ram is already in this machine, and what type of ram I can buy to expand it to beyond the 2GB already there. I'd like to upgrade it to 3-4GB if possible. It has Vista... I'm not sure if it's 32-bit or 64-bit... that's another thing I need to find out.

Any help would be much appreciated...

 

[DefCon_!1!]

well.....1st off, and sry sounding like an a$$, but wrong section, u needz to post this stuff in computer and stuff.

any way, now to be nice

um...download CPU-z, it tells alot about the computer, including RAM speedz and such. as far as 36 or 64 bit goes, id bet money that u would have 32bit, but to be sure, go into your computer specs ( right click on " my computer" and select properties)

and ya, go for kingston for a good deal

 

[Rubber314Chicken]

if you really don't want to download cpu-z (which is the best method) open the case and take a picture or the long slots that have memory in them. Two should be full, and two should be open. We can tell you what to get and how to install it top make it work best. You really only want to get one more GB because any more than 3 gigs of memory is too much and will actually slow the comp down because of the time needed to find the data.

 

[letshavepaneer]

Thanks for your reply guys. I actually don't have the machine yet, I should get it by Tuesday. I'll let you guys know what it is when I get it.

I was worried about this whole dual channel thing. I know I need to get a PAIR of DIMMs for this, which I plan to do. If this machine has PC2-667, and I buy PC2-800 RAM, then would this cause some problem (like the DDR2 speed going down to just DDR speed or something?)

I guess we will see, maybe 2GB will be enough for me with vista, I plan to only run firefox, itunes, openoffice. I will be playing video, the video controller is embedded, so I think it might leech off of my RAM (yes?)

thanks again for your replies... i appreciate it very much

 

[Rubber314Chicken]

as long as you buy ram of the same DDR (DDR2 is the most likely) and equal or faster speed nothing would happen.

The key would be to buy two 512MB sticks and put them in suck that you can run dual channel memory. That there is a big performance boost.

edit- yes the video card would leech off the memory, but as long as you are not gaming it will not steal much. I think you might be satisfied with its current specs based on your usages.

 

[letshavepaneer]

Thanks rubber.

This is a really interesting article about the 3GB memory barrier:

http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00015.htm

The summary is that 3GB is the barrier, but alot DDR2 memory in these higher multiples (ie, 2x1GB), are CHEAPER than 2x512MB. The unfortunate thing is that alot of RAM gets wasted between 3-4GB area because of addressable space there.

Thanks for the heads up about the 3GB barrier, I didn't know that, I think if the RAM is not good enough, I'll search around for just the cheapest RAM that is faster than what CPU-Z tells me.

Thanks!