[SOLVED] Need help with upgrading RAM

Nov 27, 2020
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My pc is very slow . It takes several seconds to open folders videos stutter while playing i cant watch youtube video without it being choppy and low quality (my internet connection is good eventhough) if i open more than 2 chrome tabs then it becomes more slow i tried everything from scanning for viruses and malware to stopping background programs cleaning disk space removing junk files and temporary file but it remains slow . So i decided to upgrade my ram i have intel pentium d 820 2.8 ghz processor and my motherboard is asus p5kpl am-in and in its manual it says it support ram upto 800 mhz.

I currently have 2 ram slots which are occupied by one 1gb ddr2 333mhz stick and one 1gb ddr2 400mhz . So i have 2 gb ram according to cpuid my dram frequency is 333mhz (i don't know what does that mean) and in task manager when i close all other programs except 2 chrome tabs and an excell spreadsheet (of my daily work) it say i only have 38 mb free memory and 267 available memory and 231 cached memory and 2048 total memory . I am thinking of buying two 2gb ddr2 sticks of 800mhz so my quistions is will it work? And will it improve my pc performance ? Do i need to upgrade ram on my pc? Please help me i am not good in computers and this work from home is killing me i can't even watch youtube videos eventhough my office computers have same specs and same internet connection

 
Solution
Assuming you are using Windows 10
Microsoft specifies that Windows 10 needs a minimum of 4GB of RAM.
However personally I wouldn't recommend that as the bare minimum as I have personally experienced how sluggish it is.
8GB of RAM minimum is what I would consider bare minimum.

However if you want a liberal experience, 16GB of RAM is recommended.
So yes, since you only have 2GB of RAM, you would definitely need an upgrade.

Edit: Oops yeah. It seems that you're using a very old system. Its time to do a complete overhaul upgrade.
Its not advisable to upgrade your RAM but more advisable to get/buy a brand new pc altogether
Assuming you are using Windows 10
Microsoft specifies that Windows 10 needs a minimum of 4GB of RAM.
However personally I wouldn't recommend that as the bare minimum as I have personally experienced how sluggish it is.
8GB of RAM minimum is what I would consider bare minimum.

However if you want a liberal experience, 16GB of RAM is recommended.
So yes, since you only have 2GB of RAM, you would definitely need an upgrade.

Edit: Oops yeah. It seems that you're using a very old system. Its time to do a complete overhaul upgrade.
Its not advisable to upgrade your RAM but more advisable to get/buy a brand new pc altogether
 
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The Idiot

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It will work and be a slight upgrade, though not by much. Buying any modern laptop/desktop is something to consider for the future, and maybe you could talk your work into convering part of the cost.
 
Hi Prabhkamal Singh :(


To be honest Prabhkamal your system is also very old released in August 2010 and belongs in a museum.
Upgrading RAM will not improve performance. Rather than that you should upgrade your system to the AM4 platform and spend your money on DDR4 RAM. It's no wonder it's killing you and who do you work for that have systems like yours?
 
So instead of telling you to buy new, I will answer your question. ;)

Yes, upgrading to 4GB of ram will improve performance. But even better, your motherboard supports the faster 'core' series of lga775 processors and will really wake up if you can upgrade to any of these processors. The q6600 was one of the most popular and prevalent ones of these and in the US can be had for $5 used, so hopefully can be found for cheap where you are too. If not, almost any processor from the core line will be faster than the d 820:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compar...tel-Pentium-E2160/1127vs1125vs1038vs955vs1134

The fastest processor you can get is the q9650, but it usually much more expensive than the q9550 which offers similar performance:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compar...Core2-Quad-Q9550/1127vs1125vs1038vs1050vs1049

Your motherboard can even take the ultra rare qx9770 which was the very fastest lga775 processor ever made:

But if you buy a replacement processor make sure it is used as there are a lot of chinese fakes with who knows what else in them that are sold as new. Stay away from them. If you really can't find something there, PM me as I may be able to help you.

I would also recommend using portable firefox esr for your browser. It isn't the latest, but will work on most general web sites and should be much faster than the latest bloatware they're calling browsers today.
 
Nov 27, 2020
15
0
10
So instead of telling you to buy new, I will answer your question. ;)

Yes, upgrading to 4GB of ram will improve performance. But even better, your motherboard supports the faster 'core' series of lga775 processors and will really wake up if you can upgrade to any of these processors. The q6600 was one of the most popular and prevalent ones of these and in the US can be had for $5 used, so hopefully can be found for cheap where you are too. If not, almost any processor from the core line will be faster than the d 820:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compar...tel-Pentium-E2160/1127vs1125vs1038vs955vs1134

The fastest processor you can get is the q9650, but it usually much more expensive than the q9550 which offers similar performance:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compar...Core2-Quad-Q9550/1127vs1125vs1038vs1050vs1049

Your motherboard can even take the ultra rare qx9770 which was the very fastest lga775 processor ever made:

But if you buy a replacement processor make sure it is used as there are a lot of chinese fakes with who knows what else in them that are sold as new. Stay away from them. If you really can't find something there, PM me as I may be able to help you.

I would also recommend using portable firefox esr for your browser. It isn't the latest, but will work on most general web sites and should be much faster than the latest bloatware they're calling browsers today.
Thanx samir but at the moment i can only do 1 upgrade (i am from india) so can you please recommend me should i upgrade my processor or ram . And also thanx for firefox ssr it is a little faster but youtube is still laggy
 
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Thanx samir but at the moment i can only do 1 upgrade (i am from india) so can you please recommend me should i upgrade my processor or ram . And also thanx for firefox ssr it is a little faster but youtube is still laggy
I know. I was just there in India. ;) If you could only do one, it's hard to say for video--the processor is what's hurting video as you will be lucky to have 480p smooth with the pentium d 820. But without ram, the cpu will be busy swapping out to disk constantly. So if you only do one, you may still not get smooth video. But if you can only do one and that's it, try ram and hopefully that will be enough.
 
Other than the specific applications that hog your RAM, if you think bumping your RAM from 3GB to 8GB or whatever is going to increase the speed of a regular application-like a video game—you should think again. The only thing that additional RAM does is allow your computer to do more things at once, not actually make it faster.

Where performance gains are made are with faster RAM. There is an immense difference between DDR3 1600MHz and DDR4 at say 3600MHz on an AM4 platform.
Yes an upgrade is possible with a new higher grade chip but consider your OS. Many new applications require Windows 10 and I doubt the system you have would run Windows 10 without more storage.

Retaining LGA775 is a dangerous path to follow and money spent could be put to better use with a true upgrade. I really mean it.
I have a Q9650 series processor that I kept for posterity and I would send it to you for free as your board supports it however I feel LGA775 is EOL and not be of great help.

It all comes down to what you invest in to relieve your present frustration and for future considerations.

Ask the boys for a system config for AM4 at your budget and compare what system performance gains you get compared to a current upgrade of what you have. I know what many here would do!!!!!
 
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I have a Q9650 series processor that I kept for posterity and I would send it to you for free as your board supports it however I feel LGA775 is EOL and not be of great help.
Send it to him then. The exchange rate is 73.75 INR for every single USD, and considering most people don't even make 60,000 INR a month, that's ~$815 for the whole month--food, shelter, clothing--everything. And things cost the same as they would if they're in USD if not more. So if a used Q9650 costs $50 here, it will be almost $75 on the other side, or over 5500 INR.

We have to be very careful about what are recommendations are considering some posters are not from the US and their market for parts and their economy are potentially much different than here.

This is one of the reasons that systems that are of no use to us here in the developed world are still very usable in the developing world and should be sent there to be reused and continue doing good. My own mother-in-law who's a retired phd professor from a college uses a lowly dual core T7xxx series Dell as her daily driver. People there don't have a grand USD to spare just for a computer.
 
My pc is very slow . It takes several seconds to open folders videos stutter while playing i cant watch youtube video without it being choppy and low quality (my internet connection is good eventhough) if i open more than 2 chrome tabs then it becomes more slow i tried everything from scanning for viruses and malware to stopping background programs cleaning disk space removing junk files and temporary file but it remains slow . So i decided to upgrade my ram i have intel pentium d 820 2.8 ghz processor and my motherboard is asus p5kpl am-in and in its manual it says it support ram upto 800 mhz.

I currently have 2 ram slots which are occupied by one 1gb ddr2 333mhz stick and one 1gb ddr2 400mhz . So i have 2 gb ram according to cpuid my dram frequency is 333mhz (i don't know what does that mean) and in task manager when i close all other programs except 2 chrome tabs and an excell spreadsheet (of my daily work) it say i only have 38 mb free memory and 267 available memory and 231 cached memory and 2048 total memory . I am thinking of buying two 2gb ddr2 sticks of 800mhz so my quistions is will it work? And will it improve my pc performance ? Do i need to upgrade ram on my pc? Please help me i am not good in computers and this work from home is killing me i can't even watch youtube videos eventhough my office computers have same specs and same internet connection

Yes 2x2GB@800 will help the perf.
Try to buy the sticks as a kit and not 2 separate sticks if possible.
Check the return policy before buying the sticks just in case.
Don't expect miracles it will just be a bump up.
 
Nov 27, 2020
15
0
10
For ddr2, a kit isn't necessary--just two modules that are identical or even of the same spec will work fine.
Hello samir thanks for all your help but i have one last help to ask my company agreed to buy me ram but they say i have to buy processor myself i checked for q9650 but its price is way too high for me like 4000-5000 rs which i cant afford but i do found two processors which i can afford q9450 which is 2675 rs and q9400 which is 1999 rs they both have same specs execpt cache mb which are 12mb and 6mb so please tell me does cache mb make much difference to spend 2675rs on q9450 or should i stick with q9400 with 6mb cache please help me because my current cpu only have 2 mb cache and will be there any type of performance boost after upgrading to any of the two processors???
 
That's great that they're buying the ram--that will help a lot. :) The q9400 isn't much slower than a q9450 and will seem so fast compared to the Pentium D 820 that it won't matter than the q9450 is a tiny bit faster:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compar...vs-Intel-Pentium-D-805/1045vs1046vs1127vs1125

I think with the memory and cpu upgrade you will be in good shape. Just be sure to do the upgrade carefully as one mistake can also permanently break your computer.