hypermikem
Posts: 9 +0
Ok, I've finally decided to go ahead and upgrade. I have ordered a Shuttle AK32A MB W/AMD athlon 2000 CPU and a cpu cooling fan for Athlons up to 2800. I intend to use my current case, which is huge and has plenty of room. I also intend to use my existing floppy, cd-rom, and burner, as well as zip drive, but I am upgrading the hard drive to a 40G 7200. I am also purchasing a new power supply 300W Antec smartpower. Here's the deal. I have RAM from my old setup, and I believe it's pc100 SDRAM dimms(384Mb). My new motherboard will support both DDR and SDRAM. Actually here's the specs.:
Memory
- 2 x 184-pin DIMM DDR
- 2 x 168-pin DIMM SDRAM
- Supports 4 banks up to 2 GB DRAMs (512Mb x8/x16 DRAM technology) for register DDR SDRAM module
- Supports 4 banks up to 1 GB DRAMs (512Mb x8/x16 DRAM technology) for unbuffered SDR SDRAM module
Now does this mean I can use my existing RAM in this setup? Before answering I should say that I plan to use XP PRO or WIndows 2000 Pro as my OS. ANother question is can I combine the two RAM types and utilize all four banks, or must they all be the same type of RAM.This is a little fuzzy to me with this make and model of MB. I am not sure about this, but if I were to be abloe to do this, would my over all RAM SPeed be only as fast as my slowest module? If I can't use them in combo, then DDR seems the way to go. I think I'd probably skip the pc 133 crap and just buy a stick at a time(as my budget allows) of DDR dimms instead. I can't help feeling that if I'm going to go through all the trouble of a major upgrade, I might as well not skimp on the RAM if it is going to make that big of a difference. FOr instance, how much faster would a 256 stick of DDR be than 512 Mb of PC133 Sdram? Can someone shed some light on this? Thanks.
Memory
- 2 x 184-pin DIMM DDR
- 2 x 168-pin DIMM SDRAM
- Supports 4 banks up to 2 GB DRAMs (512Mb x8/x16 DRAM technology) for register DDR SDRAM module
- Supports 4 banks up to 1 GB DRAMs (512Mb x8/x16 DRAM technology) for unbuffered SDR SDRAM module
Now does this mean I can use my existing RAM in this setup? Before answering I should say that I plan to use XP PRO or WIndows 2000 Pro as my OS. ANother question is can I combine the two RAM types and utilize all four banks, or must they all be the same type of RAM.This is a little fuzzy to me with this make and model of MB. I am not sure about this, but if I were to be abloe to do this, would my over all RAM SPeed be only as fast as my slowest module? If I can't use them in combo, then DDR seems the way to go. I think I'd probably skip the pc 133 crap and just buy a stick at a time(as my budget allows) of DDR dimms instead. I can't help feeling that if I'm going to go through all the trouble of a major upgrade, I might as well not skimp on the RAM if it is going to make that big of a difference. FOr instance, how much faster would a 256 stick of DDR be than 512 Mb of PC133 Sdram? Can someone shed some light on this? Thanks.