I have PC2100 memory but my motherboard supports PC3200. Should I upgrade?

Question

Will I notice the difference with the faster memory?

Processor is P4/3.06GHz/533MHz FSB

Answer 1

First, make sure your motherboard and processor can utilize the new memory

It all depends on what you do with your computer. It would speed the processes up a bit, but nothing of a huge gain. If you get a heck of a deal on the memory, go for it.

It may speed up frames per second on some video games. But the majority of the "performace" gain will be noticed in opening applications and switching between them when multiple programs are running.

but when you switch to the PC3200 most motherboards will require you to go into the bios and switch the latency settings, something like dram speed from auto to 400....

All in All, it won't act like a new computer by any means. but will help saving the seconds between applications.

Answer 2

It depends on your processor, you need to look up your cpu and find out what memory matches with it. PC 2100 is for processors with a bus speed of 266Mhz.

___________________________
ok so I get 2 thumbs down for the above which I dont mind except what I said is 100% true, front side bus speed x clock multiplyer = processor speed. To make sure that your hole system works flawless you need to make sure that you computer can send information to your ram just as fast as it can send information to your processor. Before you give a thumbs down and give someone the idea that what I said was wrong do your own research and you will see what I said holds true in a simplified way.

On a side not it will also do you absolutly NO good to upgrade to pc3200 if your processor dosnt have a front side bus of 400Mhz. It will work but you have gained no performance.

pc2100 = 266Mhz
pc2700 = 333Mhz
pc3200 = 400Mhz
______________________________________
For your specific CPU because it is intel the fsb(front side bus) is doubled(simply intel wanted to sound faster) 533 devided by 2 = 266MHz or PC2100, stay where your at.

Answer 3

It depends on what's in the rest of your system. If you are using an old Athlon XP/ first generation Pentium 4s that only supports 266MHz bus then there is no benefit since your system bus is limited only to PC2100 speeds.

If you have a processor that can run at 400MHz bus or faster such as an Athlon 64, later generation Pentium 4s, or Barton core Athlon XPs in the 2500+ range then you will notice slightly better overall performance (in tasks like application load times and such) and only then will it be worth upgrading to PC3200.

Answer 4

Open up your laptop and seem on the present memory module this is already put in. in simple terms write down the numbers and take it to an area laptop save. they might help you out with that.

Answer 5

what type of cpu?