PLEASE HELP! Upgrading the RAM in my girlfriend's HP Pavilion 7940...

Hi, everybody. My girlfriend has the PC in the title and it only has 128mb RAM. Hers came with Windows ME which was crap, so she installed Windows XP Home (which runs like crap due the amount of RAM). Well she really, REALLY wants to play The Sims 2 well, so she's gotta upgrade. She's gonna order a Geforce-FX 5200 128mb PCI card, and then get some more RAM. BTW, it has a 1Ghz P3 processor in it.

Well, I checked on what kind of RAM it uses, and THIS SITE says it's 168pin memory. So then should that mean ALL 168pin should work in it? NewEgg has some good deals on that kind of memory: THIS V-DATA looks good and has a Lifetime Warranty.

So what would you recommend? And also, since the v-data I linked above runs at a good latancy (CAS-3), *possibly* better latency than the 128mb that came with her computer (I'm assuming), might she possibly be better off scrapping that 128 RAM to get the tight timings of the better chip, at the cost of 128mb RAM? --- Oh, and furthermore, would you recommend her getting 512mb or would 256mb be enough?

This is a long distance relationship (d@mn education ) so I wont be there to install it for her or anything, and she won't be willing to do any OCing, tweaking, or anything else to test it out.

I REALLY appreciate your help and advice.

Thanks!

Your system uses sdram as opposed to DDR sdram,and on reading the specs for that model it says that you can run up 1 gb of ram and you can never have to much. So ya the stick from Newegg would work.Model specs

Well first off the timings thing i wouldnt worry to much about this isnt going to be a hardcore gaming computer... but since you dont know about timings it is very simple the smaller the number the better...
What you were talking about in the post is CAS or also called CL which stand for CAS Latency which all means the same thing... The biggest number i have ever heard or read about is 3 and that is the slowest there is... CAS 2 is faster because the number is smaller but is not really neccessary for what you are doing... I would go with a MINIMUM of 256 but i always use 512 when builiding a box for a gamer... The only thing having more memory will really affect is load times like when she loads a game or something... In Windows it will also affect load times and generally feel sluggish but im sure that upgrading to 256 is good because she is used to the 128. Its really your call and how much you are willing to spend.. Now when installing THERE is a wrong way to install it she has to make sure the gaps in the memory line up with the slot she is going to install the memory in... MAKE SURE she installs it in teh right slot... And when she is finished run memtest86 http://www.memtest86.com/ you have to make a bootable floppy or burn the image to a cd and boot off of either and it checks the memory for you....... to make sure the ram is not faulty...

DONT FORGET TO GROUND YOURSELF WHEN WORKING WITH THIS STUFF SO sTAY OFF THE CARPET....

Good Luck that is all i can think of right now
Eddie

Look on the motherboard about maximum densities before you upgrade to a 512mb stick. A lot of the older boards couldn't handle 512MB sticks.

man_utd said:

Look on the motherboard about maximum densities before you upgrade to a 512mb stick. A lot of the older boards couldn't handle 512MB sticks.

Click to expand...

Where would she look to find that on the board? Like I said, I have to tell her this stuff 'cause I don't have access to her right now to help her in person. If that was the case, I would have gotten into the BIOS and all that, but she's not comfortable with things like that herself.

Just look at the model number which is a s HP Pavilion 7940 and go to the website of pavilon and type in the model number.. then look for a manual and read up on the max that it can support..
Eddie

Unforunately the 7940 max's out at 512mb by using 2x256mb low density double bank sticks. They're quite expensive. Check out this link to Kingstons site.
http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configurator/modelsinfo.asp?SysID=11293&distributor=0&submit1=Search
This will also work
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/103-9992928-4319001

Yep, you need low density SDRAM with a P-III. You might just try getting a 256 stick and see if it'll play well with the existing 128 stick. If so, then that's all she needs.

Thanks for the help so far, guys. Would THIS KINGSTON VALUE RAM FROM NEWEGG work for her computer? I don't know whether it's low-density and double-bank or not.

No, that's a completely different type of memory.