PC3200 VS PC4200

What is the diffrence between

PC3200 DDR400
PC4200 DDR-2/533

I have a dell dimension 3000 w/ a 2.8GHz P4.

I have 256 RAM, and would like to upgrade, the dell website sells PC3200 RAM, is that what I want?
Also, is $30 for 512MB a good price?

EDIT--------------------------------------------------------------
For those of us that don’t know…

RMA- Return policy
mobo-Motherboard
PSU-Power Supply Unit

You want the PC3200.

Check www.pricewatch.com They always have the best prices on memory

184 pin btw

Yes, you want 184 pin PC3200. The 3200 means 3.2GB/s. DDR2 has greater bandwidth but you can’t use it besides the fact that most all of it is 240 pin.

$30 is a good price but I don’t like cheap ram. I always buy from http://www.crucial.com. Also, remember all you need is unbuffered, non-ecc.

EDIT: Rats, foiled again by you cruzer.

So, I shouldn’t buy whatever this weeks special is from Compusa (Centon)
Is there a certan brand, I don’t know that I can bring myself to pay $80 for 512MB ram. I think we paid no more than $400 for the comp. I can’t make heads nor tails of all this stuff, PRICEWATCH is watching the price, but I have no Idea what the products are.

Fen, it probably won’t matter to you unless you are a big-time online MIMO gamer.

dang, I could have used MIMO for 0nline gaming in the contest this week.

Well, I was thinking of playing Light and dark, but I would have had to upgrade my grafics card, I don’t like spending money. Plus I will have to go to school soon, so I won’t have tons of free time. Mostly I play Warcraft, but I havent played that in a while. I can get by with what I have, but somtimes this comp lags.

So, If I get a cheap, unbuffered, non-ecc. PC3200, for what I need it should be fine.

Yea, it should be. In my experience bad ram is one of the most prevalent problems when someone’s building a computer on the cheap. Hopefully it’ll work out for you but I’d check to see if you can rma first.

I’ve only had one memory go bad on me. That was a month or so ago. Returned it no problem. I also bought it at Fry’s

This is mostly just from reading message boards and watching loads of people troubleshoot. The other thing I’ve seen is that some bios’ hate certain brands and models of ram, especially cheap.

yeah, this case was pretty much cut and dry. I take the memory out and it boots, I put it in and there is a pink line down my screen and it doesn’t do anything.

How’s that for troubleshooting :wink:

Heh, yea, that sounds pretty straightforward. It’s more annoying to pin down when the computer ‘sorta’ works, ‘sorta’ boots, but ends up with random BSODs, restarts and crashes.

haha! I hate the BSOD’s but can you really blame hardware issues on Microsoft?

plenty of people will, just for the heck of it…

since we’re geeking out in here on computer stuff, i thought i should point out for those who don’t know that Tom’s Hardware is running a 10th anniversary contest with some sweet computer gear as prizes…

Heh, well, as much as I am right there with the Microsoft complaints, in this instance Windows really is doing its job. In fact, I’ve cured the majority of my BSODs by fixing a hardware problem. Not to defend ol’ Billy or nothin’, but if your hardware is failing and corrupting files, how can you blame the OS? I’ll add bad PSUs as second on my list to bad ram.

Question, what’s an indication that a PSU isn’t sufficient for a system?

I run win2k, and on this computer, I think the only serious issue I’ve ever had has resulted from me doing something boneheaded… like simply rebooting when a rather poorly written java app hanged for the umpteenth time (this without any three finger salutes)… but it gave me the excuse to go ahead and get another hard drive, 300 gigs this time, since I was going to have to reinstall windows anyway…

What is RMA?

Returned Mechandise Authorization…Return Policy.

[link]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_Merchandise_Authorization[/link]