Hi all.
I’m hoping to add some extra memory to my PC soon but am a little confused as to what to buy. I’ve visited a web site which claims to identify the correct  memory for my PC which is;

DDR PC2100 CL=2.5 184 pin dimm SDRAM.

When I search the internet for a suitable module, they vary in price so much that they can’t all be the same?

What I’m really asking is do I need to match my new simm with the existing one ( same manufacturer etc) and what is the difference in performance between cheep simms and more expensive ones?  I understand that different simms run at different speeds, so do I need to match that with my existing memory card?

Any help appreciated.

Merry Christmas to all.
Zaphod

Well I can help a bit..maybe ???

Well Eno reliability is probably there for the more expencive stuff but scence most memory brands come with a lifetime warranty I think theres more to it

When you go to buy memory you should be most concerned about what speed it is PC-2100, PC-3200, DDR2, all this has a large effect in the prices.

Another thing you want to look at is the Latencey: Latencey is the time it takes for the memory to go through 1 clock cycle, you may see latencey numbers such as 2.5-3-3-6 some of the cheaper stuff may look like  4-4-4-12(also found in DDR2). So what do these numbers mean...
If you have Adobe Acrobat reader go here>http://www.corsairmicro.com/corsair/products/specs/Ram_Guy_CAS_Latency.pdf that will tell you everything you need to know about that.

So factors in it are speed, latencey, quality, reliability, and other odds and end such as advanced heat sinks etc.
Make shure your mobo supports the speed you want to buy.. and I recomend Corsair, Mushkin, Crucial, and Kingston as great memory makers...Hope that helped a bit

Ok.
So my new stick of RAM arrived today and has been installed. I now have just over 1GB of Ram.
I've noticed that Windows now seems "snappier" but I don't seem to be getting the improvement in frame rates I was hoping for. I know my video card is suspect and is the next thing on the list, but I was wondering if I need to increase my virtual memory now I have more RAM. It's currently set at 768mb?

Any idea's.

Cheers.
Zaphod

Ram isn't a magic fix for FPS.  If you have 512 it will do the job.  Adding another 512 you may notice 1-2FPS increase but not much.  What more ram will do is make load times shorter and should make your sim run smoother, which is just as important as FPS.