P4t533 Max Ram

Hi, I have 512 mb of RDRAM in an ASUS P4T533 running XP Pro with a P4-2.4
533 processor and ultra 160 X15 SCSI drives. I have had bouts of
'sluggishness' and high CPU usage at times, which I find is solved by
re-booting and reloading what I am working on. I don't know if you can
call me a power-user (which sounds hokey) but I frequently have many
programs and documents open at the same time and I mean MANY...., maybe 6
Word docs, 3 Excel files, sometimes 3 IE6 windows, Outlook, mapping
programs, well you get my drift...along with the usual assortment of
security programs, firewall, virus, ad stopper, and spam stopper. Maybe I
am a STUPID user not realizing the limitations of my system and over running
its potential I don't know.

That said, I just loaded XP's SP2 and definately do see an improvement in
that the sluggishness is minimized, but it is still there ever so slightly
on heavy use. I just increased my paging file to a minimum of 1024 (2x)
and a max of 2048 (4x) and am still observing to see if it makes any
differences.

1) Will the ASUS P4T533 take 1 GIG of RDRAM?
2) If I buy new RDRAM, how do I make sure that it is compatible with the RAM
that I have? I have two sticks of 256 MB RDRAM, is it advisible to buy
1-512 MB stick and pair it with an existing 256 mb stick to net 768 MB?
The only way to get to 1 GIG is to buy 5-512MB sticks, will the take 2-512
MB sticks and remain stable, I had heard that this board will not take 1 GB,
is that true?

I know this RDRAM is expensive, but upgrading to a new motherboard is also
expensive, maybe its cheaper to go to 1 GIG if it solves my problems and
improves performance, what do you guys think? Mike

1) Will the ASUS P4T533 take 1 GIG of RDRAM?

Yes Running one with 2 512 sticks in it. P/N MD-16R162GDF0-CT9

2) If I buy new RDRAM, how do I make sure that it is compatible with the RAM
that I have? I have two sticks of 256 MB RDRAM, is it advisible to buy

RDRAM has been unavail for some time now from retail sources

1-512 MB stick and pair it with an existing 256 mb stick to net 768 MB?

Shouldnt be a problem adding 512 to an existing 256 that works

The only way to get to 1 GIG is to buy 5-512MB sticks, will the take 2-512
MB sticks and remain stable, I had heard that this board will not take 1 GB,
is that true?

As I said running 2 512 stick with no issues

I know this RDRAM is expensive, but upgrading to a new motherboard is also
expensive, maybe its cheaper to go to 1 GIG if it solves my problems and
improves performance, what do you guys think? Mike

Last time I purchased a 512 it was $230.00

Thanks Hawkeye, do you think increasing to 1 GB of ram will provide a
performance increase?

Also do you think this ram fit if I can get it from zipzoomfly?
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...ductCode=80480

THANKS, MIKE


"Hawkeye" wrote in message
...


1) Will the ASUS P4T533 take 1 GIG of RDRAM?

Yes Running one with 2 512 sticks in it. P/N MD-16R162GDF0-CT9

2) If I buy new RDRAM, how do I make sure that it is compatible with the
RAM
that I have? I have two sticks of 256 MB RDRAM, is it advisible to buy

RDRAM has been unavail for some time now from retail sources

1-512 MB stick and pair it with an existing 256 mb stick to net 768 MB?

Shouldnt be a problem adding 512 to an existing 256 that works

The only way to get to 1 GIG is to buy 5-512MB sticks, will the take 2-512
MB sticks and remain stable, I had heard that this board will not take 1
GB,
is that true?

As I said running 2 512 stick with no issues

I know this RDRAM is expensive, but upgrading to a new motherboard is also
expensive, maybe its cheaper to go to 1 GIG if it solves my problems and
improves performance, what do you guys think? Mike

Last time I purchased a 512 it was $230.00

Thanks Hawkeye, do you think increasing to 1 GB of ram will provide a
performance increase?

No reason why it shouldnt be an improvement, providing your issue isnt
cause by some other source.

Also do you think this ram fit if I can get it from zipzoomfly?
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...ductCode=80480

Thats where I bought mine back when they were googlegear.com
ZipZoomFly Part#: 80480 is the same Ii ordered and the PN is correct.
I am surprised they show it back ordered

Thanks Hawkeye, I am on their email notification list, if they get it in I
will be notified. Thanks much for your help, Mike


"Hawkeye" wrote in message
...
Thanks Hawkeye, do you think increasing to 1 GB of ram will provide a
performance increase?

No reason why it shouldnt be an improvement, providing your issue isnt
cause by some other source.

Also do you think this ram fit if I can get it from zipzoomfly?
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...ductCode=80480

Thats where I bought mine back when they were googlegear.com
ZipZoomFly Part#: 80480 is the same Ii ordered and the PN is correct.
I am surprised they show it back ordered

Hi,
With 6 word docs & excel workbooks open, popup the task manager. (right
click the task bar)
There you can see how much memory each session is using.
Add them up, including every thing else running. If it approches 400k then
windows is most likely swapping out to the HD every time you activate a
window.

Office usually installs that memory cache trash in control panel.
That and Outlooks journaling feature turned on will kill any computer.

--

John
johnf202 at hotmail dot com


"John Smith" wrote in message
. net...
Thanks Hawkeye, I am on their email notification list, if they get it in I
will be notified. Thanks much for your help, Mike


"Hawkeye" wrote in message
...
Thanks Hawkeye, do you think increasing to 1 GB of ram will provide a
performance increase?

No reason why it shouldnt be an improvement, providing your issue isnt
cause by some other source.

Also do you think this ram fit if I can get it from zipzoomfly?
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...ductCode=80480

Thats where I bought mine back when they were googlegear.com
ZipZoomFly Part#: 80480 is the same Ii ordered and the PN is correct.
I am surprised they show it back ordered

First, let's deal with your last question:

The P4T533 has only 2 memory slots and takes only 232-pin 32-bit RDRAM.
The two speed grades are RIMM 3200 (800MHz, aka PC800) and RIMM 4200
(1066 MHz, aka PC1066). Convention is to use the "RIMM xxxx"
designation for 32-bit 232 pin RDRAM and "PCxxxx" designation for 184
pin 16-bit RDRAM.

The only commonly available modules are 256 MB per module, which will
max out the board at 512 Megs, the configuration that you currently have.

512 Meg modules definitely do exist, and they show up on E-Bay. Two of
them would give you one gig. However, they are expensive, usually over
$200 each, and they are VERY RARE. Sometimes, months will go by without
a single one showing up (although, on rare occasions, I've seen 4 or
more at once available). By the way, yes, you can mix sizes, that is,
you could have one 512 and one 256 for 768 megs of memory.

According to the Samsung catalog, 1 gig and even 2 gig modules actually
were made and sold, but I have never seen one of either size. Never,
and I work with this particular motherboard a lot.

I love the P4T533 motherboard, it's incredibly fast and it's incredibly
stable, more so, I think, than later motherboards using dual channel
DDR. It makes me sick that industry politics killed a memory system
that was far superior to the system that ultimately prevailed.

But, that point aside, you can buy a new motherboard AND memory for less
money than what it will cost to upgrade your P4T533 to one gig. And the
new motherboard will support faster CPUs and FSB's, although the memory
system (DDR 800 dual channel) is actually slower.

So, to that extent, you have to make some decision as to how you want to
proceed, and what various things are worth to you.

Now, however, let me go off on a different tangent.

I don't think that you have the problem that you think that you do, or
that upgrading from 512 meg to 1 gig will help you (or help you much).

What you are doing is not really that demanding. When you open "x"
documents in word (whether "x" is 1 or 20), there is only one copy of
word itself running and loaded into memory, and the documents themselves
take up almost zero space (in most cases, only 50k to 400k). Basically,
as long as you are just running "office" applications -- and nothing
that you've listed is outside those parameters -- memory just is not
going to be your issue. 512 megs is plenty, probably beyond the point
at which more memory will make much of a difference. I do everything
that you do plus video capture and editing, and DVD burning, with the
same system that you have (P4T533 with 512 megs). And the system is
very fast.

I susepct, rather, that your system has just become "dirty". Meaning
that your disk is fragmented, your registry is a mess, your temp file
directory overfloweth, you have adware / spyware and MABYE virus', and
WAY too many programs are loading and doing things at startup.

If that's the case (and I'm about 85% sure that it is), adding memory
won't help, while some time spent cleaning up your system might do
wonders. The ultimate cleanup is to reinstall windows on a freshly
formatted disk drive, but I won't deny that this is a LOT of work.

Also, if you have a large drive (more than 80 gigs) with only a single
partition, you might consider partitioning things down. Simply, it
takes time to search the disk drive data structures when the disk gets
big, and this applies to both FAT and NTFS, although there are
differences in the relative efficiency of the two file systems (FAT is
better with small drives, NTFS is better above about 16 gigs; but both
systems slow down as the size of the drives increases, especially if
they are also badly fragmented).

Hope that this helps.




John Smith wrote:

Hi, I have 512 mb of RDRAM in an ASUS P4T533 running XP Pro with a P4-2.4
533 processor and ultra 160 X15 SCSI drives. I have had bouts of
'sluggishness' and high CPU usage at times, which I find is solved by
re-booting and reloading what I am working on. I don't know if you can
call me a power-user (which sounds hokey) but I frequently have many
programs and documents open at the same time and I mean MANY...., maybe 6
Word docs, 3 Excel files, sometimes 3 IE6 windows, Outlook, mapping
programs, well you get my drift...along with the usual assortment of
security programs, firewall, virus, ad stopper, and spam stopper. Maybe I
am a STUPID user not realizing the limitations of my system and over running
its potential I don't know.

That said, I just loaded XP's SP2 and definately do see an improvement in
that the sluggishness is minimized, but it is still there ever so slightly
on heavy use. I just increased my paging file to a minimum of 1024 (2x)
and a max of 2048 (4x) and am still observing to see if it makes any
differences.

1) Will the ASUS P4T533 take 1 GIG of RDRAM?
2) If I buy new RDRAM, how do I make sure that it is compatible with the RAM
that I have? I have two sticks of 256 MB RDRAM, is it advisible to buy
1-512 MB stick and pair it with an existing 256 mb stick to net 768 MB?
The only way to get to 1 GIG is to buy 5-512MB sticks, will the take 2-512
MB sticks and remain stable, I had heard that this board will not take 1 GB,
is that true?

I know this RDRAM is expensive, but upgrading to a new motherboard is also
expensive, maybe its cheaper to go to 1 GIG if it solves my problems and
improves performance, what do you guys think? Mike

I would be surprised if they EVER get it back in again. Reportedly
Samsung has stopped making it. The P4T533 was the only high-volume
motherboard that used this memory type (there actually were about 3
others, but they are relatively obscure). The best source is E-Bay.


John Smith wrote:

Thanks Hawkeye, I am on their email notification list, if they get it in I
will be notified. Thanks much for your help, Mike


"Hawkeye" wrote in message
...

Thanks Hawkeye, do you think increasing to 1 GB of ram will provide a
performance increase?

No reason why it shouldnt be an improvement, providing your issue isnt
cause by some other source.


Also do you think this ram fit if I can get it from zipzoomfly?
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...ductCode=80480

Thats where I bought mine back when they were googlegear.com
ZipZoomFly Part#: 80480 is the same Ii ordered and the PN is correct.
I am surprised they show it back ordered

Opening 6 word DOCUMENTS does not open 6 copies of Word, it opens one
copy of word and six data segments. 512 megs of memory has generally
reached the "point of no return" for performance improvement with OFFICE
applications (which includes web browsing also).


jaf wrote:

Hi,
With 6 word docs & excel workbooks open, popup the task manager. (right
click the task bar)
There you can see how much memory each session is using.
Add them up, including every thing else running. If it approches 400k then
windows is most likely swapping out to the HD every time you activate a
window.

Office usually installs that memory cache trash in control panel.
That and Outlooks journaling feature turned on will kill any computer.

--

John
johnf202 at hotmail dot com


"John Smith" wrote in message
. net...

Thanks Hawkeye, I am on their email notification list, if they get it in I
will be notified. Thanks much for your help, Mike


"Hawkeye" wrote in message
. ..

Thanks Hawkeye, do you think increasing to 1 GB of ram will provide a
performance increase?

No reason why it shouldnt be an improvement, providing your issue isnt
cause by some other source.


Also do you think this ram fit if I can get it from zipzoomfly?
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...ductCode=80480

Thats where I bought mine back when they were googlegear.com
ZipZoomFly Part#: 80480 is the same Ii ordered and the PN is correct.
I am surprised they show it back ordered

The best thing to do before you start spending cash is to get to know what
task manager can tell you about what your system is doing.

Since you say that it bad response happens occasionally while you are
working, if you are not doing something or causing something to do something
intensive then it is likely to be due to some service running in the
background IE Indexing service, perhaps a disk defragger, you know what you
have installed.

As mentioned by jaf, you get to see Task Manager by either right clicking on
the task bar and clicking on Task Manager there, or you can start it via
Ctrl Alt Delete. task manager shows how memory is used on a Per application
basis by viewing the Process tab - so you cqan see what is gobbling memory
or CPU, or overall by viewing the Performance tab - to see if memory is an
issue at all - it could be Disk IO's, but with 15K rpm SCSI thats not too
likely. At the bottom of the performance tab the Total Commit Charge is the
total amount of memory in use. If it is over the Total Physical Memory by
much then you *might* benefit from more memory. However before adding memory
I would go to the Process tab and check what is using it - there will be
many services running as shared programs as svchost .exe(several copies) -
stopping services that you Know you never use will reduce memory use and
some of the svchost.exe's will shutdown. Overall, if you tinker with
services expect to have to restart if you close down a service you actually
need to get it back (worst case). For those services that must not be
stopped, you are not allowed to stop them. EG if you don't need or use the
inbuilt IIS Server, stop it, stop the WWW service, stop messenger, stop
imapi if you never burn CD's, stop Alerter, stop Clipbook, stop network dde,
stop telnet (always disable telnet unless you use it), stop the Task
Scheduler (only if you do not ever use it directly or indirectly - Windows
boot optimisation apparently uses it). For each service that is running
normally that you decide not to run and don't want to run, change its start
to Manual (if it is needed by something else, it will be able still start).

Another useful tool is Perfmon.msc. click Start, Run Perfmon. If you click
the + toolbar icon you can add in numerous measures to display stats for.
One of the interesting ones is Physical Disk IO - for this, click +, in
Performance Object select Physical Disk, the choose whichever you want to
observe. Note that there are all sorts of scaling options - check the Help
for it in case the numbers are off the default scale.

Background tasks can be the culprit - I always kill the Indexing service.
Click Start, Run, Services.MSC enter. I disable the Indexing service as it
can do exactly what you describe - if you use it you are likely to know
about it already.

HTH

- Tim


"John Smith" wrote in message
. net...
Hi, I have 512 mb of RDRAM in an ASUS P4T533 running XP Pro with a P4-2.4
533 processor and ultra 160 X15 SCSI drives. I have had bouts of
'sluggishness' and high CPU usage at times, which I find is solved by
re-booting and reloading what I am working on. I don't know if you can
call me a power-user (which sounds hokey) but I frequently have many
programs and documents open at the same time and I mean MANY...., maybe 6
Word docs, 3 Excel files, sometimes 3 IE6 windows, Outlook, mapping
programs, well you get my drift...along with the usual assortment of
security programs, firewall, virus, ad stopper, and spam stopper. Maybe
I am a STUPID user not realizing the limitations of my system and over
running its potential I don't know.

That said, I just loaded XP's SP2 and definately do see an improvement in
that the sluggishness is minimized, but it is still there ever so slightly
on heavy use. I just increased my paging file to a minimum of 1024 (2x)
and a max of 2048 (4x) and am still observing to see if it makes any
differences.

1) Will the ASUS P4T533 take 1 GIG of RDRAM?
2) If I buy new RDRAM, how do I make sure that it is compatible with the
RAM that I have? I have two sticks of 256 MB RDRAM, is it advisible to
buy 1-512 MB stick and pair it with an existing 256 mb stick to net 768
MB? The only way to get to 1 GIG is to buy 5-512MB sticks, will the take
2-512 MB sticks and remain stable, I had heard that this board will not
take 1 GB, is that true?

I know this RDRAM is expensive, but upgrading to a new motherboard is also
expensive, maybe its cheaper to go to 1 GIG if it solves my problems and
improves performance, what do you guys think? Mike