More thinking-space and AIDA32!

Huzzah! I now have 3 gb of RAM! Whether it was smart to go all the way to 3 instead of sticking with 2, I have no idea! But it sounds bigger so I’m going to pretend it’s better. I am quite pleased.

Installing the 2 gb went seamlessly. Just turned the power off, unplugged it, made sure I wasn’t full of static electricity, and took out the old two 512 mb sticks and shoved in the brand-spanking new two 1 gb ones! Disturbingly enough, the old ones look more modern and fashionable than the new ones. I tested the 2 gigs, then turned it off and shoved in the two extra 512’s!

This didn’t go so well. The pc sort of whirred and then stopped, and I hastily turned it off again. The problem was easily solved - the RAM wasn’t properly placed inside. So I got back down on my belly and re-attempted it, and mission successful!

Now then only problem is that I don’t know if the memory is running at the correct speed… I romped about in my BIOS and tried to see but I actually didn’t see an option for it - only one that told me how much RAM I have. Disturbing.

Once I gather the courage, I will hopefully attempt to upgrade the other pc that blew itself up yesterday. It’s a bigger job, unfortunately. It’s getting a new motherboard, which implies taking the whole damn thing completely apart, putting in the new motherboard with the new processor and new RAM and then putting the whole shebang back together and hoping I did it all right. It’s not fun when it’s not my own pc.. :(

I think I’ve made my mind up on what new graphics card to get. It’s a schmexy Geforce 8800 GTS 640MB PCIe card by PNY. No, I don’t think I’ll go for the GTX version as my screen doesn’t even allow me to go to high resolutions. As I recall, this motherboard isn’t very compatible with Radeon stuff, so it’s not even an option.

While romping about on the web, searching for useful tips about graphics cards and RAM, I accidentally stumbled over a recommendation for a program called Aida32. It tells you all sorts of stuff about your pc - even more than the dxdiag command does. I HIGHLY recommend it to people who want to know wtf they actually have inside their pc… especially hardwarewise.. And if it’s all running properly, what the specs are, etc. You can download it here at Major Geeks.com. It’s only 3mb and highly informative. It also comes with a memory benchmarking thingy, which I guess is good if you want to compare memory or brag or see if it could be improved or something….