Patricia's computer needs more memory. It's got half a gig, but it's being brought to its knees. The board's about four or five years old (I think it's running a 1.8 MHz Athlon). It's got an extra DIMM slot, but I don't know how big a stick it can take. I can't find the mobo manual, but I figured I could find one on line. The only identifier I can see on it says "Micro-Star Model MS-5390." But when I do a search on that, I come up empty. I assume that it's an MSI, but that model number doesn't seem to exist in their data base. Anyone have any idea what's going on? What are the chances that a board of that vintage can't handle a gigbyte stick? I don't want to go out and buy one unless I know it will work. On the other hand, just adding another half a gig would probably solve her problem.

[Update in the late afternoon]

Well, after reviewing the options (buying half a gig for sixty bucks or a full gig for a hundred and ten) and realizing that the memory I was buying would probably be useless on the next upgrade, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade now. Athlon 64 and a gig of DDR2 for ~$250. I can use the other mobo for a development linux box.

try http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=MS-6390LE-L&class=mb

Nope. That board has three memory slots, mine has only two. It definitely says MS-5390. No matter how much I look or squint, I can't see any other number there.

And doing a search for that number at the MSI site says that the "product does not exist." I'd sure like to show it to them.

I would be surprised if a > 1.5 GHz MB can't handle at least 1 GB of memory. Moreover, DIMM slots usually can handle equal levels of memory, and thus total memory size is usually the Max DIMM capacity times number of DIMM slots. Thus if you a single 512MB DIMM, then you should be safe to add a second 512MB DIMM.

Whatever you do, don't go over 2 GB unless you plan on going to a 64-bit OS.

BTW, what's with your timestamp? This post is being made at 10:30AM CDT.

Your PC CAN handle a 1GB stick. (well 95% chance) Pretty much any PC after the 1.5 Ghz clocked PCs can handle the big memory stick. The only real worry you'll have is finding the correct memory speed.

Rand,
your best bet is what Leland said. If it's got a 512, buy another one like it and plunk it in the currently open slot. If the new one is a "faster" stick, it's still better to have twice the memory even at the slower original speed.

Are you sure the one that's in there now is working correctly, or is it going south by degrees and causing this problem?

one tool that will give you a definitive answer is SiSoft Sandra, its MOBO information module is really thorough and will tell you right away what it supports and what it doesnt, including memory.

Another thing is, do a memory cleanup in that machine, get yourself a Sysinternals tool suite, and specifically process explorer. Look at what services, startup applications and so on are useless and disproportionally large, and by disabling&uninstalling them it can sometimes work wonders for responsivity and general usability of the machine.

i forgot to add that both are free tools and what i have been considered essential arsenal on windows machines for many years.

Like kert said, though I prefer "cpu-z", traditionally, for doing the same thing.

(Though, considering the prices of PCs these days, and the prices of obsolete memory, the marginal cost is probably in favour of a new, faster bottom-end machine.)

btw, if you boot a WinXP, and after login you are using more than 150 memory, i consider it a bloated setup which needs cleanup ( except on laptops which traditionally add startup stuff installed by OEM )

i keep my desktop @ 120 megs in use at startup, and win2003 server at around ~200, running development webserver, database server and a few other services.

Actually that board supports two memory slots and 3 PCI slots.

Main Memory
• Support four memory banks using two 184-pin DDR DIMM.
• Support a maximum memory size of 2 GB
• Support 2.5v DDR SDRAM DIMM.

There's nothing wrong with the existing memory--it's just inadequate for her computing needs. I went out looking for additional memory, and couldn't find anything in a 512 less than 400, whereas this is 266. It seems to be using a Via chipset, so with a little research, I'm 99% confident that it can handle a gig in a slot. So if I can find a one gig 333, I'll probably go with that. The only other option is to replace board, processor and memory (I could upgrade to a 2.6G Sempron for about $200 total--board, memory, processor--though I'd have to get a new video card as well, because it's getting hard to find a board with AGP any more).

D'oh!

You're probably right, in relooking at it. That probably is the board (I was looking at the PCI slots and thinking I was looking at memory). It does look very much like it. I guess that "6" just looks like a "5."

Various memory makers have a guided lookup for RAM.

www.kingston.com (just an example, there are others), you select MSI from the manufacturer list, then look for the MS-6390 (listed, primarily as MS-KM266). Highlight the entry, press the "search" button.

http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configurator_new/modelsinfo.asp?SysID=&mfr=&model=&root=us&LinkBack=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kingston.com&Sys=12247-MSI-KM266+%28MS-6390%29%2FMS-6390%2FMS-6390LE-L+%28MS-6390%29&distributor=0&submit1=Search

is what I got.

Try with your favorite memory manufacturer.

btw, if you boot a WinXP,

I wouldn't know. I boot up W2K.

Go to memoryx.com and try the 'Check Your Computer' button. They sell older stuff too.

I have always had good, though not perfect, luck typing the BIOS ID string into Google and letting it poke through the BIOS maker's data pages. If you find a reference to the whole string, it's almost always specific to a particular motherboard make and model, and the BIOS manufacturers obviously know which is which.

Regards,
Ric

You made a good decision. It's better if the board supports dual cores, but you didn't provide enough information.