Before Upgrading

Motherboard support
Type:

The motherboard has to be able to support the type of RAM in question. The support a motherboard provides depends on its chipset. The following guidelines are very general, and you should do some research if you're going to recommend RAM to someone:

RDRAM is supported by Pentium motherboards with Intel chipsets.
DDR SDRAM is typically supported by AMD Athlon motherboards with chipsets by non-Intel vendors ( ie Via). However, Motherboards with Intel chipsets have recently been produced that support DDR SDRAM. In addition, new Macs use DDR RAM.
SDRAM is still widely supported by both Pentium and AMD Athlon motherboards.
A motherboard that supports either RDRAM or DDR SDRAM will not work with regular SDRAM, and vice versa.

Amount:

The motherboard has to be able to recognize the amount of RAM that has been installed. Not all motherboards, especially older ones, will recognize the massive amounts of RAM typicall in new computers. This is dependent on the BIOS and the chipset drivers. If a motherboard does not recognize the full amount of RAM that is inserted, consider an update to the BIOS and/or chipset drivers.

BIOS
The BIOS has to be able to recognize and support the RAM in question. BIOS updates can ease the installation issues, allowing a BIOS to recognize the new RAM.

OS
The OS affects the amount of RAM that should be installed, not the type. Operating systems manage RAM, and not all operating systems can handle large amounts of RAM. Use the information belkow as a guide tot he following fact: While you may be able to install more RAM than is listed below for each OS, installing more than the max listed will not result in significant performance increases.

- Windows 95: 64 megabytes
- Windows 98/ME: 128 megabytes
- Windows 2000/XP: 4 gigabytes
- Mac OS 9: 1.5 gigabytes
- Mac OS 10 and above: 4 gigabytes

Compatibility
In this case, compatibility refers to how compatible will a new RAM module be with one already in the system. If the student installs incompatible RAM, the result could be numerous memory errors. Follow these general guidelines:

- Do not mix bus speeds, if possible.
- Do not mix parity and ECC RAM with non-parity/non-ECC RAM
- If a computer is experiencing general protection errors, ask the student if (s)he has recently upgraded RAM. If yes, open the comp, and remove the recently installed module. If the errors disappear, the student had bad or incompatible RAM.