saving RAM questions

[John Summerfield]

On Wednesday 08 December 2004 23:59, Matt Morgan wrote:
> We're thinking of switching quite a few of our somewhat older desktops
> to FC3. I've been using one of these for a few days--they're all
> PIII's with 128Mb of RAM. I know that 128 is not really enough. Mine
> runs very well with 384Mb, but swaps noticeably more at 256Mb.
>
> Upgrading them to 256Mb would be easier and cheaper (they have only
> two DIMM slots, so if we can buy 256's for half of them, we can move
> those extra 128's to bring the other half to 256). So I'm looking for
> ways to save on RAM.
>
> I know about turning off daemons that aren't important. I've turned
> off all but the most essential, although it doesn't make that much
> difference after the first few, really. I know about the light
> desktops like XFCE, but we want to stick with Gnome or KDE in this
> case. Is there anything else big I'm missing--any other important way
> to save on RAM?

I've recently decided I really don't like Intel chipsets, for this very 
reason.

I have an eVectra (i810) that doesn't like my 256 Mbyte SDRAM.
I have a Gateway (BX) that likes one of my 256 Mb SDRAM but not another. They 
look the same to me.
I have a whitebox with an Intel desktop board (i815) which supports three 
SDRAMs up to 512 Mbytes each to a max of 512 Mb (I didn't like this chipset 
from the begining, but it's in a used computer I acquired). It doesn't like 
my 256 Mb SDRAM either.
Then there's my Acer (Via). Supports up to 1.5 Gb, thinks my 256 Mbyte SDRAM 
is fine.

The bottom line is that this might not be as straightforward as you'd hope.



-- 

Cheers
John Summerfield
tourist pics: http://environmental.disaster.cds.merseine.nu/