I think 2GB is enough. You can always upgrade to 4GB if needs to be (3GB is practical limit for 32-bit OS).

Yes.

FWIW I've only started moving away from 2GB in 2010.

DDR2? Should be cheap as chips. I'd go for 4 GB 😀

philscomputerlab wrote:

DDR2? Should be cheap as chips. I'd go for 4 GB 😀

That's what I thought.. but the prices I found online are ridiculous (at least for me) or maybe I'm just cheap 😒 for 2x2GB DDR2 800 the prices go between 50 - 70 euros. The most expensive component in this build so far, which is the GPU, only costs 30 euros shipped!

That's steep, wow. Yea don't spend that much. You should get it close to nothing. If you were close by, I could give you some for free 😀

I would say yes! this was almost exactly my system until 2013 😀
(I had a different board)

go for it 😉

2GB is fine, I run my WinXP era games on an HP Core2Duo workstation , which has 2GB of DDR2 , and all the games work just fine.

remember people were complaining that even some later games like Skyrim were unable to address more than 2GB.

philscomputerlab wrote:

You should get it close to nothing. If you were close by, I could give you some for free 😀

I'd like to visit this old-memory-is-lower-priced-than-new universe someday.

leileilol wrote:

philscomputerlab wrote:

You should get it close to nothing. If you were close by, I could give you some for free 😀

I'd like to visit this old-memory-is-lower-priced-than-new universe someday.

That would be great! And we coud wear matching T-shirts!

XP games period is until >=DX10 or Win7-only games appeared. That happened in times when 4 Gb was recommended. Hence for XP machine you need 4 Gb.

leileilol wrote:

philscomputerlab wrote:

You should get it close to nothing. If you were close by, I could give you some for free 😀

I'd like to visit this old-memory-is-lower-priced-than-new universe someday.

At work I'm helping "recycle" some computers. Which involves stripping them and sorting the good parts. It must be around 100 machines, all of them Core 2 Duo with DDR2 memory. Also, have a screwdriver with you. If you see an computer in the skip or on the road, you can quickly grab some free RAM.

This spring I upgraded my C2D to 8GB DDR2. Two sticks are Samsung DDR2-800 and the other two are some generic sticks I bought from China. Works OK. Cheap as peanuts. I heard the chips are recycled from server systems, not sure if it's true though.

Look for "DDR2 for intel", sticks for AMD won't work, something to do with memory controller. Like this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Samsung-chips-4GB-KIT … =item3f5369513d

RacoonRider wrote:

This spring I upgraded my C2D to 8GB DDR2. Two sticks are Samsung DDR2-800 and the other two are some generic sticks I bought from China. Works OK. Cheap as peanuts. I heard the chips are recycled from server systems, not sure if it's true though.

Look for "DDR2 for intel", sticks for AMD won't work, something to do with memory controller. Like this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Samsung-chips-4GB-KIT … =item3f5369513d

Yeah... There's a lot of these on the bay... But I already have an Intel CPU 🙁
In the end I bought a 2GB set for 12 euros... It was a decent deal compared to the rest. This shop is the one with the best RAM deals that I could find. A lot of variety too.

philscomputerlab wrote:

leileilol wrote:

philscomputerlab wrote:

You should get it close to nothing. If you were close by, I could give you some for free 😀

I'd like to visit this old-memory-is-lower-priced-than-new universe someday.

At work I'm helping "recycle" some computers. Which involves stripping them and sorting the good parts. It must be around 100 machines, all of them Core 2 Duo with DDR2 memory. Also, have a screwdriver with you. If you see an computer in the skip or on the road, you can quickly grab some free RAM.

Funny story. That's how I got my hands on a Pentium MMX 133 and a sound blaster 16. There's an old computer at work which they use as a door bearer! I would have taken the motherboard and memory too, but it would have taken way too much time 😢

New DDR/DDR2 RAM will be more expensive than DDR3/DDR4, because manufacturing volumes are far smaller than they used to be. But you can often get them used for next to nothing, as old computers are being scrapped and RAM is one of the most durable components, so it is likely that there are plenty of fully functional sticks out there that no one needs.

In my opinion no, because games such as Titan Quest and Gothic 3 are smoother when is more than 2 Gb RAM even when they played on XP instead of newer systems, also Crysis are smoother on more RAM. Videocard also uses some of RAM so is good to have 3 Gb on XP 32 bit or 4-6 Gb if are playing on vista or 7 x64.

Sorry for the late reply. I think those specs are actually very good for an XP machine. As for the HDD though, can you not use SATA drives with the mobo? You might benefit from a faster SATA HDD than an IDE one.

Yes. You're talking games like Supreme Commander, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Gothic III, Crysis perhaps. Some of the most demanding games of the period. All worked fine with 2GB. Those games struggled immensely with 1GB. As far as I can remember, nobody aimed for 4GB in gaming machines back then as it was simply not needed. The ideal number to aim for was 2, or at least 1.5 Gb. Going from 1 to 2 Gb on my Athlon 64 4000+ was the best move I ever made with that machine.

Oh and throw a Western Digital Raptor 74GB SATA in there (or two). Makes a huge difference and those drives are just super top end pimp items for the period.

Tiger433 wrote:

In my opinion no, because games such as Titan Quest and Gothic 3 are smoother when is more than 2 Gb RAM even when they played on XP instead of newer systems, also Crysis are smoother on more RAM. Videocard also uses some of RAM so is good to have 3 Gb on XP 32 bit or 4-6 Gb if are playing on vista or 7 x64.

Vanilla (obviously patched) Gothic III sees almost no improvement beyond 2GB RAM. The game is almost unplayable with 1GB, having just an extra 512MB for 1.5GB worked wonders with the gameplay, with something like a 75% reduction in swapping. With 2GB there is almost no swapping at all, and loading times are vastly reduced.