How much more RAM should I buy?

Hey,



I'm running an Athlon 2400+ with 2x 512mb DDR400 (Dual Channel). She's been seeming a little slow lately, I already have a gig of ram and I was considering more... is this an efficient way to make it faster?



Should I get 2 more 512mb sticks?



Or should I get 2 256mb sticks? And put them in the spot of my current ram and move my 2 512mb sticks to the 2ndary dimms? That essentially would make it faster right?



Which scenario would be best? Thanks for the help.

Hmm, i wouldnt go for more ram as a first option.. if your PC has being running slow lately but it used to be fast then i would try a clean out.. Virus and Malware scan (ad-aware, spybot, win defender, Virus scanner of your choice), then maybe a regisrty clean with Ccleaner, remove any temp files and free up hard disk space.. then after all that a Defrag of your system drive can do wonders.. (i did a defrag the other day only after 6 months of a fresh install and i couldnt believe the difference!)



Note: I obviously dont know your level of computer knowlege and if you have already done all of this then just ignore me.. lol.. but if a clean out is not the needed solution then i would be wondering what is making it slow when it used to be fast.. most of the time its software related

look how empty/full your hard drive is....that might be an answer.

Unless it is very close to full it shouldn't matter.

With an Athlon 2400 (are you talking about an athlon XP?), adding more RAM will only make it more unbalanced. 2GB of RAM is all well and good, but your processor is pretty old to be running that much. I would suggest upgrading to an Athlon XP 3200 instead of more RAM.

*edit* I see your sig now (and it is too long, btw) so you are indeed talking about an XP.

I heard that AMD is droping prices on thier processors on july 22, you might want to look into that on a news websearch, i cant verify it. I would agree with the cleaning your computer though, unless you are installing something new with higher needs why buy more ram or a new processor? chances are you r computer is overloaded with too many programs running at once, I would first take Jesse1984's suggestion and see if that helps.

no ram is definetly not the problem 1gb is lots. I think you esither have minor computer issues or should consider a faster CPU