RAM question not seeming to be answered elsewhere

[USMDude]

I have a friend who wants to upgrade his RAM. He currently has one stick of 512MB DDR SDRAM PC2100 from Nanya Technology (came with the Sony VAIO originally). His mobo is an ASUS P4S533-VX mobo. I'm wondering what the maximum speed mem this board should be able to handle. I know he wants to max out the RAM size-wise, which would be 3 gigs. If it can only handle PC2100 mem, then that's fine, but I figured perhaps someone on here would be more knowledgeable about this and could help.

Thanks.

--Edit--

According to Nanya Tech.'s website documentation:

Memory Doc. the timing on the memory he's already got in there is 2-3-3 if that's any help.

[discodanman45]

You don't necessarily have to get pc2100. pc2100, pc2700, and pc3200 should all work with that motherboard. If you put pc3200 in the motherboard it will downclock to the speed that the cpu is running at. pc3200 is probably cheaper to buy then pc2100 right now, so might as well go for the better cheaper stick

Some more info about RAM. Don't worry too much about timings. PC3200 that has a CAS latency of 3.0 will easily have a CAS Latency of 2.0 if downclocked to pc2100 speeds. The only time where identical sticks with exact timings are needed is when you are running dual channel.

The last part of info is the following question. Why does he need 3 GB of RAM? I don't think your friend will see any difference between 1 GB and 3 GB of RAM.

[Cricket]

Head on over to Crucial.com and use the memory configurator...it'll tell you exactly what RAM works in that motherboard or Sony VAIO computer.

Cricket

[USMDude]

He plays a lot of games on his comp, and so that's pretty much why he wants to upgrade the RAM, plus his wife uses the comp to do image-editing. I figured it'd probably be a good idea to go for like 1.5 GB and upgrade the graphics card, instead of just bumping up the RAM to 3 gigs, but he seems pretty dead-set on doing both.

[David M]

Installing more than 2 gigs of RAM for now, is a waste of money since there are virtually no 32 bit applications that need more than that amount. When we start utilizing 64 bit applications, then it will be a different story. I would just get two matching sticks of 1 gig RAM. I agree that Crucial is a good place to determine exactly what type of RAM your computer needs.

The graphics card makes a tremendous difference in your computers graphics capability.