Upgrading RAM, what should I get?

I recently purchased an HP Livestrong L2000 laptop. Overall I'm happy with it, but it seems that to bring out its full potential as far as running games goes, I need to upgrade the RAM. Here are the current specs.

AMD Turion 64 ML-37 (2.0 GHz/1MB L2 Cache)
ATI Radeon Xpress 200m w/productivity ports
2x512MB DDR SDRAM (PC 2700)
80 GB 5400 RPM HD
14.0 WXGA BrightView Widescreen (1280x768)

I'd like to upgrade to faster RAM, and I think I want to go ahead and get 2 GB (especially since my graphics card shares 128MB). I'm wondering if anyone would suggest any specific brands, and if there's anything I need to know or keep in mind when purchasing it. Thanks.

 

Kingston or crucial. Your ram speed will be 333mhz max, PC2700 DDR333.

JC

 

Crucial DDR400 sodimm 200 pin would be fine but if you combine it with one of the ddr333 chips it will also run at this speed. Many people recommend this one

 

Crucial, Kingston and OCZ are very good brands.

 

So the maximum speed RAM that my system will use is PC2700 DDR333? How does one find this out, anyway?

EDIT: What kind of difference is there between Kingston's normal RAM and their ValueRAM?

EDIT AGAIN: At this point it looks like I'll be ordering 2 sticks of Crucial Technology 1GB 200-Pin DDR SO-DIMM DDR 333 (PC 2700) Notebook Memory - OEM from newegg.com at $115 each. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145068

 

Here is where you can find what is the max speed and the type.

http://www.crucial.com/store/listpa...abid=AM&model=Special+Edition+L2000&submit=Go

JC

 

Okay, thanks for all the help so far. Now, I've already said that I'm planning on getting 2GB, but I'm seeing conflicting reports on whether or not there's any advantage in going for the full 2 GB. So, is it worth it, especially as far as games go?

 

Well, its depends on what games are you runnning.

When I run Halo on my 1150, its uses about 130 mb of ram out of 1 gb. I am not sure about today's games.

JC

 

Battlefield 2 is one game I'd like to play. It runs on my laptop currently, at 800x600 with everything low, but at about 20 FPS. I've heard that it benefits from 2 GB.

 

It may load faster but it will not hugely improve the game itself. When I ran Halo for the first time, with just 256 mb of ram, it took some time to load the game. Once i upgraded the ram to 768 mb, it loaded quick. However, when I upgraded to 1 gb, i didnt see any differences. Other then the loading time, it was the same.

JC

 

You cannot play BF2 on L2000. Period.
Performance will be awuful and the look, well, colorful dots with guns.
By the way, L2000's max RAM speed is DDR400, that is PC3200, whatever crucial's web page says. Faster ram will benefit the shared video card!

Jumping from 1gb to 2gb of RAM is qustionable as far as gaming performance is concerned. Maybe BF2 will be the only game affected (it does consume a lot of RAM).

 

Alright, thanks. So how did you discover the max RAM speed is DDR 400? I'm certainly glad to hear that it will support faster RAM, as I would like to get the most out of this system and its video card.

 

Here's a long thread from not so long ago (many screenshots): http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=25157&page=18
Here's just one example (out of many): http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=36988

This used to be a hot topic 6 months ago. Now everybody buys DDR400 for Turion/Sempron based machines because 1)it's usually cheaper 2)more bandwith even if they run at 166mhz (pc2700). The main problem is that AMD's memory controller (in general) is somewhat picky and so far the most compatible RAM type is crucial. You can always ask in the HP forum or do a search there.

 

Alright, thanks. Unless there are any other considerations on the kind of RAM, I think I'll be ordering this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145096

Thanks for the help, everybody.