Using a DDR 400 on a (it seems) less powerful PC

[SavageKurtain]

So, i decided to expand the RAM of my old Compaq EVO N1020V laptop, 1,50 GHZ Intel Celeron processor.
I decided, at first, to buy a DDR 400 (PC3200) 1 GB RAM, but it turned out that the base RAM that was inserted in the laptop was a DDR 266 (PC2100) 256MB RAM.
Is it possible to use a more powerful RAM, or do i have to buy same DDR 266 model, but with more memory?

[Rwolf]

As long as the memory stick uses the same voltage is should work; I'm not sure if you need two identical sticks, which is usually required on stationary PC:s, but it is possible the laptop can mix different memory sizes to some degree. The memory speed will be the slower PC2100 rate anyway I think. There should be a key/slot cutout on the memory stick to indicate the voltage too, so it should not be possible to put the wrong voltage type stick in the memory connector.

Ideally the laptop hardware manual will tell you what combinations of memory is compatible. For the older series of laptops there is usually a memory limit at 2GB total for the machine, there is not more memory adresses coming through the northbridge on older machines in the P3/P4 generations. Your machine is even older I see, equipped with with Celeron or Pentium processor only. (Memory physical type would be a SODIMM for most laptops.)

However, looking at this guide it seems the max memory supported is 1GB for your computer, and you may need other RAM:

https://configurator.memorystock.com/re ... elID=31873