Upgrade notebook RAM?

Tek7

Tek7

CGA President, Tribe of Judah Founder & President
Staff member
I was researching what it would cost to buy a 4GB (2x2GB) notebook RAM kit today and was surprised to find out it would only cost about $40-$50 USD.

I'm currently running Vista Ultimate with 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-5300 (I think) RAM. The 4GB kit is PC2-6400.

Is it worth it to upgrade?

If so, I might purchase it once it's in stock and count it as a very early birthday present.
 
If your Vista is 32-bit, I don't suggest so since you don't get all the ram (only about 3.5~) but if it is 64-bit, sure. I got 4 in mine, and games load in seconds as opposed to minutes with my old PC. Performance wise... you'll get very minor boosts (all the benchmarking showed 2 -> 4 gigs of ram adding like 1-2 FPS total). If the load times are slow even with a decent CPU, 4 gigs would help.
 
Keero said:
If your Vista is 32-bit, I don't suggest so since you don't get all the ram (only about 3.5~) but if it is 64-bit, sure.
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Bwah?

I thought Vista Ultimate 32-bit could make use of 4GB of RAM. Was I mistook?
 
From what I read online, it will "show" the 4 gigs, but will only use the 3~.

From Google:
The 4 gigs of RAM in a 32bit OS thing has been discussed all over this board, and millions of places online. So be sure you understand that topic before getting too concerned with anything else.

Now that you know that. Vista SP1 made a cosmetic change, presumably intended to stop people wondering why 4GB of RAM isn't showing up, that cosmetic change was to make it actually report 4GB. It reports as 4 now, but that changes absolutely nothing on how the memory is actually addressed, that is still a 32bit OS issue, there is no way around that.

If it is absolutely critical to you that ALL 4GB of your RAM is available to you, then run a 64bit OS.
Click to expand...

Can anyone else confirm this though?
 
Tek7 said:
Bwah?

I thought Vista Ultimate 32-bit could make use of 4GB of RAM. Was I mistook?
Click to expand...

Its funny how its a Ultimate but it truly isn't, hardware wise.

32-bit: 50%-75%
64-bit: 100%

If it does only show 3GB, then there is no point to have the extra 1GB.

But Keero, the RAM depends on its specialty.

My Ram is primarily good for ping/lag, as well as performance.

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Click to expand...
 
Tek7 said:
I was researching what it would cost to buy a 4GB (2x2GB) notebook RAM kit today and was surprised to find out it would only cost about $40-$50 USD.

I'm currently running Vista Ultimate with 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-5300 (I think) RAM. The 4GB kit is PC2-6400.

Is it worth it to upgrade?

If so, I might purchase it once it's in stock and count it as a very early birthday present.
Click to expand...

not with 32 bit..max of three. Vista will work fine with two and the benefits of 4 will only be felt under 64 bit and that's only if you run programs that will actually USE all 4 gigs.
 
Tek7 said:
Bwah?

I thought Vista Ultimate 32-bit could make use of 4GB of RAM. Was I mistook?
Click to expand...

yes..as of service pack 1 vista will lie and say it sees alll 4 gigs. microsoft did that becuase folks were calling left and right to ask where their ram disappeared to..so they now make the os lie. In reality vista can only use 3-3.5 gigs out of 4 gigs due to various addressing factors.
 
personally, I would still put the 4 in, I'm running 32bit vista and a 64bit windows7 there is a slight difference, but even if vista will only see 4 gig ram and use 3-3.5 it's still better then the 2gig of ram. if i'm not mistaken I thought HCS said somewhere that it starts out with all 4 gigs but has to subtract the memory from the video card so really it uses only 3 or a little over 3 of the system memory.
 
I agree with Whon.

Why it may only use 3.5 gigs out of the 4 gigs you buy, you're still getting the benefit of 1.5 gigs and really only losing 500 megs from that 4 gigs of memory.

I say get it.
 
actually it's how windows addresses things..whon mistook how i said thigns are counted:

ALL memory anywhere in the mahcine is put into the total maount of installed memory in a windows mahcine. this includes video card, modem buffers, sound card buffers, network card buffers etc etc. Add in the amount of instlaled ram and you'll go beyond the 4 gig limit of 32 bit..this means you then wrap around and you start loosing memory. Because of this running in this fasion is not reccomended for stability reasons. Go with a maximum of 3 gigs installed(unless your video card is larger than 512 megs) to avoid this issue.
 
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