robdrums

Hi guys

I bought a Dell Studio 540 with 4gb RAM. Now, you may or may not have read about my ongoing saga with Dell where the memory was causing frequent crashes.

Finally got it back from Dell yesterday, and the docket says they changed out the hard drive and replaced the 4x1gb sticks with 2x2gb, leaving me two spare slots.

Upon interrogating the system, it turns out they put 1x1gb and 1x2gb, total 3gb. They say they will send me out another 1gb stick to install myself to bring it back to 4 as it should be.

Fine, but I have requested they send me a 2gb stick as a goodwill gesture as the docket states that was what was installed. This would give me 5gb in total. I know nothing about RAM, but is it as easy as this, would I have that much memory, or is there more to it?

I am considering, while I have the lid off, buying another 2gb stick for £35 from Dell and sticking another one in the spare slot. If Dell send me out a 2gb as I have asked, that would give me potential of 7gb RAM, or 6gb if they send me a 1gb.

I know 4gb is a good set up, but I am just contempleting beefing it up while it's open. I also know numbers don't mean everything in computing, but in theory, would this be a good idea, would it work, or am I wasting my time? if the PC was designed around 4gb?

Processor is a Quad Core 2.66Ghz, and I have a 9800GT Geforce Nvidia graphics card.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

Rob

wrench97

Vista 32 bit or Vista 64 bit operating system?
32 bit os"s can only address 4gig of ram including system devices and usually report around 3.2Gig as usable.
The more ram sticks you add the shorter time on battery you'll have 2 sticks of 2gig are better then 4 sticks of 1gig.

robdrums

It's Vista 32. So there'd be no point then?

I am going to push them to give me another 2gb stick, even if I have to send the 1gb one back to them. I always thought 1gbx4 was a bit of a messy way of doing it when 2gb sticks are available for so little money.

Thanks for the reply.

Rob

wrench97

On 32 bit the Dell norm is a 2gig and a 1 gig stick, if they will send you a 2 Gig go ahead and swap it for the 1 gig but I doubt you'll see any difference in performance.

robdrums

OK thanks. A friend of mine told me that 2x2 or 1x4, ie pairs of parallel memory are better for performance than mixing & matching. I didn't realise 32bit Vista wouldn't be able to recognise anything higher than 4gb anyway, so I suppose I may as well live with it if the mixing of 1gb and 2gb sticks won't make any difference. It's the principle though!

Cheers

Rob

wrench97

The laptop will use both sides of the stick as 2 channels so it will be dual channel mode.

robdrums

Sorry, how do you mean? Do you mean 2x1gb plus 1x2gb will still work fine in dual channel mode or would it (theoretically) run better if the memory is matched and parallel?

It isn't a laptop by the way, but I'm sure that makes no difference :-)

Rob

wrench97

The ram sticks are double sided some motherboards like the one in this laptop will see each side of the stick as a channel and run in dual channel mode.
Mine runs in Dual channel using 1, 1gig stick and 1, 512Meg stick.

robdrums

Result - Dell are sending me a 2gb stick on Wednesday. Taking back the 1gb one as well but nevermind, I guess it's useless to me. Seems quite petty of them for a bit of kit worth £20.

So in the future, what will be my upgrade options? As long as I use Vista 32 I can't add more RAM? If I upgrade that at a later stage to 64 or whatever else comes out, I will have 2 free slots into which I could in theory beef it up to 8mb?

Rob

sobeit

since 3 gigs will only work with windows, then there really is not much you can do except to purchase faster ram, depending upon what is compatible with your motherboard.

As far as 8 gigs with a 64 bit os, then it too will depend upon your motherboards specs.

Tyree

You can use 4GB with Vista 32. The OS won't "see" but it will use it and 4GB will be plenty with a 64Bit OS.

sobeit

vista32 sp1 will see it but not use it.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946003