TM8204, speed of installed RAM

Hi all.
I noticed some of you (lucky ones) who recieved their TM8204 indicated that the installed RAM is 533MHz while the Acer site clearly indicates that the installed RAM is 667MHz. Can someone please shed more light on that matter? and please for the current owners of the TM8204 verify and post the speed of the installed RAM on your system?
Thanx in advance.

 

Looks like 667M to me.

- Ed

 

According to Cpu-Z mine is DDR533 which sucks because I thought I was getting DDR667

 

Guess I'll need to double-check after I get done mucking around with installing linux. Sorry if I mislead.

- Ed

 

At least one 8204 owner on another forum has taken a picture of his RAM (I know, that sounds kind of dirty, doesn't it?), and it's clearly labelled as PC2-4200, which would be 533MHz.

http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=133673

As I indicated over there, I'm actually quite surprised by this. I'll be interested to see if mine comes with the slower RAM. If so, then I'll be taking some serious issue with both Acer and whomever I purchase the notebook from (assuming that the reseller, at least, doesn't start listing the difference in their specs).

 

I smell a class action lawsuit...

 

I'm not a big fan of class action lawsuits. Often, they're frivolous and only the lawyers benefit. Everyone else loses (both the immediate parties, and everyone who suffers as companies start acting in ways to avoid future potential lawsuits).

However, this could be a clear case of false advertising; it's not even debatable whether or not there's an issue. I'm sure, though, that Acer and the resellers will do the right thing, which would seem to me to be: 1) give notice in all future sales that 533MHz RAM is included and 2) offer returns (without cost) to current purchases and/or provide the proper RAM.

 

As noted here my 8204 came with 533MHz RAM as well.

 

Yea, everyone sure wins with that. Everyone that is lawyer that is.

 

Got my 8204 3 days ago..
Sure enough:Nanya NT1GT64U8HA0BN-37B DDR2-533

They lie..

 

it's 533...

667 ddr2 so-dimms are not in the market yet..

Only ones are in TW and are CL5, which is **** slow..
i'd rather CL4 533 than CL5 667..

I've even called Acer service ctr and they confirmed the 8204 ships with 533 rams.

And yes, my 8204 is running on 2GB 533..

 

I'm waiting on mine, but CDW clearly state that it's 667Mhz Ram, so we'll see.

 

mine which i RMAed due to the NIC card issue had 667 ram in it...

 

Acer has changed the specs on their website for both the 8204 and the 5672 listing the memory as being 533mhz. This is not looking good.

 

If phiberx is correct (667MHZ DDR2 SO-DIMMS are not yet available) I suppose there's not much that can be done about it.

My machine was always spec'd as having 533MHz RAM, so I've got nothing to complain about anyway I guess..

 

Did you purchase yours in Thailand? The ones in the United States supposed to have 667mhz RAM in it. Just got off the phone with Acer and they said they didn't have inventory for it. All resellers got their info from the Partner site set up for resellers, but that was wrong and has now been corrected. All resellers should update their specs on it.

 

Yes, I would have purchased it from OS if the international warranty was more than just 1 year, but 3 years domestic warranty is a pretty compelling reason to buy local.

So far I've never seen 100% duty cycle on the processor (but I haven't done any video encoding yet), so in my usage the CPU's not exactly stressed, and the main limitation in gaming is always going to be the Radeon X1600. As always the biggest bottleneck is the hard drive.

Would you even notice the difference with 667MHz RAM?

 

I would say no. I'd say one would notice speed of the HD more than you can with the speed of RAM. And not a lot of people notice a difference between 5400 and 7200 unless you're working with very large files. Since you dont really hit the max speed until you do so.

 

So does anyone have good documentation that the RAM was supposed to be 667 and not the memory bus. As you might imagine I'm having trouble finding any.

BUT, provided you have that, one option is to call your credit card company and dispute the charge. That should get the attention of the retailer involved and may indirectly get the attention of acer. In my experience this is a good way to resolve disputes when you're having trouble making headway. If you paid with a check or something else, tho, you're out of luck.

 

Its a measly ~5% improvement. Sure it would be nice to get the 677 but for me a appology would do just as well. I'd prefer to have my 533MHz ram and for it to be delivered when it was rather then wait for afew weeks for it to be back in stock.

 

Hmm, according to CPU ID mine has 667.

 

@clintb
Where did you get yours from? and what is the build date of your 8204?

 

Cool, care to run the 2M Super Pi test and let us know the results? Just want to see if it makes any real impact to performance. Thanks!

 

Got it from ncix.com in Canada. I'm in the US, Texas to be exact. BTW, I highly recommend ncix.com. Very good price on the 8204. I paid $2098 USD with 2-3 day express shipping and extra insurance to cover the full amount.

Build date is 06/03.

I'll run the Super Pi test again tomorrow since I can't remember what it is right now. On the desktop and it's a bit late.

 

wow. That's awesome. I got mine from NCIX and had a horrendous experience. I got one of the very first that came into them (a whole 3 weeks after everyone had received theirs) and literally got 1 of 2 in their Toronto wherehouse.

Although once it shipped it shipped promptly. Anyways - great machine, even with 533 memory heh

 

Pi test isn't going to be affect by your bus. It will purely be affected by the processor itself. By changing the memory to 667 instead of 533 the bus will be able to transfer more data faster that is all.

 

Oh? If the Super Pi test isn't memory speed dependent, then what is?

 

Falafel is correct. My 8204's Super Pi 2M benchmark was 1m15sec. Right on the money with everyone else.

 

How fat the pipe is between th processor and memory and how fast the bus speed helps applications that access lots of memory. Applications that are reading and writing huge amounts of memory are going to benefit the most. Also having several applications reading and writing to memory will benefit.

Applications that depend mostly on the GPU or CPU will most probably not see much benefit from faster memory, and if they do it will be a small improvemnt. Calculating Pi is just testing how fast your CPU can run the algorithm.

It all depends where the applications spends most of its time, and how much ad how frequently it utilizes memory. Super Pi probably doest mostly math.