memory upgrade advice for travelmate8215

When i ever i have many tabs opened in firefox and some other applications running in the background the system is starting to hang alot....
So i was thinking maybe it was time to make an memory upgrade.

Qurrently i have 1 GB of DDR2 PC4200.

Does anybody know if it is possible to run a 2GB Ram stick in the Acer Travelmate 8215??
the manual says:
"256/512 MB or 1 GB of DDR2 533/667 MHz memory,
upgradeable to 2 GB using two soDIMM modules (dual-
channel support)"

I have updated to the latest bios.. version 3521.

The readme files does not say anything about this and i like to have buy 1 stick of 2GB. Then i would have totally 3GB and perhaps il be able to run Vista at some point...

Or is it better to go with 1 stick of 1 GB and make the RAM run as dual channel??

Please can anyone advice me on this??

 

check which chipset you have. I believe you have the 945 chipset, which would take 3GB. You can use Crucial.com's online scanner to see what they say your laptop will support.

 

Thanks for your reply goofball. I have tried the Crucial scanner and it says that my system can take maximum 2GB stick pr. slot.
So thats all good. I can buy the 2 GB stick.

And it was 945 Express Chipset...

But what about my last question?
is it better to buy the 2 GB stick or 1 GB stick and make the system run in dual channel???
I have heard that dual channel gives a better performance...

 

your system will run in dual channel for the first 1GB + 1GB of the 3GB. the last will run in single channel. I personally found going from 2GB to 3GB to have a nice performance increase, well worth the $20 it costs to move to 3GB instead of only 2GB.