Ram Question

Hello. I have a m15x with an i5 processor and 6gb of ram. I read some threads that said that the m15x could support 16gb of ram unofficially; however, my m15x won't get past the BIOS screen. I assume this is because I don't have the i7 processor. Anyhow, I decided to use this ram in my wife's Asus G73 laptop (it has the i7 720qm). Since there are four ram slots, she now has a total of 20gb of ram. I checked her windows index score after installing the ram, and it went down 0.5 points on the RAM Memory score. I checked the BIOS and used CPU-Z, and they both show the laptop as having 20gb of ram. Does this mean that her computer is able to use 20gb of ram? She is using Windows 7 64bit as her OS. The ram I used was 1333mhz PC3-10666.

I realize that I might need to redirect this question to the Asus Forum, but I thought you guys might know something.

 

I am not 100% sure, but the ram may not being able to utilize dual channel mode or tri-channel modes correctly with your configuration, bringing down the score somewhat. Curious why you want to upgrade the ram so much? You probably won't notice much speed difference.

 

You're probably right. I just noticed how low the price of ram has dropped from only a few years ago and thought that it would be a decent cheap and easy upgrade. I figured that if I was to improve the ram, I might as well get a bunch since the price wasn't so much different.

 

I did a bit more research and the only difference I can find between the ram (aside from capacity and brand) is that the new ram is PC3-10666 and the old ram is PC3-10600. The stock ram is Kingston and the new ram is G.Skill. That shouldn't cause incompatibility issues because the new ram should just down-clock to PC3-10600. I wonder if the timing on the ram is different and causing problems. The timing on the new ram is 9-9-9-24 and the Cas latency is 9. Here is the Newegg link to the ram I bought Newegg.com - G.SKILL 16GB (2 x 8G) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Laptop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-16GBSQ

 

To resolve the "dual channel" question, try pulling the original ram from your wife's laptop, leaving two 8 GB sticks in adjacent slots. Then try WEI again.

Joe

 

I would like to test that, but the Asus G73 is a real pain to work on. They designed it so that you can easily access 3 of 4 ram slots, but the last one is inaccessible unless you take the entire computer apart (not something I'm interested in trying again). I will try some different configurations to see if maybe I mismatched the channels, and if I can't get it to work better, then I'll try to make some of my money back on e-bay or something.

ps. I figured out that PC3-10666 and PC3-10600 are the same. Companies just round the numbers differently.

 

The WEI score went back up after reconfiguring the order of the ram. It's now set up with 2gb on the bottom then 8gb, then 2gb, and 8gb on top.