Dual Channel Ram

as you might know, some of the smaller ASUS laptops have 512mb soldered in..

the maximum amount of ram on these is 1.5gb 1x512 + 1x1gb....

2 questions:

1- you can't replace the soldered ram, or can you ? is it really soldered in or just hidden somewhere in the system?

2-if you install the 1.5 setup, you will get a performance hit i guess because ram is no longer running in dual-channel mode since the modules are not identical....i guess that sucks....

anyone have some feedback or thoughts about this?

thanks,

 

1) You can't, no it's soldered.And the bad news is (I think you mean W7j) the speed is DDR2-533 instead of DDR2-667.
2)I think you're right.A big mistake from ASUS's design.Yet, if you are not doing intensive tasks.The performance hit will not be so great.

 

Yeah, I have feedback. The limitation to 1.5GB is a serious one. However, the advantages of dual-channel are virtually nonexistent in normal usage of the computer. Even for memory-intensive applications (like memory benchmarks) the advantages are marginal.

 

I just installed 2gb ram on my mac mini. One of them is 533 and the other is 667, I will still get 2gb worth of ram right? Also 2gb @533 is better than 1gb 667. Am I correct guys?
Latief, sorry for messing up your thread but I think this is the best place to post this question, rather than starting a whole new thread.

 

Quite correct. The size is much more important than the clock. I'm unsure to what extent the clock difference will be noticeable, but I'm guessing not much.

 

what happens if you install a 2gb stick in the open slot, do you think it will boot?

man, in this day and age with vista, 1gb is the minimum. i tried that on my desktop which had 1gb, and i was not impressed, going up to 2gb on that made a world of difference........

so why the damn weird 1.5gb thing? i just don't understand why they did not solder in a 1gb stick? sometimes it makes you wonder .....

 

If you have a 2gb stick, technically it'll work, but Asus hasn't gotten any 2gb sticks yet to test..... However, the chipset is setup for a maximum of 4gb, so 2gb sticks should be able to be read and if not, they just need a bios update which Asus will no doubt do... but when the world changed over to 1gb sticks, the same was said and they didn't even need a bios update........ so, in systems like the S6, W5, etc... yes you eventually can replace the memory in the open dimm with a 2gb stick giving you a total of 2.5gb...