W3J with 3Gb of RAM?

Has anyone tried putting a 2Gb module in with a 1Gb module on a W3J? My understanding is that Asus says each slot can take a 1Gb module max, but there's no reason they can't take 2Gb modules. However since XP-32 is capped at 3 or 3.5Gb, going beyond 3 doesn't really make sense.

Has anyone tried this? Will the extra gig be addressed? Is a 200-pin SODIMM, DDR2 PC2-5300 memory module (i.e. this) my best bet?

Thanks!
~ Brett

 

Asus only lists 1GB per slot because 2GB sticks were not commercially available when the W3 was released so they didn't bother to validate the MB on that size. Only way to see is to put one in and check if it is recognized. Some of the older Asus models required BIOS updates for the 2GB sticks to be recognized, others just worked - I can't remember whether the W3 was one of the latter or not .

The linked RAM should work, but you might find one cheaper at NewEgg.

 

As ClearSkies mentioned, the 2gb stick of ram may work, especially with a BIOS update.

 

I have 2GB under the keyboard and 1GB in the main chassis, works perfectly fine with 3GB!

Although if you are recovering wondows you must remove one slot, it will not run XP recovery CD's with 3gb Ram. other than that works fine.

Fyi Upgraded internal wifi to IntelwirelessN and just set up tripple booting XP+Vista64+Windows7-32

 

Awesome - was the upgrade from 2 to 3 at all noticeable? I'm mainly looking to beef up performance in Photoshop CS4 and other resource hungry programs...

That's pretty interesting - thanks for the warning!

I mainly stay wired so I'm not too worried about that, but how does your system run under Vista-64? I may consider Windows 7-64 if the claims about its performance hold true. Right now I'm primarily using XP but also running Ubuntu through Wubi and all the hardware is detected beautifully.

~ Brett

 

Running XP, if you enable 3GB switch Photoshop CS3 will see and use more RAM, so yes I did see a performance gain. (I use Photoshop at work every day with large files and have XP64 with 6gb RAM) and I have heard CS4 uses even more RAM and fastest way to improve performance in Photoshop, is allowing files to load in RAM without it having to pagefile.

I've only just got a tripple boot system up and runing so its going to take a while to load up everything and get each OS optimised before I can evaluate perfoamance of each, but windows7 does seem snappy, but vista 64 also seems ok, straight out of the box I ran performace test on all, stock drivers and settings they all returned similar score.

http://www.passmark.com/products/pt.htm

Once I install all drivers, I will retest and use fastest for my main OS and use others for testing.

 

Wait, are you saying there's a switch to enable when using CS3/CS4 to utilize all 3GB?

~ Brett

 

yeah prety much, although it will not see the entire 3GB it does change from seeing 1.5gb?? to seeing over 2gb, 2.3-2.7?? I cant quite remember but I got our IS guys to install the switch on one of our work PC's with 3GB instaled, photoshop saw and therefore used more ram, on the small file which took 50 sec to open, after we changed the boot.ini file it saw more ram and opend the file on 15 sec (190mb A0 file) and the large file which took over 5 mins opened on 2:50 which was a massive improvement, well worth changing.

I just installed Vista64 and Photoshop CS4 yesterday, great to finally have a true 64bit program natively running in 64bit mode! it sees 2469mb of Ram available.

I have all the test settings written down at work if youre interested but deffinately Photoshop cs3 saw more ram and used more and was fater opening files.

IS were worried about stability and starving ram from other programs but I run it on my XP for for a couple of months with loads running and never had a problem, if you are doing photoshop work I would enable it, you can always save the information as a text file and change it back if you want.

 

I installed the 2gb module and I just wanted to confirm that the W3J will accept it and run smoothly in XPx86. The hardware section of My Computer reads it as 2.87 GB which (although not a full gig) is a pretty significant bump for Photoshop, etc.

Thanks,
~ Brett

 

Have you set the 3GB switch? it allows Photoshop to see and use more RAM.

if you Hit Windows key + Pause Break, go to advanced tab, under startup and recovery click on Setings, then click edit.

if you copy the first line and paste it underneath and add so it reads similar to this;

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional with /3GB" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

(this line was from a backup boot.ini file I had)

next time you boot, you can choose weather to boot normally, or with the 3GB switch enabled.

Then go to Photoshop hit Ctrl+K then Alt+P untill you get to memory, note down how much memory Photoshop sees before you enabe it and after, for me it was an increase of nearly 1gb more ram under CS3.

if everything runs ok, you can delete the first line and it wil boot up normally enabling the 3GB switch.

At least this way if it doesnt boot, you can restart boot into windows normally and remove the switch.

 

I do not understand this "3GB switch" thing. That option is the exact copy of the default one (see below my boot.ini), except that it has a difference IN THE LABEL. That should do nothing except change how the boot option looks on the screen, unless I'm missing something.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

 

Yeah it is slightly different, the line I posted was incorrect, I had troubble finding my boot.ini file as I have a new install with XP, Vista64 and Windows7and didnt copy it, this is the correct entry to use.

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional with /3GB" /3GB /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

the differnce is the added with ''/3GB" /3GB'' value.

To be honest its hard to find information on this but it modifies memory allocation, but what I do know is that with Photoshop it allows the application to see and therefore use more ram, in this case see the screen prints, the first is normal XP boot with 3gb ram installed and photoshop only sees 1.5gb ram, but second is with 3GB switch enabled and as you can see Photoshop can now see 2.4GB ram which means it will open larger files completely in RAM and does not page file as much, it does speed up opening large files especially when RAM fills up, im talking about multi layered A0 150dpi images.

here is more information

http://www.maxi-pedia.com/3GB+switch+Windows+boot.ini+3+GB

aparently it can have problems with certain software and or stablity, but as long as you make a backup, its easy to set back to standard, but we have done tests at work and using Photoshop, tis setting gives you quite an impressive open and save speed boosts (a 250mb file went from 50 sec down to 20sec!) and I have run it on my laptop for 3 months with Photoshop, Autodesk, Civil Adobe Premiere and more and had no stability problems at all.

but unless you are opening massive files you will not notce a difference, but if you find while opening a large file your computer page files a lot, this will help.

 

I didn't try the switch but Photoshop is definitely using more RAM than it did. It frequently goes well over a gig now whereas in the past I don't remember it ever hitting that point.

~ Brett