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    L502x Actual Maximum Ram?

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by Sgraffite, Mar 27, 2011.

  1. Sgraffite

    Sgraffite Notebook Guru

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    First off, I realize it states 8gb as the maximum. However, often times when listing the maximum amount of memory, they are basing it on currently availability of sodimms.

    For instance when I bought my Inspiron e1505 in 2006 it stated the max memory was 2gb, because 1gb DDR2 sodimms were the largest available. Once 2gb sticks were commonplace, people realized that the e1505 actually maxed out at 4gb of ram.

    Does anyone have the means to verify if the L502x can support more than 8gb?
     
    Sgraffite, Mar 27, 2011
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  2. Occams_Cat

    Occams_Cat Notebook Guru

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    I suppose that all depends on weather the BIOS is programmed to recognise 8GB modules - only one way to find out!
     
    Occams_Cat, Mar 27, 2011
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  3. Sgraffite

    Sgraffite Notebook Guru

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    Yes, it appears there is only one way to find out, unless a random hardware engineer shows up :)

    I bought this laptop of high hopes that it could support more than 8gb of memory in the future. We shall see.
     
    Sgraffite, Mar 28, 2011
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  4. Commander Wolf

    Commander Wolf can i haz broadwell?

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    I think it all depends on how lazy Dell's BIOS implementation is. On 965 laptops where the chipset officially supported 8GB, some models, like the 1420/1520/1720, usually only took 6GB happily, whereas others like the M1330 can take 8GB. It's probably something of the same here...
     
    Commander Wolf, Mar 28, 2011
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  5. xiongx8404

    xiongx8404 Newbie

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    I am waiting for a random hardware engineer. Please show up!
     
    xiongx8404, Apr 25, 2011
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  6. Tsunade_Hime

    Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow

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    8 GB sticks are available only through OEMs (HP, Dell, Lenovo) and cost ~2200 a stick. So the realistic maximum is 8 GB. It could probably do 16 but dropping 4 grand in memory you'd be better off with a mobile workstation anyway.
     
    Tsunade_Hime, Apr 25, 2011
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  7. mavericke

    mavericke Notebook Consultant

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    That is true though. I would spend it all on a 2x quadcore cpu server. The problem is that some servers will require ECC memory to be fitted, am I right?
     
    mavericke, Apr 25, 2011
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  8. xiongx8404

    xiongx8404 Newbie

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    Thanks for the information. Hopefully we can buy 16GB kits next year below 200 bucks.
     
    xiongx8404, Apr 25, 2011
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  9. TuxDude

    TuxDude Notebook Deity

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    Increasing RAM way above 8GB would not show much increase in performance unless you're running virtual machines or do a lot of compiling/assembling/linking or very memory-intense apps or in apps where you see a lot of paging going on...

    It is quite long since I gamed, so not sure how much memory today's games utilize but still 8GB is a huge amount for a normal laptop/workstation as of today....

    If the BIOS recognizes the 8GB DIMMS, it should theoretically work - it all depends on whether DELL already has support for it in the BIOS or upgrade the BIOS in the future to do this....
     
    TuxDude, Apr 26, 2011
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  10. XPS-15

    XPS-15 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Very interesting read... Thanks for the information.

    Erick
     
    XPS-15, Apr 26, 2011
    #10