Studio 14z - 1GB memory weakness

A bunch of buddies and I are deciding between a Macbook pro and a 14z, the Dell however has 1GB soldered on the motherboard which totally kills the deal. It's a pity since Dell has a superior heat flow design over the Mac.

The Macbook pro topped our buy list because Dell didn't include 2 slots for user added memory. What's worse is only a measly 1GB is soldered permanently, making dual channel memory only available up to 1GB. How could this happen?

The Nvidia chipset in the 14z also supports up to 8GB. This can never be realized with the 14z (max 5GB?). Comments?

 

I'm not entirely sure what you expect us to say to this? Yes it is slightly annoying, but 5GB is plenty. What you also don't get with the 14z is a huge price tag; so you play your cards you take your chances.

 

Well, we've not totally made up our minds yet on what would be a great book for school. Yep it is annoying 'cos it seems someone finally made a light notebook to compete with the macbook pro 13" but toppled the house of cards at the last second.

I'd disagree on the price, if u up-spec the dell with warranty and identical components to the macbook pro 13", it's about the same price. Do you have any laptops identical to the MBP 13 to recommend? We're still open to suggestions!

 

meh - not really an issue. 5 GB is likely more than enough for 90% of applications, and beyond that, it's only worth the extra price tag for a handful of people.

 

It's not the max mem we're irked about, it's the dual channel only up to 1GB on the dell. How can u share system memory with a 9400M if you don't have enough bandwidth to sustain both the cpu and gpu beyond 1GB? The modern OSes already take up around 1GB!

All I'm saying is we're expecting 3D applications to take a performance hit, why have a decent gpu on board if it's gonna choke in 3D applications?

 

You should have a read of this thread, as I don't think you understand dual channel RAM fully:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=167472

That's not intended as a slur against you or anything, although I recognise that it might sound like one.

Also, the price difference can be about $300, as long as you are not going for the full 5GB of RAM

 

Sorry, just noticed you asking for other recommendations; I'd maybe have a look at the Asus U series and the Sony Vaio Z series for models to compare against the MBP 13. Personally I prefer the Vaio Z series, but it depends on which country you are ordering from as to whether they are more expensive than MBP. The MBP in the UK is ridiculously priced (eg $1,499 in the US, £1149 in the UK which converts to $1,927 - scandalous)

 

+1. Although differently sized sticks will impair performance, it is hardly something you will notice. You're still achieving a 128bit bus, in the end. Newer multi-core CPU's do not "stack" processes in the terms that A goes before B, and B goes before C. Nowadays it is a much more intricate process. Frequency (FSB) and latency of the RAM itself will have a much more drastic effect, and this is still negligible depending on your usage.

Modern mobo's are "smart" in regards to where the place the information inside the RAM. Information that is going to be accessed the most will be placed in such a fashion that it can move it on the 128 bit bus (if I had to gander, I'd say the soldered peice is on the board specifically to acquire rendering information in the quickest fashion possible, but I couldn't say this for sure).

I guess if the ~2% performance hit on the component that is only a bottleneck under very demanding and rare conditions was worth ~$300 bucks + the premium you pay for a name, then I would be in the OP's situation.

 

P.S. if I had to guess, I'd say aesthetics were important as a motivating factor in your purchase. You were looking at the Vaio Z series, but the biggest competition in my decision was in the form of the SR series. Very close in specs to the 14z.

 

Agree 100%. Ths SR series is a good comparison, but as they are looking at the MBP I figured aesthetics was a large factor, hence suggesting the Z series and the Asus U series. If that is not such a factor then you might also want to take a look at some of the Dell business line, such as the Precision range, and also the HP Elitebooks. Slightly more expensive than consumer models, but you typically get better service and better durability.

 

I was about to say - the Z series is a different plane of functionality relative to macbooks and the 14z. If I had three grand to spend on a laptop, that's what I would have bought.

 

NP, that's y i posted, I need someone to confirm/debunk the theoretics. However your link has not convinced me because it only covers CPU usage of dual channel ram, it doesn't touch the usage of CPU + GPU using the dual channel at the same time.

I've to mention a mistake in my above post, I ment to say dual channel limited to 1GB in both banks of the ram sticks. So to clear things up, for e.g. in an 5GB system only 2GB is dual channel and 3GB is limited to single channel.



Let's discuss a usage case:

1. OS loads up 1GB ram
2. User launches a game/app that uses 1+GB

So now GPU frame buffer is limited to single channel part of the ram, if CPU accesses some more ram also at the same time as the GPU from now on while the game is running the GPU chokes on the lack of bandwidth, game engine suffers frame rate hit. Am I right on this?


If this were a discrete GPU with a dedicated graphics ram on the GPU board, I wouldn't give this much thought, but this is all about integrated graphics and ram sharing.


p.s. Thanks for the notebook recommendations, I'll look them up

 

not sure if it works that way - i know on my comp it claims I only have 2.75 GB of physical memory, but it recognizes that 3 GB are installed. does this help?

 

You are correct to an extent. This is not as a result of your differently sized RAM sticks, which, again, only account for a very small margin of performance that will rarely be capped, as harddrive or the GPU's ability itself will max far before the amount of information supplied is not enough.

You suffer the performance drawback you described with any integrated GPU.

 

Did you ever mention what this computer will be used for? I'm assuming gaming or some sort of video encoding/image rendering or something because generally 3gb is more than enough.

 

Zhaden, do you have CPUz installed? Could you post a screen shot of the memory tab?

 

krap101, mostly programming work and a little light gaming when time permits.

zhaden, to my understanding dual channel ram gives benefits of lowered latencies of operations (instead of actual double bandwidth) since the cpu's bottleneck is way way behind in 64bit 1066Mhz effective clock. But I was hoping integrated graphics takes advantage of this latency reduction in time sensitive apps like 3d engines.

I'd agree on intel GPUs not being able to take full advantage since they are crap to begin with, but the 9400M is up to par with the discrete 9300M GS in raw GPU power, that's where my concern lies. Will lack of dual channel be enough to cripple it? Or is it crippled still with dual channel on?

Fragilexx has a good question above, I myself cannot find info if the laptop version of the MCP79MX supports dual channel memory or not.

 

Oh I know that the chipset supports dual channel in uneven combinations (referred to as Flex Memory by Intel); but was just curious as to whether the BIOS has implemented that feature or not.

If Flex Memory is supported then I suspect your GPU would be allocated the dual channel part of the RAM before the rest of the system gets a look in. I've tried to find documentation on the Intel series 4 memory controller in relation to integrated graphics, but thus far have been unable to locate anything specific enough.

 

dudee: Correct, but the lowered latency is as a result of having 2 64 bit busses running in parallel. Ideally it's a 128 bit bus, but it does not work like this since the CPU can only handle so much at a time, as you mentioned. As Fragilexx mentioned, I believe rendering information will be appropriately placed within the RAM itself (and other information that is used repeatedly in a process with priority) to achieve dual-channel bus speeds on the information that may actually make use of that benefit. It is, however, not possible for me to confirm this at this time.

Fragilexx: Still waiting on it to arrive...

 

3GB is more than enough for smooth computing.

I'm running Windows Vista at the moment with 58 processes. Some of these include AIM, Firefox (4 tabs open), IE (flash/streaming music), TweetDeck, Microsoft Word, Call of Duty 4, Fraps, and Everest.

Even with all of these programs open, I still have about 900MB free. The only time you'll run out of RAM would be when you're running 2-3 memory intensive games or doing hardcore music, photo, and/or video editing.

Don't think about dual-channeling and the like so much. Trust me, the 14z is a solid performer. You'll be amazed what a T6500, 9400M GS, and 3GB RAM can do -- it's about on par with my old computer (3700+ and 7600GT). I can run Bioshock at medium settings with a steady 50FPS. So this laptop is perfect for light gaming and programming.

I also purchased it for school. With its small form factor, light weight (under 5lbs), long battery life (5+ hours), and low price point (>$900) when decently spec'd, it's an awesome choice.

Windows 7 is being released soon as it uses even less memory. 5GB+ isn't required just yet.. but when it is, 4GB RAM sticks will be much cheaper than they are now.

 

Thanks for the assurance Nilosays, could you help us check if flex mode dual-channel is on in cpu-z?

I play quite texture heavy windows designed games though, like BF2 + mods and TF2. Those babies run up to 1.65GB and 850MB respectively on just engine space allocation even on low gfx (256MB option!)

On a side note, does everest report any 'non-local' memory allocation? My discrete 7800go gtx get an additional 375MB system ram which I cant seem to unallocate. It would be awesome if 9400M is able to extend into non local ram since it's still local essentially. But it could also mean only 2.4GB of ram is available to windows