Upgrading to 3GB RAM seems to be Detrimental

I recently bought an extra 2GB from Dell and installed it in my XPS M1530 taking the memory up to 3GB (it has 2x1GB as standard). Unfortunately it seems to have had a detrimental effect on peformance. It's not a great change but its noticeable, generally programmes seem slower to start up.

Is there a reason for this as it seems to go against the perceived wisdom of upgrading the memory.

 

Assuming you have Vista, it could well be SuperFetch at work. Vista is using the spare RAM to pre-load files which it thinks you may need. Doo applications load faster than before once the boot process has finished.

I personally use hibernation and minimise the number of times I boot the computer. This avoids the boot process and gets you back to where you were before you shut down.

John

 

are they the same types of RAM? if you put a slower type of ram in the computer, then it will run both sets of memory at the lower speed.

 

IIRC, don't you have to run 2 identical sticks of RAM to take advantage of dual channel mode? That could be it too.
But as galaxywolf said, if one is slower than the other, the PC will default to the slowest speed.

 

whilst that's a possibility Talin, nowadays alot of Intel Chipsets have been "wired" to take advantage of as much Dual Channel as they can, having a 2GB and a 1GB means that the PC should use 1GB from each stick as Dual Channel, and then use the additional 1GB as single-channel.

though if the Memory controller is reverting to using the Whole lot as single channel whereas you used to be running Dual channel as you've suggested.. that would be a noticable speed decrease.

 

Although different makes, the originals are Kingston whereas the new stick is some generic Chinese make, they're both supposed to be the same speed of 667 Mhz. As I mentioned applications seem to be slower starting up even well after boot up, not significantly but noticeable nonetheless.

 

The RAM might not play nice together... I haven't ran to this issue myself, but you can have compatibility issues uses different brands of RAM together.

Try taking one out and see if your speed increases and use benchmark tests to be sure it isn't just false visual stuff. If the speed really does change it could be an incomptability of them working togehter.

Also, download an app like CPU-Z and be sure your RAM is operating at the 667 speed. I rem. on my last laptop (i5160) I had purchased RAM that was rated as the max the board could take it it operated at a slower speed for whatever reason. Popped it into my wife's laptop and it was at the rated speed. So you could have an issue there as well.

 

*edit*

meh, teach me to reply without refreshing the page first.

 

Any ideas of what benchmarks I can run for a more scientific test. Also how do I found out what speed the RAM is operating at?

 

download and use CPU-Z (it's just an EXE file, wont' install or anything), it'll display most of the info you need in the "memory tab" (including whether it's running in single or dual channel memory mode)

CPU-Z can be found here : http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php