Vostro 1500 and aftermarket RAM

Hey everyone,
I just purchased the 1500 and will probably be manually upgrading the RAM. According to the RAM deals thread ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=121363) dual channel isn't all that necessary, "DO NOT worry about dual channel, the technology has gone and pretty much past. Dual channel nowadays barely gives any performance increase (2-3%) for current systems."

Ive read a few posts about people that are going to buy 2x1GB sticks (of RAM) and deal with the added difficulty of getting to the slot under the keyboard. However, with only a 2-3% performance downgrade, wouldn't it be more efficient to buy a single 2GB stick and only replace the RAM slot that is easily accessible on the bottom of the notebook? By doing this you have a total of 2.5GB of RAM and don't have to deal with the hassle of installing RAM under the keyboard.

My question is, can anyone verify that the performance increase is only 2-3% with use of dual channel?

If not, I would believe every ones best bet would be to wait for a good deal on a 2GB stick (~$80). What do you guys think?


-Paul

 

Look at the numbers here on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bandwidths#Memory_Interconnect_Buses_.2F_RAM

I'd prefer the bandwidth of dual channel, however, I'm a gamer and I do video rendering/editing so I would notice the difference in most cases.

It depends on what you do. If you do anything computer intensive, it may be worth it.

 

From what I’ve read, you can still run Dual Channel even with a pair of unequal (size) memory modules. It is called asynchronous, dual-channel. Here are some benchmark results showing maximum memory bandwidth of each mode. You can see that asynchronous dual-channel is faster than single channel but slower than synchronous dual channel. However, don’t be fooled by those numbers, because in real life the difference you actually feel is far less.