Worth upgrading from 2gb to 4gb?

Yes I know its been discussed hundreds of times before and yes I know there's tons of threads already about this subject, I still don't understand the situation. I got some money for Christmas and I am considering maxing out the memory in my 1720 some time soon since there's lots of good boxing week specials going on. I've read that Vista 32bit may or may not actually see all 4 gigs and that a lot of it apparently depends on the chipset and motherboard too. Should I go for the 4 gig, save a bit of money and only upgrade to 3 gigs or just stick with the 2 gigs the machine came with?

 

hmmm stay with what ya got. Use the money towards and XPS M1330

 

I'm going to guess you have two 1GB dimms right now. If you want to upgrade you should just buy ONE 2GB dimm. You can find it for really good prices on Amazon, NewEgg, and Frys. Once you do that you'll have a 3GB setup (1GB + 2GB). Since 32-bit vista won't recognize the full 4GB potential, just stick with the 3GB. If you do ever upgrade to 64-bit, you can always go ahead and buy that second 2GB dimm.

 

Well, my lappy (specs below) shoes 3.5 gigs in 32-bit Vista. It's really fast - faster than my parent's desktop with XP Media Center 2005 (clean install on this one done by me). Of course, theirs has a 3500+ Athlon 64 and 1GB DDR-400 (2x256 & 1x512).

Vista with mine is blazing fast, though.

 

There isn't really a need for more then 2 GB of RAM. That's more then enough for anything you may need to do.

There isn't really a practical use for 4 GB of RAM at this time, esp. since 64-bit support is still lacking.

 

Not sure about photo/video editing, which I have read eats memory like crazy, but if you ever go into VM's (more popular each day on the work and hobbyist scenes), higher is the only way to go. Of course, an x64 platform upgrade would probably be the more prudent first step before stepping into any serious VM work.

Just some thoughts on the "There isn't really a practical use for 4 GB of RAM at this time" statement, but of course your usage will vary.

Regards,
Paolo

 

Wouldn't there be a performance drop from using 2 different sized memory modules?

 

I'd say it depends on the price; if you can grab 4GB at a great price, then do it (even though the system may not recognize the full 4GB).

 

I upgraded from 2gb to 4gb and did notice a signifigant difference. Load times increased, I can run several windows without any hesitation, streaming videos run without any pausing. I got my 4gb from newegg, with rebate cane to 65 dollars, so it was a no brainer. Even though windows only recognizes 3.5, considering how cheap ram is nowadays, its a cheap upgrade to squeeze out every bit of performance your machine is capable of.
I say DO IT!

 

Do not do it. First its a waste a money and second you need a 64bit OS. 2GB is plenty, just tweak vista a bit to get your memory usage down a bit.

 

Windows Vista uses RAM to prefetch files that it expects that you will use, which means that with more RAM (up to 3.2 GB or so for 32 bit Windows) more programs and files can pop open instantly, with no hard disk access. However, this does increase boot times since the extra files need to be prefetched (though I think this is done in the background and does not delay the point at which the computer becomes responsive to you,).

It looks like 4 GB is about to become standard on premium laptops:
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/35386/118/
http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/12/24/notebooks.with.4gb.ram/

I personally intend to upgrade to 3 GB (unless 4 GB is the same price).

 

Well if using 64bit vista I would say go for it otherwise I wouldn't bother.

 

I just bought 4GB at the egg for about $55 after rebate. After I sell my original 3GB, it will be about free. So what about that is not worth it ?????

These RAM prices are unbelieveabley cheap and a super good time to get ready for 64 bit. Seems like a complete no-brainer to me. Dave