new 640m 3 questions

hi, just got it, and love it..

1. is dual channel supported (i have 1 stick of ram 1gig) and if so where do i turn it on.
2. how do i get the post details on power up so that i can see what's happening at boot.
3. is there any application that will give me a bit more control over the display, over and above just the brightness (eg contrast, colour balance)

or am i talking a load of rubbish

cheers

 

1.You'll simply need to plug a second matching stick into the empty slot.
2. No idea directly, because I don't care to see it, but it is usually an option in th bios to show "boot Post action"
3. I assume you have the integrated Intel -- if so, if you install the Intel version of the video device driver you'll get the options Dell hid in their version.

 

1. You need to buy another stick of RAM with the same specs (speed, latency and size). Once installed, dual-channel will be enabled (two sticks of the same specs to enable dual-channel, different makes are ok as long as the specs match)

 

what is dual channel... and what are the advantages...??

 

thanks guys...

the reason i asked about the dual channel was that i was told that as the laptop sticks of ram were double sided then they'd work in dual channel .. guess i was duped on that one then. The spec was for 2x512 but in order to give me more expansion opportunities the shop fitted 1x1gig for me to give me a free slot for the future. I questioned dual channel with this configuration and was told what i mentioned above.. :doh:

and i'll go grab the drivers from intel as well for the gfx.. thanks

 

hiya,

i grabbed the drivers from the intel site and they are indeed newer than i had. But i cannot install them. I get the message

this driver cannot be installed on this computer. please contact the computer manufacturer for further details.

can i get round this. I have tried uninstalling the drivers first.

cheers

 

You'll have to manually install the drivers. Another user had the exact same problem, and this did work. For instructions on it, see the 3rd post from the top (post #213) on the Format Questions Thread.

I know it looks a bit complicated, but it really isn't that hard.

SG

 

actually if its using the 945 chipset, you can use different densities in dual channel,ie 1gig and 512 will operate just fine in dual channel and the speeds dont need to match, it will just default to the lowest common denominator

 

but i definitely need two sticks and was given a bum steer by the guy in the shop.

so my cheapest route to dual channel is say a stick of crucial 512 for £36.

 

you would get the most bang for the buck by getting 1 more 1 gig stick, dual channel gives you more bandwidth, but the performance gains from having 2 gig single channel would be more evident than just getting dual channel, but yes a 512 would give dual channel

 

3. is there any application that will give me a bit more control over the display, over and above just the brightness (eg contrast, colour balance)


what video chipset are you using?, if its intel, I dont know, if its ati or nvidia, yes

 

thanks, that's a great help

 

intel 945gm chipset onboard graffics

 

dont know then sorry

 

got the intel drivers and installed them as per southerngirls link. thank you very much..

i can now control brightness, contrast, gamma, channels etc etc so i can now hardware calibrate my monitor..

excellent

 

So simply by installing those intel drivers you are now able to calibrate your screen?

 

Dell strips out a ton of features from the drivers they supply. Most likely to prevent people from mucking with the settings too much, and then having to support it when a user really does something screwy.

 

The driver that he installed is his video card driver. Just like all of us need our ATI/nVidia driver, he needed his Intel driver. Without the video card driver, you can't really do much to the display.

 

hi,

yes i need access to brightness/contrast and gamma to allow me to use my monaco optix XR pro kit to calibrate the monitor. (well generate me a calibrated profile to use)

this way thanks to the helpful folk here i now have access to all of that and more.