any admin/ops advice please on Xa 1526

hi i was wondering if you could straighten out a dilema which i cannot reverse now

i have a Xa1526 as most of you will know as i write in here a lot or should i say taken up residence .

the situation is when i purchased this in april i had in mind to upgrade to 4gb and vista 64 around end of the year or when first service pack comes out and drivers are better.. anyway i left a list of a few memory types in the buy ram section for gophn yesterday but nobody has answered so i went ahead and purchased a pair of 2Gb G.Skill DDR2 (PC2-5300) 667MHz SO-DIMM modules at what i thought was a bargain.

the manual says that my cpu and notebook supports 667 2gb chips but on the crucial website it says its does'nt so i emailed fuji and they say it does which i am relieved at

question is as this is my first amd turion cpu using ddr2 and the supplier sold me 2x1gb of 533 but advertised it as 667 and cpu-z says its 266 bus will the gskill work/compatibility problems (i think it will work tho as it is very a reputable manufaturer for desktop memory).

what would the cpu-z say it would be in speed? 333? doubling as 667 just wondering, as i know intel is quad so 667 is 166 if not mistaken.

also does upgrading memory invalidate warranty if it gets a fault and need to be sent back in other words do i have to keep hold of the original memory for a year in case of warranty replacement

oh and the 2x1gb memory already in gives a score of 5.9 in vista performence is that good?

sorry for long message

cheers all

 

Dear Rhino,

I once replied to a post of you and I mentioned that I find it really bad that the salesman told you that it was 667 MHz DDR2 while it turned out to be 533 MHz. The difference is not really noticable, but still...

If you have CPUz you should see Memory tab (3rd tab I thought). You see the amount and also the speed. You have DDR2, so you have to double that amount.

If it says 266 MHz, your RAM runs at 533 MHz. If it says 333 MHz, your RAM runs at 667 MHz. And about that quad thing, that is the FSB of Intel which works as a quad pump (not the right term I think). AMD uses a totally different type of FSB which is not comparable.

We are a distributor of F&S notebooks (demo models) in The Netherlands and a lot of our customers upgraded their own RAM. It didn't effect their warranty. Actually we once send a notebook for warranty which we had changed the RAM, and they did not cause any problems.
But this is our experience, the best thing to do is to ask it under a different name. It always works.

5.9 in Vista seems like a great score. Upgrading to 4 GB is not worthy I think. Your CPU and video card are the bottlenecks, so you will not really notice it. Unless you are playing to do some serious multi-tasking. I don't find it a worthy upgrade.

Good luck.

-Notebook Solutions

 

thanks m8 for the quick reply

as mentioned i thought id grab the memory while it was still cheap (prices going up soon) and upgrade to vista 64 later on then the memory will take more advantage, but i understand what you are saying and thankyou for your input.

 

It would be easier to decide if you could tell us what you will be using your notebook for. If you are going to use heavy programs like Photoshop and Dreamweaver simultaneously in combination with Vista, you might want to consider 4 GB.

But if it is gaming, and not very heavy computing: stick with the 2 GB.

 

i use it mainly for photoshop/paintshop pro ..gaming...and daily use (i.e office).

4gb maybe overkill but it was cheap and any way upgrading to vista64.

one thing that i dont understand tho is how the turion manages to work efficiently with any memory on my xa 1526 whether its ddr2 533 or my new ddr2 667?

i only mention as cpu-z showed that the 533 and 667 were fully capable of timings and frequency of 266 and 333 respectfully as they should but in the memory tab it showed my ddr 533 (when i had it installed) was running at 200 rather than 266 (this was the memory that came with the laptop - samsung 2x1gb 533..

and the new memory g-skill 2x2gb 667 in the memory tab is shown clearly as running at 300..tho shouldnt it be 333 for 667 memory?

do you thnk it my be a faulty motherboard/cpu? i even updated bios to newest 1.22 to see if that might fix it but nothing changed.

very strange.

thanks anyway for helping-- n/solutions

 

5.9 is the highest score in Vista.

 

Also, I whole-heartedly support the use of 4 GB as opposed to 2. I dont know why people tout 2 GB as enough. If you can afford 4, do it. I have 4GB on my Desktop and hit around 50-60% memory usage on startup-- and I don't have many startup programs. It's due to the way that Vista utilizes memory. If you use a virtual machine, or use many applications, using the full 4GB will not be uncommon.

By using large memory space, you avoid frequent page faults and allow for Pre-fetching ad nauseum. Lovely stuff.

 

Very strange indeed... 600 Mhz. But Hypertransport of AMD works totally different. I am not very familiar with AMD FSB technologies, but I think they count different.

I can understand you FGLRX but his processor and hard drive are the bottleneck, so I really wonder if it is smart to upgrade to 4 GB. Which costs around 300 euro's here, a lot of money I think!

 

hi n/solutions
just to mention i have my vista running on my new 100gb seagate 7200 so cant see that as bottlekneck but the turion i have is second fastest out of the amds...only the tl60 is next up which ill upgrade later when prices drop..

also can you get vista 64 upgrade as in is it available as upgrade or do you have to buy a retail full version..or does fuji sell it ...would it invalidate my warranty

i think it might tho if its from fuji themself surely it would be okay?

oh and n/solutions i found a retailer selling new gskill 4gb for £146.00 (217.15 euro)

 

215 euro's is a nice price for 4 GB. If you want to use your notebook for the coming 3 years straight, then just go for the upgrade.

Well you have a 64 bit CPU, and you had Vista from F&S. So what I would do is call and explain that you want to have 64 bits Vista.

Do not mention anything about upgrading to 4 GB or something. They don't like that.

Maybe they will ship you a 64 bits Vista. But you need some lobbying skills I think

Updating an operating system does not invalidate your warranty. Upgrading hardware and such things may though, but F&S is not so smart in checking for any upgraded parts.

Good luck!

 

thankyou..

ill call them tommorow and see what happens about the upgrade

oh and by the way about the retailer i posted in earlier thread that sold me the wrong memmory as in giving me 553 when advertised as 667..

well they said fuji gave them the spec and all they would do is give me a £15 store voucher and a apology

$%^$^ store i say or as us civilized people say bad custermer service

 

Buy you are going to upgrade to 4 GB, aren't you? Or did you order a 1x 2 GB stick?

We are an official reseller of F&S. If you were in Holland, I would gladly helped you out with the 64 bits Vista. But UK is totally different I am afraid.

 

sorry m8 i thought i mentioned in previous message that i had purchased gskill memory 667 2x2gb and installed them myself which is pretty straight forward. but i kept the 2x1gb 533 in the fuji box just in case i had to return the laptop for
for warranty replacement.

how much in euros is vista64 upgrade anyway ?

and thanks for being so helpfull your a lifesaver

 

Oh sorry I think I read wrong there.

In Holland the lowest price is 85 euro's for the Home Premium 64 bits OEM version. Which means that you can only use it for one system.

I think that makes around 55 pounds in the UK. But I would just ask F&S first. Maybe they will ship you one.

Thanks, it is an honour to help people out.

 

hi n/solutions..
contacted fuji support and they cant guarantee 64bit vista will work and they said when asked about vist64 they dont do/provide it in any of their laptops so a copy is out of the question and i also contacted the official fuji distributor/online fuji shop in the uk and they dont even stock vista 64.

the support said that operating systms are not under the warranty only the hardware so i can upgrade without worry ... when i get an oem copy of vista64 from a online shop later today £56

oh and the tech said when asked about cpu-z / everest / si-sandra giving me wrong ddr2 frequency values as in 200 instead of 266 and 300 instead of 333

tech "does it work without crashing"

me "yes but im losing bandwidth/speed cuz they are not working at their full frquenzies/speed that they are rated as and the bios has no featuers to alter anything"

tech "well as long as they are working dont worry about it and anyway we dont use any utils like that"

me "so explain why in bios it only registers 3gb and doesnt show 4gb"

tech "dont know"

what great tech guys...


alos i got this in reply from another forum moderator but how can it apply to me as the system is permanently mains and set to full performance..................

(There are many possibilities. First, the BIOS, not the SO-DIMM, chooses the memory speed, so buying a faster-rated SO-DIMM doesn't *force* a faster speed, it just allows it. Second, most notebooks slow down the system when the load is low on the CPU to save power, so your readings may be reflecting that slowed clock. Third, since skt 939 and AM2 CPUs have the memory controller in the CPU, there is a fixed set of ratios (or dividers) available to derive the memory bus clock from the CPU clock. Depending on the CPU clock, some memory bus speeds may not be available, so your 300MHz reading may be the CPU's closest approximation to 333MHz.
And so forth...)


really feeling good about this laptop now ............NOT

 

First this Rhino. The fact that you see 3 GB in your BIOS is because 32-bits OS can only handle 3 GB. To use 4 GB or more, you need a 64 bits OS.

But I can understand the answer of F&S. If you look at their support site, you will see that they do not have 64 bits drivers for the Xa1526. That is also why they didn't ship you the 64 bits version.

But like I told you, I am not very familiar with AMD Turion's. But I think that the third sentence is right. AMD uses 300 MHz instead of 333 MHz. But don't worry, it is still faster then 533 MHz DDR2.

Good luck mate.

 

thankyou n/solutions..i agree...i have looked and they do have a few drivers available for vista64 but i will have to see if any areas are not covered by the operating system when i install

found:
FIC Conexant Modem
Nvidia Chipset Northbridge C51D - Southbridge MCP51
NVidia G72M Chipset Driver for Windows VISTA
Realtek ALC 885 Audio Codec
Ricoh R5C832 (SD+IEEE1394)
Touchpad (on board)
WLAN miniCard D2301 & USB D1705

should cover most things on top of vistas own driver i hope

oh and what you said in last statement about the 300 freq..well even if i had a tl60 2.0g cpu that is still on a fsb:200 ht:800 multiplier:x10 which is only one up from mine which is x9 so i still cnt see how that would get any closer to the 333

but anyway case closed i aint gonna moan anymore and try and enjoy what i got

oh and n/solution enjoy your holiday have a nice time.

 

Thanks Rhino I hope that I helped you out a bit... have fun with your upgraded notebook.