DDR memory question..

I have noticed that some manufactures will include 3gb of DDR Ram in some of their laptops...
I thought, (correct me if I'm wrong), that DDR Ram had to be paired off with the same amount in each module...so you would need to have (2) 2gb modules, not a 2 and a 1gb module...
I'm assuming this works because it wouldn't be sold, but you never know....

thank you.
joe

 

no you don´t necessarily need to pair them. you just will have the dual channel feature working when you stick in two modules of the same size.

since the dual channel feature just gives some few percent of performance it´s not necessary to pair them.

 

thank you for the reply.
Do you feel there is a big enough difference in having 3gig ram over 2gig ram for everyday applications? The unit will never see a game, so that factor is out.

 

well, what system are you running - xp or vista ?

depends on what you are doing with your notebook, if you do work with graphics content ( photoshop...) or cpu and memory intensive apps you need more ram.

for xp the sweet spot with demanding applications was 2 GB, to have the same performance with vista you will need around 3GB.

depending on the applications you will see a difference when having more memory. your laptop will not be way faster, but you will definitly have less "out of memory" errors when doing memory intensive tasks.
if you are just browsing the internet or use your machine for music and watching movies you will not feel the difference.

I have bought my laptop with vista business x64 and since my apps need to run stable i downgraded it to xp. but since ram is very cheap right now i have bought 2x2 GB ocz memory.
of course xp 32 just recognizes around 3GB, but when i´m switching to vista i get the max out of my ram. for me the 2x2 GB are an investment for the future.