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    Using more RAM than you have in a single SODIMM

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by ajnauron, Dec 9, 2014.

  1. ajnauron

    ajnauron Notebook Consultant

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    Hey guys, I'm wondering whether I'm the only one experiencing this problem. I have two sticks of G.Skill 8GB DDR3-1333 memory(Total of 16GB installed). Everything's fast when I use 8GB or less(as measured by Task Manager), but when I go over 8GB, I get a noticeable slowdown. Is this a normal result of having both sticks in use, have you guys encountered this problem?
     
    ajnauron, Dec 9, 2014
    #1
  2. TomJGX

    TomJGX I HATE BGA!

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    That's strange.. Never had such an issue or heard of anything like that... Maybe one of the sticks has some problems... have you run memtest?
     
    TomJGX, Dec 9, 2014
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    tijo likes this.
  3. tilleroftheearth

    tilleroftheearth Wisdom listens quietly...

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    How is Task Manager measuring 8GB as being faster?

    What cpu/platform are we talking about?

    Does your notebook have 4 SoDimm slots available? Are you using the correct two?

    What O/S are you running? Any tweaks done to it? Have you run any registry optimizers, etc.? How long since this O/S been clean installed?
     
    tilleroftheearth, Dec 9, 2014
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  4. tijo

    tijo Sacred Blame

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    Using more than one SODIMM shouldn't have an impact on system performance to any noticeable effect. I've been using over 28 GB of RAM (that means using 4 SODIMMs) and I have not seen any slowdowns.
     
    tijo, Dec 9, 2014
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  5. Seanwhat

    Seanwhat Notebook Evangelist

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    it's probably not an issue with one of the sticks because if it was, the problem would happen more than just whenever you're using more than 8gb, as it'd hit the bad spots in the ram randomly anyway. wouldn't hurt to let memtest run anyway.
     
    Seanwhat, Dec 9, 2014
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  6. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    As you increase the amount of RAM in use by programs then you might be causing Windows to make more use of the paging file (virtual memory) on the hard drive which has painfully slow write and read performance compared to the RAM.

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Dec 9, 2014
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  7. JOSEA

    JOSEA NONE

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    ^^^ As John R alluded to try turning of the page file and see if that helps. No issues here running 2 Eight GB sticks on my Sager with win 7 home64 bit
     
    JOSEA, Dec 9, 2014
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  8. tijo

    tijo Sacred Blame

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    Given the amount of RAM available vs what he's using, paging shouldn't be an issue. Even if a program requests tons of RAM, it will be allocated as virtual memory and paging won't occur unless there is close no available RAM anymore.

    If there is indeed paging that is occurring, then it would be worth investigating what's happening since it shouldn't be an issue.
     
    tijo, Dec 9, 2014
    #8