What RAM to put in my Dell e1505?

I've been needing to upgrade my Dell e1505's RAM from 1GB to 2 or 4GB. First question is will it take 4GB? If not, will the following deal at Newegg due?
newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820146517

Thanks,
-Daniel

 

The Dell E1505 has the i945 intel chipset. The chipset does support 4Gb of memory, but the E1505 bios limits the memory to 2Gb. The E1505 will not power on with 4gb of memory installed. I have tried two different known working brands of 2gb Pc5300 modules, and the system will not boot with any of them. The Bios limits the memory usage to 2Gb.
So the best you can do is get 2 x 1Gb PC5300 sodimm memory (667MHz)

Here is the memory you should buy:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148086

K-TRON

 

Thanks. I'll be ordering that tonight. May I ask what the difference is between 533 PC2 4200, which Newegg told me was the right memory, and 667 PC2 5300, the stuff you mentioned?

-Daniel

 

The price i suppose. The speed won't matter in performance, only size. And the higher specced memory will run at the speed your notebook wants it too, so you would definately not have any problems installing/recognizing it.

 

What processor does your E1505 have?
Most socket M chips have a 533Mhz FSB, so Pc4200 is all that is needed.
If your system has a cpu with a 667Mhz FSB, you can use te Pc5300 memory.
Their really isnt a price difference between the Pc4200 and Pc5300 memory. Just go for the Pc5300, if your cpu does have a 533Mhz bus, the memory will always downclock to those speeds.

K-TRON

 

Intel Core Duo (T2300 @ 1.66GHZ).

 

The T2300 has a 667Mhz bus, so it will benefit from the Pc5300 memory.
So go with the Pc5300 sodimm.

If you want to know more about upgrading other parts of the E1505 like the cpu and video card, continue reading:

Keep in mind the cpu is also upgradeable on the E1505, so if you find a deal on a faster core duo (T2400, T2500, T2600, T2700) or core 2 duo(T5300, T5500, T5600, T7200, T7400 or T7600), all of them will work in your system.

You will notice a big jump in performance going from a T2300 to a T5xxx or T7xxx socket M processor mentioned above.
I just upgraded from T5300 to T2500 and the performance dropped alot. Proving the Core 2 architecture is much better than the Core Duo architecture. I than put my T5300 back in and sold my T2500. Than I bought a T7400 and man, there is a big performance gain from that.

AS for the graphics card, it is upgradeable.
The E1505 was offered with three graphics card options, the nVidia 7300, the ATi X1300 and the ATi X1400.
The X1400 is the most powerful of the three cards offered with the system. Its a nice card, and it works well if your a college student, doing homework, watching movies or whatever. Please note that the X1400 will not be able to play most games of today, it is not a gaming graphics card. It is a card designed to help fill in the gap between high end cards and low end integrated solutions.
I have the X1400, so if you want me to run any performance tests, I would be glad to help you out.

K-TRON

 

I ordered the RAM you recommended.

I already have the ATI X1400 in here because I do video editing and at the time of ordering this I was into gaming and animation.

As for the CPU, I may look into that, depending on cost. Is the T7400 the highest this comp can accept?

 

T7600 is the highest, but the T7400 and the T7200 are better since they provide almost the same performance, for a much lesser price.

 

I just upgraded to a T7400 and there was a pretty big performance increase. Rendering times dropped around 20%, which is definitely a good thing. I was also surprised that the T7400 ran cooler than my T2500 and T5300 did.

K-TRON