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    Would it be worth getting 3 or 4 GB RAM in an X61s?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Funkymoe, Jun 5, 2008.

  1. Funkymoe

    Funkymoe Notebook Geek

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    I ordered a Thinkpad X61s with 2 GB RAM the other day. I was thinking of adding more since RAM is so cheap, but I'm not sure that there would be a clear benefit considering it obviously won't be used for gaming. Would 3 or 4 GB RAM make Vista run noticably smoother, or would the difference be too small to be worth it?

    Sorry, I know this is probably a stupid question.
     
    Funkymoe, Jun 5, 2008
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  2. StormEffect

    StormEffect Lazer. *pew pew*

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    If you are using Vista, going from 2GB to 3GB (or 4GB) will give you a little extra responsiveness, but the primary jump is from 1GB to 2GB. I personally use 4GB because it is just so darn cheap, and I noticed a difference going from 2GB. It is hard to quantify, things just feel a bit zippier (15-20%?), and programs barely ever need to use the page file, so I never get HardDisk bottlenecked.

    In terms of most benchmarks, you wouldn't really see a performance increase, if you did it would be very small unless the test focused on using very large files.

    I'd say it is worth it going for either 3 or 4. I use 4 on a 32-bit system and get about 3.3GB of usable RAM (if I wanted to use all of it, I'd need to upgrade to 64-bit Windows).
     
    StormEffect, Jun 5, 2008
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