The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    dual-channel (and?)/or more memory?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by lappy_dawg, Jan 27, 2006.

  1. lappy_dawg

    lappy_dawg Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    6
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    i have a dell xps m140 coming in the mail. needless to say, i will not be using this machine for gaming. it will be for word-processing, email, excel, statistical analysis, photo-viewing/basic manipulation, and playing multimedia. i would like to have a pretty fast speed for these tasks. the machine will ship with 2 dimms of 256 mb ddr2 533 mhz. i would like to upgrade the ram, and i understand that the m140 is dual-channel capable.

    should i just replace one of the 256 dimms with a 512? this will negate the dual-channel feature, right? but will i notice a big difference in performance between single-channel 768 and dual channel 1 gb?

    otherwise, if 1 gig is recommended, it seems like i should go with 2 x 512 for dual-channel, right? i would think i won't be needing 2 gigs anytime soon . . .

    so getting single-channel 768 will cost $45, dual-channel 1 gig will cost $90. what would you do?

    thanks.
     
    lappy_dawg, Jan 27, 2006
    #1
  2. Jenson

    Jenson Notebook Evangelist NBR Reviewer

    Reputations:
    677
    Messages:
    663
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Dual channel is not going to give you a 50% increase in speed. (More like 5% which is nothing compared to the performance increase of doubling the RAM) The more RAM you have the better, whether it is dual channel or not. I would personally go for the 1 stick of 1GB because if you ever want to upgrade later, you'll have to get rid of either a 256 or 512 anyway. But don't worry about dual channel, just opt for as much RAM as you can get.

    Matt
     
    Jenson, Jan 27, 2006
    #2
  3. lappy_dawg

    lappy_dawg Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    6
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    oh yeah, i forgot to list that as the third option: 1.2 gig of single-channel for $90. so your advice would be to go with that. no instability issues with a 1 gig paired with a 256 mb, are there?

    regardless, 5% increase does not seem like much of a performance boost. thanks.

    any other input out there?
     
    lappy_dawg, Jan 27, 2006
    #3
  4. Jenson

    Jenson Notebook Evangelist NBR Reviewer

    Reputations:
    677
    Messages:
    663
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    no instability issues, just make sure that you have the correct type of RAM, eg. DDR vs DDR2 (they aren't interchangeable), and if you have 400MHz RAM in there right now and buy 533MHz RAM, it will downclock to 400MHz but it's not a big deal if you don't game, but it's kind of a waste.

    Matt
     
    Jenson, Jan 27, 2006
    #4
  5. USAFdude02

    USAFdude02 NBR Reviewer & Deity NBR Reviewer

    Reputations:
    762
    Messages:
    2,025
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    USAFdude02, Jan 27, 2006
    #5