max supported ram by ATI Radeon IGP345M chipset?

i have a Sony PCG-K35, it was running way slow so i picked up 2 gb to replace it's meager 512, by all reports it only supports 1gb. didn't know if the bios could be modded or what to force it.

 

Well, Since AMD aquired ATI all of their data sheets are gone.
From what i've read 1Gb is the Max, it sounds like it might be a chipset limitation. If i could find the datasheet and it declared whether or not it's a 32-Bit chipset that will deffinitively tell us if it indeed can use 2Gb. From what i've seen though it's limited to 1gb via hardware.

 

I would be very surprised if a 12 year old chipset has been modded to allow this.

See:
Comparison of ATI chipsets - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


When new in 2002, this was slow.

See:
Sony VAIO K35 Specs (Mobile Pentium 4 532 3.06 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 80 GB HDD) - Laptops - CNET Reviews


May be time to upgrade.

 

The thing i cant understand is why intel used an Ati chipset? I've never heard of that.. Even the socket M (PPGA478) used a 9xx chipset.

 

Intel didn't use an ATI chipset: Sony did.

ATI, NVidia and some other long forgotten chipsets were the bane of those horrible days of getting to build a stable and fast computer back then. With support for the next SP of the O/S at that time not supported because the manufacturers of those chipsets were already long gone.

 

Toshiba also used ATI chipset on some laptops with Intel CPUs as well. i saw the laptop was 2004 i didn't think that that they may have used a 2 year old chipset at the time.

the interesting bit is it's still seeing 1gb. i guess i need to pull 1 stick and see if it's using each stick at 512 or if it can indeed make use of a single 1gb chip. then i might suspect bios limitation. only issues is i'm not smart enough to mod a bios.

 

One problem could be that the RAM is of high density and the chipset can't handle it. It was a real problem when upgrading older systems with the newest cheapest RAM. The symptom would always be that the computer could only see half of the memory of each memory stick.

Strange. The exact opposite of how I remember it. It was Intel and AMD who couldn't figure out how to make a decent chipset.

 

Right. It was quite common to have an Intel or AMD system with an ATI or nVidia chipset. I still have an old AMD desktop with a nVidia chipset.

In any case chipset GPUs of that era could not utilize more than 64MB anyhow even if more was available to them.

Beamed from my G2 Tricorder

 

you guys are going to make me dig through the parts bin aren't you. I know one of my old routers I used was a Cyrix CPu on and AMD chipset ...... Still have and IDT x86 CPU ( now VIA ) on an SiS chipset. ahhhh the days of actually knowing what CPU worked on whos chipsets the best ........ also remember Intel chipsets SUCKING !!!

think I even have a VIA C7 based laptop running somewhere in the family ( VIA CPU and Chipset )

 

they made cyrix and amd cpus that fit intel sockets.


Welp it doesn't see 1gb with stick in there so that sucks.

EDIT: just stumbled across this, have yet to read it my self.

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/amd-g...p-320m-340m-345m-related-chips-out-there.html

 

It's only 9 to 10 years old judging by the dates on the reviews here. Nonetheless, that's still an era where chipsets didn't future-proof their RAM support or manufacturers put a limit in the BIOS on the RAM support.

I see from my records that I spent £107 in April 2005 on a 1GB SODIMM. That was probably as soon as I could find one, which means that 1GB modules were in the pipeline when the K35 was designed.

John

 

John, I based the '12 years old' on this:

See:
Comparison of ATI chipsets - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Look further down and find the 'Comparison of Northbridges' section and finally the IGP 345M we're talking about here.


While I said chipset; it is the Northbridge that is that old... maybe the rest of the chipset is newer?

 

That's a very valid point. If the relevant hardware was two years old when the computer was manufactured then 1GB SODIMMs would have been a distant dream.

Old components are cheaper and easy for the manufacturers to inflict on the purchasers. Move forward a few years to when Intel did a better job of chipsets and you'll see that they then also did cheaper version of chipsets with deliberately cut down hardware support.

John

 

It is the same as today, with some core 2 chipsets not supporting 8gb sodimms or any intel chipset not supporting 16gb sodimms.

 

my core 2 duo chipset says it only supports 4gb yet i'm running 5gb and tru turbo is running 8gb.

any ways this Sony says 2005 on the best buy sticker on the bottom and the date on Sony sticker is 2004and the chipset/NB is from 2002, this thing was technically 3 years old when the guy bought it. the good news is it's usable again even though it only sees 1gb of the 2gb installed. just wish i didn't have to drop $40 on the 2gb. I guess one has to pay if they can't cope with a newer machine.

 

It doesn't support 8GB sodimms. Also they can be finicky with what 4GB sodimms you install.

 

It doesn't support 8GB sodimms. Also they can be finicky with what 4GB sodimms you install.