should i buy 2 gb of ram now?

I placed my order for a DV2000z lappy last night. I thought about it and realized that i oculd just upgrade to 2gb aftermarket and just get the base 512 through hp. i called up Hp, and asked them to change my order down to 512 mb of ram then i would just buy 2 gb off newegg.com. Instead their solution was to have me keep the 1gb, and refund me $75 i paid for the upgrade to 1gb. SO here is my dilemma, should i buy the 2gb off newegg ($148.98-$16 MIR, pretty good deal) or just wait and see if it goes down in price? i have no idea what sort of movement there is in ram... thanks!

samuel

 

Uhh, l think the 1gb g.skill DDR533 dimms are $70 each which would save you $10. And l would get it aftermarket.

 

If you keep the 1gb that it comes with originally, is it 1x 1gb or is it 2x 512 mb sticks?

That will heavily influence what you decide to do.

 

HP always installs RAM in pairs because their notebooks are dual channel. Honestly I would suggest sticking with the 2x512MB which you got as a free upgrade, because while 2GB is great, it's mainly only needed for games (e.g. BF2).

I upgraded my DV1000 from 2x256MB to 256MB+512MB and I noticed a huge difference (primarily because the shared graphics isn't leeching so much system RAM anymore). Going up to 2x512MB was barely noticeable by comparison however.

 

yeah, its 2x512... what is a good brand for notebook ram? ive used OCZ and corsair in the past for my desktop and they were good. I never know whether to go with a cheaper brand or not. Can anyone notice a difference?

 

also, does anyone know if dv2000z uses pc4200? Could i go up to 5300 667?

 

I think that the main reason to buy brand-name RAM is to minimize the risks of a defective chip. The higher quality sticks tend to fail less frequently (no numbers to back this up). Plus, some brand name sticks come with pretty good warranties.

I have used Kingston, Corsair, Crucial and OCZ and they all worked flawlessly. The two Corsair sticks for my desktop were Value RAM, but worked just as well as the Kingston sticks they replaced.

 

I've bought a lot of "low-quality" RAM and I haven't had any problems. Sure, it could happen, but the money saved is worth the "risk", IMO. The only reason I'm waiting to purchase my 2GB RAM is because I want to know for sure what the maximum speed supported will be when I upgrade to Merom.

 

will i notice a real difference going from 1 GB 533 to 2 GB 667?

 

oh, one more thing! it says turion x2 processors support up to pc 5300. is there any advantage by going with pc 5400 if its $1 more for the same brand?

 

Uh... yes. Take another look at your question.

1GB @ 533Mhz Vs. 2GB @ 667Mhz

The latter has twice the RAM and is running faster.

If you were to compare the same amount of RAM at different speeds, it might not be as noticeable. Does anyone have any benchmarks?

 

i refering to the notebook that i own, seeing that it claims to not support 667, even though all Turion X2's support 667.

 

533 vs 677, very minimo performance increase due to 667 high cas latency.

 

so here's my plan. just got 1 gig of these last night to add onto the 512mb already on my e1505 to make 1.5gb. then wait till end of yr when 1gb of pc2 4200 drops to ~$40, then ill snatch up another stick to make 2gb. heck im only planning on using my laptop a few hrs a week checking email while out of the office..heh. even 1gb might be overkill in my case

 

i did notice the obscene cas latency on pc 5300... do i sacrifice cas and go faster or sacrifice speed? i appologize, i know little or nothing about ram...


THANKS!,
Samuel