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.

    vostro 1520 RAM upgrade: matching dimms

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by gktk, Feb 19, 2011.

  1. gktk

    gktk Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    6
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    A quick question or rather quick confirmation on a Dell vostro 1520 RAM upgrade.

    I currently have 2 x 1Gb and was gonna just swap these out for 2 x 2Gb and put the old dimms on ebay.

    I noticed the 4Gb dimm is about the same price as 2x 2Gb so an option is to buy just the 4Gb dimm and have 5Gb RAM on the laptop (sell the remaining 1gb dimm)

    Question is there a real performance hit when the dimms are not matching? or will it not matter and the extra 1gb of ram will be more beneficial.

    Thanks
     
    gktk, Feb 19, 2011
    #1
  2. bikerboy94

    bikerboy94 Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    14
    Messages:
    319
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    are you running a 32 or 64 bit system?
     
    bikerboy94, Feb 19, 2011
    #2
  3. gktk

    gktk Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    6
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    sorry shoulda mentioned 32bit atm

    will upgrade to 64bit to see all the memory
     
    gktk, Feb 19, 2011
    #3
  4. bikerboy94

    bikerboy94 Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    14
    Messages:
    319
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    you wont see any real world diff between 4 and 5 gigs of ram so i would do 2 - 2gig sticks.
     
    bikerboy94, Feb 19, 2011
    #4
  5. gktk

    gktk Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    6
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    thanks for prompt feedback, my thinking as well
     
    gktk, Feb 19, 2011
    #5
  6. bikerboy94

    bikerboy94 Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    14
    Messages:
    319
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    your welcome. this is a really good fourm.
     
    bikerboy94, Feb 19, 2011
    #6
  7. Judicator

    Judicator Judged and found wanting.

    Reputations:
    1,098
    Messages:
    2,594
    Likes Received:
    19
    Trophy Points:
    56
    If you think you might want to upgrade again later, the single 4 GB stick may be better, since that means you will only need to buy a single 4 GB stick in the future to upgrade to 8 GB. That's largely only if you feel you might do that, though. Otherwise a pair of matched 2 GB sticks is a little more likely to be stable. RAM is supposed to work well even with mismatched sticks, but this occasionally isn't the case, and small incompatibilities can crop up.
     
    Judicator, Feb 19, 2011
    #7
  8. gktk

    gktk Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    6
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    mm fair point but unlikely to go beyond 4gb for me in next few yrs .. also in the future ram speeds will increase at such a rate by the time i need 8gb i full laptop refresh will probably be the next step
     
    gktk, Feb 19, 2011
    #8
  9. gktk

    gktk Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    6
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    you right, just found the forum and also found unclewebb thread about unlocking extreme cpus, suddenly looking at maybe cpu upgrade as well !!
     
    gktk, Feb 19, 2011
    #9