T61 64-bit does not recognize 4GB????

As we all know if you are using Vista if you want the OS to recognize and use 4GB of RAM you must have the correct OS (64-bit) and the correct chipset (currently Santa Rosa).

I heard a rumor on this thread that Lenovo has a problem with the T61 Vista 64-bit recognizing the entire 4GB. Maybe this rumor just came about because Lenovo was offering 64-bit for a short period when the T61 first came out and now the option is gone.

I'd like to clean install with 64-bit Vista when I get mine. Does anyone out there have firsthand experience to dispel this rumor???

 

Might be that the integrated graphics allocate some of the System RAM for use...

 

Nah, when you go to system properties it shows how much RAM you physically have and is recognized by the OS unlike the task manager which shows how much is in use/available.

 

I read your postearlier today, and since we do not have any T61 laptops, I asked an old colleague to install the x64 version of Vista business on his T61. I talked to him just a few minutes ago over the phone, and he told me the bad news...

T61 can NOT access memory above 3GB (3070 MB).

Now, if we check the webpages at Lenovo, they say:

"512MB, 1GB, 2GB and supports up to 4GB maximum memory
Note: Due to the limitation of the current 32-bit PC architecture, actual usable memory size is limited to 3 GB even though the physical installable memory size is 4 GB in ThinkPad T61 (14.1-inch widescreen) systems."

If I am not totally mistaken, this means that there will be other chipset(s) in different models. It will be very interesting to see the T61p models have to offer.

 

Why does Lenovo charge $800 for 4GB of RAM then? That makes no sense.

 

Every PC manufacturer is charging ~$800 for 4GB.

 

Dual Channel support. If you mix 2+1 GB memory modules, you lose pretty much performance reading and writing from/to the RAM.

 

Oh yeah, but is it worth $800?

 

Can you provide that link please? This is very disappointing. Probably a deal breaker for me.

Other chipsets??? It's the Santa Rosa chipset and there are only two (one for discrete and one for integrated graphics; PM965 and GM965 respectively). There won't be any other chipset. I don't know about maybe a chipset driver to fix the issue.

 

Well, of course, why pay $800 for 4GB RAM when you can pay around $200?!

Maybe it is because of those exteremely expensive small "Lenovo" stickers those memory modules cost so much?

Actually, there are a lot of companies that do not care so much about the price difference. Partly because they do not know that you can buy RAM-modules cheaper, and partly because they want the "original" stuff.

But of course, as a private person, I think +$300 is a little bit to expensive for a small piece of paper glued to the memory sticks...

Who knows, maybe it is the glue that costs so much?? ;-)

 

And stallen, here comes your link:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-67709

Actually, they could support the 4GB RAM _IF_ they were willing to rewrite the microcode in BIOS. Dell can support 4GB RAM on the 945PM chipset, and that is the same chipset in both XPS M1710 / M2010 and many T and Z models (such as Z61p, T60p, T60 etc)

Nown the Intel 965 chipset should not have those limitations at all, so I do not know what the H**L those people are doing in IBM/Lenovo.

 

This is insane. The chipset and the OS support 4gb of ram. Every other Santa Rosa notebook around does. Why shouldn't the T61? I'm assuming its a specific Vista+T61 bug.

Someone needs to try it with XP or Ubuntu 64bit.

 

I wonder if the X61 has the same problem.

 

Ok I've been googling around. Whether or not the issue with Vista actually exists is still a matter of rumor.

4gb is confirmed as working with Fedora on a T61, so it obviously isn't a hardware problem.

My best guess is PEBKAC.

 

Wait so if I were to get a 1GB w/1 dimm then add on a 2GB stick I wouldn't get that much of an advantage...could you please elaborate on this. I was planning on doing this with the t61p...if it ever comes out.

 

Dual channel in itself isn't much of a performance boost. Beyond that, all Intel chipsets for a few years have supported asymmetric dual channel, so half of that 2gb stick would be running a type of dual channel.

The additional gig in 3gb vs 2gb far outweighs any loss going from dual channel to asym dual channel. (Assuming that whatever you're doing on your laptop would have otherwise required using a page file or swap space)

 

I do not know where you get your information from, but this is incorrect.

Dual channel REQUIRES 2 similar RAM-modules to function properly. There is no "half of the 2GB memory module dual channeling with a 1GB memory module". If you mix 1GB memory module and 2GB memory module, the memory performance will be like if it is only 1 memory module installed on the system.

And now, down to the facts which you can exercise at home:

Install 2 x 1GB SO-DIMM memory modules in your machine and benchmark your computer. In Memtest86+ I get around 2700MB/s with 2 x 1GB Samsung PC2-5300 memory modules. In Sisoft Sanda I get around 3400MB/s under Win XP 32-bit SP2.

Now, take out one of the memory modules and benchmark again. I get around 2200MB/s in Memtest86+ and around 2800 in Sisoft Sandra.

Install 1GB + 2GB memory modules. I use Kingston PC2-5300 2GB and Samsung. In this configuration, I get the same results as having only 1 memory module installed (2200 and 2800)

Swap the slots and insert the 2GB module in socket 1 and 1GB module in socket 2. I get lower results; around 2100MB/s in Memtest86+ and around 2750MB/s in Sisoft Sandra. Both the 1GB and the 2GB memory modules are specified as PC2-5300, but due to quality and/or other enviromental conditions, different brands and sizes of RAM-modules can preform somewhat faster or slower. Usually, the 2GB RAm modules are slower than smaller ones.

With 2 x 2GB Kingston PC2-5300 SO-DIMMs I get around 2600MB/s in Memtest86+ and 3400MB/s in Sisoft (for some reason, they show to be as fast as 2 x 1GB Samsung mamorymodules); not so much difference, but anyway. But I see only 3GB RAM in the OS.

Now we use simple mathematics and look at the speed difference:

2600 - 2200 = 400 (400MB/s difference)
4 / 22 = 0.1818.....

That is almost +18%. You can ask anyone who works with RAM-intensive operations (for example intensive database queries) and you will get the answer that 18% is NOT insignificant. Now of course, this is theory.

I do not see the reason why not to spend another around $100 to get a second 2GB memory module. Of course, if you want to be more economic, it is ok to mix memory modules than keep the disk swapping when you run out of memory!!

Oh, I want to mention that I used ThinkPad X60 for this tests.

 

Wrong: Asymmetric Dual Channel

Anyway, canned benchmarks != real world performance.

 

Yeah, that is my thread also that you are looking at over on the thinkpads.com forum. I don't really think he dispelled the rumor. He says 3.8 available and his integrated graphics is using the rest. I don't know what utilities he is looking at for this information.

PEBKAC - maybe, but I'd like to see a screenshot of the Vista 64-bit OS showing proof that the full 4GB is seen/useable by the OS by someone who knows what they are doing. Until then I don't want to fork over ~$1800 for a T61P until I know for sure.

 

I think that Mr cmonkey needs to explain to us all how he can get his "Asymmetric Dual Channel" to work in our T6x, Z6x, X6x laptops. Apparently, I can not anything about this subject, so I can not get it to fucnction. Maybe I can learn something?!

And of course, we do not care about the facts that I have tested these settings.

I do not want links to sites. I want you to proove with an example how we can get the benefits with "Asymmetric Dual Channel" and I will try it out.

 

I'm saying that there is a form of dual channel that exists with a mismatched pair. I'm also saying that even if there wasn't, you're better off running single channel with more ram than dual channel with less. No matter how you look at it, the moment you have to page or swap to the hard drive, there is a noticable performance loss.

 

If "Vista 64" isn't recognizing 4GB of ram then it's a problem with it; not the laptop. The T61 has no issues with presenting all 4GB to the OS. Output from top and free on my linux install...

top - 01:22:13 up 3:14, 3 users, load average: 0.20, 0.35, 0.27
Tasks: 149 total, 1 running, 146 sleeping, 0 stopped, 2 zombie
Cpu(s): 8.3%us, 0.9%sy, 0.1%ni, 89.6%id, 1.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.1%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 3984868k total, 1637008k used, 2347860k free, 129764k buffers
Swap: 2031608k total, 0k used, 2031608k free, 774992k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
7507 dijital1 17 0 14672 1016 728 R 2 0.0 0:00.02 top
1 root 15 0 10316 672 560 S 0 0.0 0:00.58 init
2 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
3 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
4 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
5 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1
6 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/1
7 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/1
8 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.03 events/0
9 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.09 events/1
10 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
11 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthread
47 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd/0
48 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd/1
49 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
179 root 14 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 cqueue/0
180 root 14 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 cqueue/1
[dijital1@euphoria ~]$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3984868 1636944 2347924 0 129772 774976
-/+ buffers/cache: 732196 3252672
Swap: 2031608 0 2031608

 

That is wonderful to see ciphermonk, thanks!

But I wonder where those missing 200MB+ are? I suppose that you have 128MB for the graphics, but where does the rest of the 80-90MB go?

Could you please make a:

cut /proc/bus/pci/devices

Very curious!

 

It's not missing. Between what the the kernel reserves for device mapping and what the X3100 intel card uses, all the memory is there. The intel card has a base usage of 128MB but can use more than that.

grep /var/log/Xorg.0.log
(==) intel(0): VideoRam: 262144 KB

[root@euphoria dijital1]# cat /proc/bus/pci/devices
0000 80862a00 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 agpgart-intel
0010 80862a02 10 f8100004 0 e000000c 0 1801 0 2 100000 0 10000000 0 8 0 0
0011 80862a03 0 f8200004 0 0 0 0 0 0 100000 0 0 0 0 0 0
00c8 80861049 17a fe000000 fe025000 1841 0 0 0 0 20000 1000 20 0 0 0 0 e1000
00d0 80862834 14 0 0 0 0 1861 0 0 0 0 0 0 20 0 0 uhci_hcd
00d1 80862835 15 0 0 0 0 1881 0 0 0 0 0 0 20 0 0 uhci_hcd
00d7 8086283a 16 fe226400 0 0 0 0 0 0 400 0 0 0 0 0 0 ehci_hcd
00d8 8086284b 11 fe020004 0 0 0 0 0 0 4000 0 0 0 0 0 0 HDA Intel
00e0 8086283f 17f 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 pcieport-driver
00e1 80862841 17e 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 pcieport-driver
00e2 80862843 17d 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 pcieport-driver
00e3 80862845 17c 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 pcieport-driver
00e4 80862847 17b 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 pcieport-driver
00e8 80862830 10 0 0 0 0 18a1 0 0 0 0 0 0 20 0 0 uhci_hcd
00e9 80862831 11 0 0 0 0 18c1 0 0 0 0 0 0 20 0 0 uhci_hcd
00ea 80862832 12 0 0 0 0 18e1 0 0 0 0 0 0 20 0 0 uhci_hcd
00ef 80862836 13 fe226800 0 0 0 0 0 0 400 0 0 0 0 0 0 ehci_hcd
00f0 80862448 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
00f8 80862811 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
00fa 80862828 10 1f0 3f6 170 376 1c31 1c21 0 8 0 8 0 10 10 0 ata_piix
00fb 8086283e 17 fe226c00 0 0 0 1c41 0 0 100 0 0 0 20 0 0 i801_smbus
0300 80864230 11 df3fe004 0 0 0 0 0 0 2000 0 0 0 0 0 0 iwl4965
1500 11800476 10 f8300000 0 0 0 0 0 0 1000 0 0 0 0 0 0 yenta_cardbus
1501 11800832 11 f8301000 0 0 0 0 0 0 800 0 0 0 0 0 0 ohci1394
[root@euphoria dijital1]#

 

Great, thx!

Now I think I need to compare it with the T/X60 models and see the differences (if I will have time and the info and my knowledge will be enough)

I am waiting for my T61p to arrive, and I found out today that the preliminary shipping date is 2007-07-19 (it will take an extra day for shipping from the distributor to our office). I should post a longer message in the appropriate topic about what I found out earlier today.

Since it is still 2 weeks left (well, AT LEAST 2 weeks left!!), maybe I can find out just something about the differences...

 

If this is true it can't be blamed entirely on Vista 64. I have asked the same question in the Asus thread and someone with a G1S was able to provide proof (screenshot) that the Asus G1S can utilize the entire 4GB with Vista 64.

I know there are some people that installed Vista 64-bit on their T61. As cheap as RAM is these days, I can't believe somebody with a T61 and Vista 64-bit can't dispel this rumor!!!

 

Having follow this thread, I was getting concern since my company was looking at Vista 64 to utilize the 4GB RAM capability of the T61. Well, I installed Windows Professional X64 on the Thinkpad T61 and am happy to report that System Properties now says that 3.93GB of RAM is present. Likewise, I believe that Vista x64 should not have any problems recognizing the additional memory beyond 3GB on the T61.

Mozez

 

Yeah, this thread is old. This rumor has been dispelled for some time. Vista 64-bit has been proven to support the Full 4GB of RAM. I think some people even reported that it says something like 4.02GB or something like that on Vista 64-bit.

 

Damnit I went through the whole thread thinking It is a new issue with Lenovo again - definetely would have made me cancel the order.

 

Relax. Mine shows 4030 Mb. I'm running Vista Enterprise x64.

 

Let's let the thread die so know one else has to read the whole thing for nothing.

 

I agree...my bad. I didn't read far enough.

 

Definitely not a hardware problem... My T61 running Fedora x86_64

Tasks: 129 total, 3 running, 125 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie
Cpu(s): 3.0%us, 0.5%sy, 0.0%ni, 96.0%id, 0.2%wa, 0.2%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 3989912k total, 1080112k used, 2909800k free, 96196k buffers
Swap: 2031608k total, 0k used, 2031608k free, 392876k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
2577 root 3 0 528m 138m 15m R 53 3.6 20:56.54 Xorg
3024 dijital1 1 0 299m 158m 41m S 2 4.1 18:07.02 firefox-bin
4242 dijital1 1 0 14544 996 732 R 2 0.0 0:00.01 top
1 root 1 0 10320 688 576 S 0 0.0 0:00.63 init
2 root 1 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.01 migration/0
4 root 7 15 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
5 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
6 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 migration/1
7 root 7 15 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/1
8 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/1
9 root 1 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.12 events/0
10 root 1 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.13 events/1
11 root 1 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
62 root 1 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd/0
63 root 1 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 kblockd/1
64 root 1 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.01 kacpid
[dijital1@euphoria ~]$