Thinkpad T400 - 2GB RAM vs. 4GB RAM

Edit : Thanks for answering all of my questions guys. I know it'll be wasted at school, but I think I'll go for 4 GB to future proof my laptop and improve performance in Vista. It sounds worth it.

I'll be using XP most of the time because my school is insisting on it. I'm going to multiboot with Vista which I'll be using now and then (holidays, maybe weekends or after school. lol).

I'm just wondering whether the upgrade to 4 GB is worth it. I think I have a good understanding of RAM, but I'm still wondering a few things.

- How much address space is actually available for RAM on a T400?

- How much RAM do certain programs use (eg: Mozilla, MSN, iTunes, World of Warcraft, anything you can think of just to give me a better idea) ?

- I read somewhere that Vista uses more RAM for everything when it knows that more RAM is available, comments on this?

- How quickly are RAM requirements going to increase in the future?

- It's not possible for an excessive amount of RAM to negatively impact anything but my wallet, is it?

I guess that's about it. Just looking for opinions, maybe a few confirmations, any new facts welcome. Just wanna make sure my laptop has the right amount of RAM, since I wouldn't feel good about just maxing it for the sake of it. Also wouldn't feel good about it if I ever feel like I don't have enough RAM on the machine, just because I was being cheap. Thanks in advance for posts.

 

4 Gb RAM -> 64 bit OS -> bigger memory program footprints(than 32 bit) which will take away some of your 1 GB extra memory. if you are using xp, you cna save a lot on memory consumption. i feel vista 64 bit is very fast, has better battery life(turned off page file) and access to switchable graphics. if you have 4 GB, you can run a VM on Virtualbox, allocate 1-2 GB to that VM. my VM xp is very fast. also feel Games run as fast as in xp.

it is true, vista uses more RAM when it is available. but that is for the super fetch and prefetch which will speed up things a lot. your experience will be much better when it has more RAM.

 

I believe XP on a T400 can address somewhere between 3.25 and 3.6GB of RAM.

RAM usage for a program depends on application usage patterns.

I have successfully gotten Firefox over 1GB, however this involves having about 50 tabs open at once, plus another 50 that were opened/closed (leads to memory leakage), and this may not be typical.

iTunes, MSN, Office, etc. are unlikely to take more than 100MB at a time. WoW and other games usually fall somewhere between 200MB and 700MB.

2GB is more than enough for XP for the vast majority of users (only VMs or intense multi-tasking will actually use more).

Conversely, 2GB is the minimum for Vista to function effectively in my opinion. Vista also can, and will, use every bit of RAM you throw at it. This is called SuperFetch, and is basically an intelligent caching system that preloads your most frequently used applications into RAM. This substantially reduces application load time as they don't need to be spun off the slow hard drive to launch. However, this also leads to hard drive thrashing (it never spins down all the way) because the Prefetch cache is highly dynamic.

Not sure about future RAM requirements, but the rule of computer software tends to be that it will take up all the capacity available. 2GB is becoming standard and 4GB+ will likely be standard in 1-2 years, so if you intend to keep your T400 for 2 years+, extra RAM is a good idea.

The only negative of extra RAM would be very mildly increased power draw due to the extra DIMM. This should only equate to a few minutes less active time, but might reduce your standby time substantially (e.g. 10 days to 7 days) because RAM must still be powered when you are in standby. However, this is a minor concern at best and shouldn't stop you from getting more.

What I have done, and recommend you consider as well, is to order my ThinkPad with a Single 2GB DIMM. This gives me enough RAM to get by at present at a reasonable price. In a few months-years as more RAM becomes a necessity rather than a luxury I can easily drop in a second DIMM (4GB to go to 6GB if they have fallen in price, or just a 2GB to go to 4GB if not). I think this strikes the best balance of present value and future options.

 

I agree. For the canadian lenovo site, it's +$70 for a 2 gigabyte 1 DIMM which is worth it. When you have enough money, or if you wanna wait till prices drop, go to www.tigerdirect.com and order another 2 gigs.

 

On my T400 with 4GB ram on Vista 64 Ultimate, it is using 2.42GB of physical memory. On my other laptop with 2GB ram, Vista 64 uses only 1.1GB or physical memory. So Vista does use more memory, the more memory you have.

 

All of my Vista PCs are running 4gb or more. The minimum to have Vista work w/o headaches would be 2gb. One of my PCs had 3 sticks die (go Corsair's horrible batch of Ballistix...). I ran the PC on 1gb (Vista Ultimate 64) and the hangs were unbearable. Once I got the RMA exchange, 2gb are in and running smoothly.

The programs you listed will actually be fine w/ 2gb though. I haven't tried WoW on Vista, but it ran smoothly on my older XP rig with 1gb only -back in the day-.

 

It's true that Vista uses RAM more intelligently than XP does. When I upgrade my T400 from 1GB RAM to 2GB RAM, the amount of RAM Vista uses increases significantly. As a result, the OS runs much more smoothly and the total performance is even better than itself when I use XP.
(So in my opinion, Vista can take full advantage of T400's powerful hardware better than XP. I mean, T400 users should choose Vista because it is more suitable for the machine than its previous sibling )