should I upgrade from 2GB to 3GB ?

a friend has 2x2gb sticks, but since he's running a 32bit OS, it only recognises 3GB
i have 2x1GB.
he offered to swap (for free) one of my sticks for one of his.

i'd go from 2GB to 3GB, but i'd lose the dual channel.
is it worth it?

 

I don't know, but I'm willing to find out for you. Would PCMark05 benches give you the info you want?

My hunch is that it will not make any difference, other than the fact that more RAM is better.

 

more memory > dual channel. from what i've read, dual channel has come and gone. in most cases, it's worse/as negligible as intel's robson turbo memory.

 

Word.

Dual Channel was the bomb when it was first introduced, but if you have a 3gb configuration you won't see any significant difference from your dual channel.

Not sure if what I just said made sense, but,

get the 3gb .

 

i was pretty sure on doing it, but wanted to make sure
ya can't have enough RAM
a PC mark with both 2GB and 3GB would be great though

 

From what I understand, dual channel will help when your RAM speed is less than your FSB because the bus has more available bandwidth than a single channel of RAM can feed. Dual channel can theoretically double this bandwidth that it feeds the FSB. Of course in practice it isn't quite that way. But the T61 has a 800MHz FSB and only 667MHz RAM. So dual channel should play some role in performance. I'd be interested in seeing some real benchmarks though. Let me know how it goes.

 

There is an extensive thread dealing with memory configurations, dc etc answering all these questions. Try using the search option once in a while.
If you are lazy the short answer is that you have DC as long as you have memory sticks in both slots on all new (introduced within the last 4 years) laptops irrespective of the size of the memory modules you are using.

 

The short answer is: Yes, definitely. But it really depends on your usage. If you are not a power user, I doubt you will notice the extra 1GB RAM. I doubt most people would.

Also note that, if running Windows Vista, it will most likely take longer time during startup for Superfetch to cache your extra RAM, since there is more to fill with 3GB RAM compared to 2GB RAM.

As for dual channel, just like villageman said, having 1x2GB + 1x1GB RAM, it will still be running dual channel. Read this guide and be enlightened:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=167472

 

Ah.. didn't realize Dual Channel no longer required identical sticks, awesome! Instead of making a new thread, on a side note, is 2gb more than enough to handle Vista Home Premium on usage (as compared to running XP with similar programs/games)? From what i've seen it's a yes, but i do know it's a memory hog.

 

Yes. 2GB RAM using Vista Home Premium should be more than sufficient for most people.

 

2GB - PCMark Score: 4862
3GB - PCMark Score: 4683

Not entirely sure why the difference is so big, but the margin for error is typically 100-200 points to allow for variances in the test. But the difference in speed is only really going to be noticed by the benchmark, and not by you.

I also haven't finished optimizing the system, so the final score might be a hair higher.

 

The funny thing is that the same happened to me with both Windows Experience Index as well as PCMark05. But this only happened the first time I had added the additional 1GB RAM (totalling 3GB) and booted up the machine. The second time I booted it seemed that the machine had "settled down" and subsequently the memory results for Windows Experience Index went from 4.7 to 4.8 in favor of the 3GB RAM.

The results for PCMark05 more or less stayed the same. 3949 with 2GB RAM and 3938 with 3GB RAM.

 

Well, in my case I'm really working to reconfigure my computer and load up all my old software. So loosing a few hundred points on PCMark for me isn't too suprising, and most likely is NOT related to any issues caused by having 3GB of RAM.

 

I remember now reading Intel's information on the differences between dual channel, single channel, and flex mode. But there still should be some performance hit while running in flex mode as apposed to dual channel, since 2gb would be running in dual channel and 1gb running in single channel. Once again though, nothing you could notice and probably not even accurately measure with a benchmark. Most of the time that third gb isn't even being accessed. Then that brings up the question of whether or not 4gb is running in dual channel or flex mode on a 32-bit OS because the fourth gb isn't addressable. Would be interested to know, but again, not truly important to performance. All I know is that my T61 is amazingly fast.

 

just did the trade.
I can't believe he did it for free.
it was a kingston 667 with a heat spreader!

Lately I've been using CS3 quite a bit (Premiere and photoshop) so the extra RAM should help there
as for regular usage though, i wouldn't recommend paying for more than 2Gb right now