Adding RAM Qosmio X505-Q894

I got faked out. Reading the manual for my new X505-Q894 it said "This modle uses one bank,,,bank (A) lower slot" Re" RAM in the adding RAM section of the Toshiba Users Manual (Pg 52), so I was under the impression that this laptop had one single 4gb chip of RAM. So I went and bought another 4gb RAM.

When I went to install the new 4gb chip, well surprise, surprise, both slots are full. A total of 4gb RAM came with laptop, so it obviously must be 2 - 2gb chips. So it's my own faut for relying on the manual and not inspecting the computer myself...lord knows that I should have know better than to take the word of the Toshiba X505-Q894 Users Manual...LMAO. What ticks me off is the wasted time. Now I have to get another 4gb chip. This further goes to show that if you want something done right...do it your self. Crikie I'm ticked at myself for being trusting to a users manual.



So just so ya all know...A self inspection will get ya much farther than relying on the Toshiba Users Manual.

 

First off, just as a future reference point, whenever you buy a pre-built PC, whether it be a desktop or laptop, you can almost ALWAYS count on the manufacturer to cut whatever corners that they can when they can get away with it. RAM is one of those instances where you will almost always have the cheaper alternative installed. It costs more for Toshiba and every other company to use one 4GB chip than it does to buy 2 2GB chips, so you can bet any money you have in your wallet that you will almost always end up with the two chips, which is better for the company rather than the single chip which would be better for you.

By the way, I do have a dumb question: Do you absolutely need 8GB of RAM, and if so, why? The reason I ask this is because it would probably be better for you to just use the 4GB stick and one of the 2GB sticks that came with the machine for a total of 6GB of RAM rather than buying a second 4 GB stick. You could always sell the one remaining chip on eBay, but I don't necessarily see the virtue or need for 8GB of memory on a gaming laptop, at least not at this juncture in gaming tech.

I guess if you intend to do a lot of video editing and an absolute ton of multi-tasking, or you just want the bragging rights, I would understand the "need" for 8GB instead of 6. But then again, if bragging rights is what you wanted, you probably should NOT have bought the Qosmio, certainly not the mid-to-lower-range model. So I am assuming you either have a genuine need for 8GB of RAM or you just erroneously believe you do.

 

CV...You're a hoot and thanks for the reply.
You'd be right on a couple of things...yeah, my first store bought factory made puter, and first laptop ever. When I checked the cost of either building one myself or having one built...for what this laptop came with, this is much cheaper.
Re: your donation to my knowledge base on this matter...thanks, much appreciated.
As far as six vs. eight...I had eight on the brain, so I went with eight.
I do some gaming, but allot of video editing. If your familiar with the editing process, you know how long and the resources rendering process takes. For me, faster is better.
Bragging rights!!! Love it, you're a hoot. Sounds like you'd be cool to catch a beer with. >;-}
Again, thanks for your reply.

 

Oh, I agree, I am the bomb!

Seriously, yeah, I think I mentioned video editing in my post as a good reason to need more RAM, in case that was where you were coming from, which it turns out you were. When you are editing video, then not only is more RAM beneficial, but that is one of the main reasons to worry about an i7 over an i5, so yeah, you can benefit, more than a straight-up gamer and writer like me, from the extra 2GB of RAM. So hell, just buy another 4GB chip and sell both your 2GB RAM chips on eBay to offset the extra cost.

 

i just got my 8gb in last week and installed it in my qosmio and WOW its a big difference in the snappiness of the overall performance of the OS. i see only 12% of ram being used at idle from the OS.

personally from the videos iv watched and the post ive read, going from 6 to 8gb might not be that big of a performance gain however it will be utilizing dual chanel using 4x4gb instead of the 4x2gb. you may see some differences.

personally i would recomend going to 8gb, the performance gain in general is really worth it even if you dont do alot of video editing. my qosmio feels alot faster.

although i will say i have yet to buy a SSD which i am going to buy one maybe this week or the next, but. i personally would say that 4gb and a ssd might feel faster than 8gb and a hdd.

i cant wait to see what the qosmio feels like with 8gb and a ssd. super fast performance i imagine

ssd is really the way to go as far as performance. more ram is always better esp if you like having alot of programs or tabs open doing this or that.

even with 8gb i only seen a 7.4 windows experience score (

 

I'm glad I saw this thread. I have the q892 and I was thinking about upgrading to 8gb also, because I read that the extra RAM will make Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Crysis alot "smoother" by increasing the minimum framerate count and holding the average fps more steady.

Reddbojo, if you have any of these games can you confirm with FRAPS if the extra RAM does indeed hold a smoother framerate.

 

Just out of curiosity, what does it cost to buy 8GB of RAM? I ask because you cannot use the current chips in the Qosmio because they are only 2 GB each, an I believe that there are only two memory slots.

 

On Amazon as low as $47.99 for a 4gb ddr3 - 1066 stick.

 

i picked mine up off ebay for 80.00 shipped for 8gb 4x4gb sticks. i definitly think its a cheap performance upgrade, but imo the ssd is still probably a better peroformance upgrade to start with then upgrade the ram.

 

The SSD is probably NOT going to be a viable choice for me. lol I just checked my available HD space on my 500 GB laptop drive and I have just under 200 GB left. Of course, I have installed just about 25 games onto my machine since I bought it and will probably install more. So if (probably when!) I get a second HD, I won't be able to get an SSD, but will probably have to go with a 7200 RPM monster of a drive. I am sure I will have enough space to wait for the TB drives to come down in price.

The RAM upgrade may be an option for me, but so far I have no reason to because everything I throw at this beast runs beautifully. Hell, even Metro: 2033, which was one I was REALLY WORRIED about given the fact that it is reputed to eat PC's for breakfast runs sweet on my machine, so long as I don't max everything out.

However, I seriously doubt that doubling the RAM would allow me to increase the detail level from High (which it is at now) to Very High. I am pretty sure that this game is just pushing the limits of the 460m GPU.

 

well a ssd is greatly going to speed up the load times of gaming most definitly, if space is a deal then i would go with a 64 or 128gb ssd as the primary drive then the secondary drive go with a larger hdd, regular hdd even 7200rpm isnt going to be able to compete with the read and write speeds of ssd, i've heard alot of ppl say the ssd greatly increases the load times on gaming.

also the ssd is going to speed up boot times and shutdown times.

as far as the ram maybe you wont see a gain in performance but it definitly allows your overall system from being taxed from doing multiple processes at once.

 

Now THAT's surprising, I heard that was new Crysis, and even desktops were struggling with it.

 

CV...
I just picked up a LaCie Hard Disk Quadra 1TB eSATA/FireWire800/FireWire400/USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive 301881U for $99 on Amazon...no tax, free shipping.
I need this kind of space for my video editing and rendering. I do the main work via my NLE software on my C:\ drive, but all the video, both captured and rendered and all the editing projects are saved to the external HD. Much better use of space.

 

Reddbojo, I am probably going to need another drive soon, but it will likely have to be internal. The reason is that because I am running a lot of games, I only have about 185GB left of my original 500 GB HD. I don't want to be running games and software off of an external drive, obviously, as the access times are usually significantly slower than internal drives. Obviously for music, videos, pictures, and mass storage an external is fine and dandy.

@mooses, to be honest, the SSD drives are too small. I understand they are much faster, but to be honest, I need raw space more than I need the rapid access times of an SSD. If I install another 10 or 15 games by Spring, which is entirely possible, I will have used the entire 500 GB drive and will be looking for another 500GB or larger. If the Qosmio had THREE drive bays like the G73's, then your idea would work for me as I could have a TB split between two regular 7200 HD's and say 128 GB for a third drive, and would get a SSD.

 

If I bought a SSD drive, could I reinstalled windows using the recovery DVDs I made when I originally purchased the laptop (had HDD), or do I have to do a CLEAN install of windows?

 

you can use the recovery disks to install a fresh version of windows on your ssd.