Question Regarding Laptop Ram Upgrade

Hello,

I want to upgrade the RAM on my Toshiba Satellite A105-S4004. The problem however, is that I am getting conflicting reports as towards the maximum memory capacity on my laptop. The details for my laptop on Toshiba's website claims that it is 2gb. However, Everest ( http://www.lavalys.com/), Corsair's & Crucial's detectors claim that I can hold up to 4GB. Similarly, many vendors and reviews both list 2gb and 4gb... slightly more posting the 4gb mark.

So, in conclusion...

What do you all think is my capacity, 2gb or 4gb? It would be wonderful if someone has experience with this regarding the Toshiba Satellite A105-S4004.

 

In 2006 (when this notebook came up) 2GB RAM chips were almost unheard of...so really most people thought that 2x1GB would be the max a laptop would see.

The chipset in your laptop can handle 4GB (you will be able to use a little more than 3GB only...don't get me started on the limitations of a 32bit OS and a 32bit chipset RAM interface ) as long as Toshiba BIOS support it.

I'd give it a try...4GB of RAM is ridiculously cheap now.

 

Thank you very much for this answer. I know about the 32 bit stuff, but it just doesn't seem cost effective to shoot for the 3gb mark.

 

I am not so sure you will gain much with that laptop and 4GB of RAM.
In fact, my guess is it is a complete waste of money to put another 2GB in it. You will probably need to buy 2 DIMMS if 2GB each. For a tiny amount of better performance, if that.

 

Honestly, I know that the first 1gb is going to account for just about most of the performance upgrade. The important thing is I just need to know if my laptop can take 4gb and I'd be able to see the 3gb/3.5gb (whatever) number of ram and utilize it if I did decide to go for 4gb. I've been looking around and comparing prices, and some of the 2x2gb kits are just so cheap, and still come with lifetime warranties. With that said, there is a high chance of finding some nicely priced 2x1gb kits too.

 

No question about it, you could spend your money on much worse things than extra RAM. I understood that you understand about 32bit OS limitations, but that was not where I was getting at.
Irrelevant of Windows version and type (XP, Vista, 32bit 64bit), with the rest of the specs the laptop mentioned, I honestly don't believe it will change anything.
Even for much more powerful notebooks (and desktops even), there aren't many things that improve going from 2 to 4 GB of RAM. There are some games and some programs that will use 4GB of RAM, there are programs that will use much more than that too. But I don't believe any of them would run on the specific notebook due to the CPU and graphics solution.
$10 (for example) might not be much to waste, but why waste them in the first place?
Anyway, that is just my opion. If you go ahead and buy it, good luck.

 

If you put a 1gb stick of ram in one slot and a 2gb stick of ram in the other...does it still matter which slot gets the 2gb?

 

Not that I know of...

I do manage to play World of Warcraft & Age of Empires 3 on my laptop, which I believe is an over performer. I imagine those would be the most memory intensive programs I run.