9-9-9-24 or 7-7-7-20 for VPCZ and Win Experience Index?

Hello Sony people of the world,

I saw some mention of the timing in the past but just cannot find those threads (>_<)'
I want to juice up my VAIO VPCZ12 with some more RAM (from 4 to 8GB).
Currently installed is...
Speed = DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500)
Timing = 7-7-7-20
I want to install...
Speed = DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)
Timing = 9-9-9-24
Any positives/negatives with doing this?

Lets say everything checks out (with the diff timings) and I install the new RAM and my "Memory operations per second" in Windows Experience Index goes from 5.9 to 6.8, what does than mean for the user? Will I notice the difference or are we talking about a diff so small I won't notice change?

I mostly do things like watch 1080p videos through the HDMI to a 52" BRAVIA. I need to switch from the "SONY LCD" to "Single" display with TV only so I don't loose too many fps. I think someone mentioned video playback improves greatly moving from 4 to 8GB of RAM.
I also do a lot of video editing.

Any feedback will be appreciated (^_^).

Buggy

 

First

Core i5 does NOT support 1333mhz RAM module. So you will have to get a 4gb 1066 mhz RAM.

Second, yes you will see a minor to major improvement in performance depending on what you do with the PC. For most purposes 8 GB is overkill (IMO)

For video editing yes you will certainly benefit from 8 gigs of ram

And I do not think there should be any difference in video playback going from 4 to 8 gb ram.

 

Although it doesnt support 1333mhz RAM, you can still use it as the RAM will be run at 1066mhz at probably 7-7-7-20 timings from 9-9-9-24 (like on my Z). However, the fact that you're going to use 2 different company's RAM at different timings and speed. That increases the chances that they wont work together (but worse case scenario, your Vaio doesnt boot and just remove one of the sticks)

Like said above, for most people, going from 4gb-8gb will not produce any significant bonuses in performance. However, for you it might actually make a difference. For outputting image to your Bravia TV that's mostly your GPU's job which has it's own amount of memory. (btw you can use Windows key + p to switch between display options)

 

Just a note.
My VGN-Z with a P8600 (2.4GHz / core) CPU, I went from a factory stock of 3GB of DDR3 RAM to 8GB or DDR3 RAM (all running at 1066MHz), and the Windows User Experience rating for RAM went from 5.8 to 6.0 (not a lot of difference).

For comparison, another laptop with a i7 Q720 running a 1.6GHz per core (yet a superior CPU to the P8600 above), with 4GB of the same model RAM gets a 7.3.

And another comparison.
I've got a 3 year old Core 2 Quad custom desktop rig with 4GB of DDR2 RAM (800MHz), and that gets a RAM rating of 7.2 along with the CPU. Basically, my desktop is faster in terms of clock speeds for everything, yet despite having superseded DDR2, the RAM there is working more to its potential.

At the end of the day, the speeds you get comes down to what processor you use. And the CPU (and motherboard to an extent) will influence your RAM rating provided you have capable sticks.

And for most consumers, RAM increases won't be too noticable. Boot ups are generally the same under every day circumstances, and speeds are pretty much unchanged. I did see that when playing blu-ray movies (or any 1080p actually), the VGN-Z doesn't refer to the HDD as often as before (less HDD light blinking). I've disabled virtual paging altogether so the machine doesn't refer to the HDD too often in any case, and I've been able to pump up the RAM of my virtual machines for a general performance increase there.

EDIT - Adding more RAM for me has increased the dynamically SHARED video memory; total video memory now stands on 3.8GB RAM for me (with 256MB nVidia 9300GM). For the Intel, it's on 1.6GB total SHARED (with 64MB dedicated).

 

Ahh, I forgot about the i5 compatibility. I'll probably get some for my i7 machine then.

What about with Intel HD graphics?

I always thought the dedicated GPU took care of this, but have read a few threads throughout the forums saying adding more RAM actually benefits... I got confused (@_@).

Also, I was going to pair the RAM with the same timings, not miss-match.

Thanks for the response so far!

 

For any curious monkeys out there like me...

I just installed G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) into my VPCZ12 that is intended for my Thinkpad and this is the result...

~Win Experience Index for RAM went from 5.8 to 6.9 (4GB to 8GB)

~I had loss of FPS (occasional choppiness) when playing 1080p from VAIO to 52" BRAVIA with 4GB (even with VAIO LCD turned off and all GPU juice going to TV). After installing the 8GB seems like the playback is smooth as butter, just a tiny loss of FPS in the most intense scenes (with "Extended Display" LCD=900p/TV=1080p, GPU running both displays simultaneously).

I ordered G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) sticks for the VAIO and will give you VAIO lovers the results.

Even though I cannot utilize the MHz of the incoming RAM I am interested in the results.

The reason why I am posting my results is because I thought the GeForce GT 330M and its 1GB video memory worked independently of the system RAM (I running the same processes in the background).

 

I'm curious to know your thoughts and what deals you find on the RAM. As I get more into my lappy and what I can get it to do for me, I'm starting to desire more RAM.

p.s. - The new speakers rock. Also, just got the wireless soundcard, which does a good job at opening the sound up even more. Bummer that volume controls don't work over the wireless connection, so I'm still plugged in. Creative Labs needs to light a fire under someone's a** and get some product support.

 

First things first: All of our VPC-Z1x vaios only support ram up to 1066Mhz.
That means if you put inside 1333Mhz modules, they clock down to 1066.
That is not specially bad since latencies adjust, generally from 9 to 7. That usually makes up for the difference in frecuency from a performance standpoint.
If you get 1066Mhz modules, they might have higher latency than 7, so buying 1333Mhz modules is not such a bad idea if price is similar.

For the record, mine came with 2x4gb 1333Mhz Samsung out of the box.
To check at what speed and latency your memory is working, there is a tiny easy free program called cpu-z which tells you this and more! you can get it at CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting .

Anyway, difference will be small.
And, about windows performance index, it is meant to be an easy look at performance, but it is neither very self explanatory nor detailed. To compare performance where, why and how it is a lot better to look elsewhere.

About the graphics ram, yes, the little GT330M has 1gb of dedicated ram. But, in case you run out of dedicated video memory, your graphics card might use system ram to keep working. The intel graphics adapter, on its own, always takes up a portion of system ram, in fact, my Z "only has" 7,68Gb of RAM available because of that.

 

I'm just curious about your RAM wei number. I get 6.8 with 8GB (4GBx2), just like the bugman. I would assume that you get the same number with 2GBx2? That the difference between the 5.9 vs 6.8 WEI score is 1 ram simm vs 2 (not 4GB vs 8GB).

 

More RAM = higher WEI score, even comparing 2x2gb to 2x4gb. One of the many reasons the WEI doesn't mean much.

 

Microsoft hasn't been good at explaining WEI -- it's not meant to measure speeds, but bottlenecks.
This is why Windows advertises the lowest number as the overall WEI score. It was meant to be an easy way for non-technical consumers to check whether their machine would be good enough for specific programs (like games) -- Microsoft had hoped that games publishers would place an easily seen WEI number on the front of all games, so someone with a, say, WEI score of 5.0 could avoid all games marked 5.1 and above.

Obviously, this failed -- the games publishers aren't interested in reducing their sales, and prefer that a customer runs a game slowly than not buying it.
So now Microsoft has switched to marketing the number as a help for when purchasing a system, as an aid for those who don't understand much about computers. This will fail too, because those people won't find the WEI score anyhow.

 

I'm getting mine from Newegg...
Newegg.com - G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Laptop Memory Model F3-8500CL7D-8GBSQ
Newegg.com - G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Laptop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBSQ

Another 10% off any notebook memory with NBMEM10 coupon.

If you can afford it I recommend getting as much RAM as possible. I do a lot of multitasking, with four GB I had problems while simultaneously video encoding and general usage, now things run much more smoothly.

I never paid attention to WEI before but since getting a higher score my computing experience has been more positive.

 

It depends on what you use the machine for. If you neither use a lot of RAM nor use the disk a lot, more RAM won't make a difference.
In my case (C compiling with gcc), I do lots of random RAM reads and writes, re-running small programs thousands of times, and getting faster RAM was more beneficial than getting more RAM. So I chose 4 GB of 5-5-5-15 timed RAM, which helps more for my particular usage patterns. For your usage, with multiple memory hungry programs running simultaneously, more RAM is the better choice.

 

I installed the 8GB 1333MHz RAM with the same results in the VPCZ, identical results in the X201.

I am going to try installing the hybrid graphics drivers posted by Nautis and overclocking them a tiny bit for smoother vid playback.

 

Mine says 6,9 for RAM.
2x4gb@1066, latencies@7. Also, as it can be seen in my signature, I have the i7 620M.

All together may count for the extra (and useless) 0.1 I get.

For me having 6 or 8gb of ram was a requirement.