Help me on my RAM upgrade decision

[plinius]

Hi all,

After reading and doing some research in this forum, i've come up with 3 upgrade options:
1. to get 2x512MB from Crucial at total cost of USD170 = Total 1GB RAM
2. Get 1xGB Transcend at USD210 = 1.256GM RAM (+original IBM 256MB)
3. Get 1xGB Kingmax (Generic Brand) at USD150== 1.256GM RAM (+original IBM 256MB)

If you were me, which option would u take? and why?

Actually will I sense the difference in performance between 1GB RAM (Option 1) and 1.256GB RAM (Option 2 & 3)..........

if purely by cost, option 3 would be the best, but my concern is of course on reliability and stability.........

thanks in advance......

rgds..

[stgreek]

Hi all,

After reading and doing some research in this forum, i've come up with 3 upgrade options:
1. to get 2x512MB from Crucial at total cost of USD170 = Total 1GB RAM
2. Get 1xGB Transcend at USD210 = 1.256GM RAM (+original IBM 256MB)
3. Get 1xGB Kingmax (Generic Brand) at USD150== 1.256GM RAM (+original IBM 256MB)

If you were me, which option would u take? and why?

Actually will I sense the difference in performance between 1GB RAM (Option 1) and 1.256GB RAM (Option 2 & 3)..........

if purely by cost, option 3 would be the best, but my concern is of course on reliability and stability.........

thanks in advance......

rgds..

Kingmax and Crucial (esp. the latter) have both proven to be quite stable with Thinkpads, so maybe option 3 is indeed the best option for you. I would definetely skip option 2 though, I don't think it is worth it.

Stavros

[K. Eng]

I've always been partial to Crucial memory and would probably go with that. I've used it a lot and I've never had problems.

As for 1GB and 1.256GB, I would say that for most people, there would be no difference. However, if you are doing very memory intensive applications it might help to have more.

What will you be using your ThinkPad for?

[plinius]

thanks for all the replies...

basically I'll be using the thinkpad to run AutoDyn, a simulation program, and Photoshop.

Rgds.

I've always been partial to Crucial memory and would probably go with that. I've used it a lot and I've never had problems.

As for 1GB and 1.256GB, I would say that for most people, there would be no difference. However, if you are doing very memory intensive applications it might help to have more.

What will you be using your ThinkPad for?

[craigg]

I assume you have a T42. If so, I would suggest buying your memory direct from Transcend. You can get two 512mb sticks shipped to NM for a little under $150. Sell your old 256mb stick on eBay for about $35 and be happy knowing that this configuration should hold up well until you buy your next Thinkpad. Btw...I purchased my upgrade for my T43 from Transcend and was very pleased. The memory runs perfectly with no errors reported.

[aamsel]

Is (1) 256MB module really worth selling on EBAY ???
Would it be better to hang onto it in case your TP needed to go in to EasyServe ??

Andrew
Austin, TX

I assume you have a T42. If so, I would suggest buying your memory direct from Transcend. You can get two 512mb sticks shipped to NM for a little under $150. Sell your old 256mb stick on eBay for about $35 and be happy knowing that this configuration should hold up well until you buy your next Thinkpad. Btw...I purchased my upgrade for my T43 from Transcend and was very pleased. The memory runs perfectly with no errors reported.

[Kenn]

I'd go with the 1GB stick (Kingmax should be fine). That way, if you ever had to upgrade again, you'd just have to get another 1GB, replace the valueless 256MB SODIMM, and max out at 2GB.

Otherwise, with 2x512MB, you'd pay the same price for .25GB less, have a leftover "valueless" SODIMM, and would have to replace one or both of the 512MB sticks if you ever wanted to upgrade again.

[craigg]

For me it would be worthless to keep it. I would rather sell or give it to someone else that can use it now. In another year it may only be worth a few dollars. In two years it will be filling a landfill. That is the way it is with most computer technology now

Is (1) 256MB module really worth selling on EBAY ???
Would it be better to hang onto it in case your TP needed to go in to EasyServe ??

Andrew
Austin, TX

I assume you have a T42. If so, I would suggest buying your memory direct from Transcend. You can get two 512mb sticks shipped to NM for a little under $150. Sell your old 256mb stick on eBay for about $35 and be happy knowing that this configuration should hold up well until you buy your next Thinkpad. Btw...I purchased my upgrade for my T43 from Transcend and was very pleased. The memory runs perfectly with no errors reported.

[jhonyl]

For the sake of the normal people who read the forum, and get caught up in these debates about over 1GB of RAM, I just wanted to mention this: Press Ctrl+Alt+Del and choose 'task manager'. Go to the performance tab, and look at the 'Commit Charge (K)'. Total is the total amount of memory you are using now. Peak is the biggest amount of RAM that you have used since your last reboot. When you do it, I bet that most of you will find that your computer bearlly got to a 512MB peak, and if it did, it was probably left on for many days, and you probably ran a faulty program which leaked memory for many days, or something like that. You can check in the Process tab the time for which your computer was on under the 'CPU Time' column. Most of the time would go to the 'System Idle Process', which is a good approximation for the up time. Anyways, my computer 'Idle Process' ran for 145 hours, which is a bit more than six days, and the memory peak is @ 578,148KB. Two days ago the peak was under 350,000K. So for me, for the past six days, 512MBs would have been just fine, and any byte over that would have been left unused. Now the total is @ 403836KB, and I bet that if I close Mozilla, which leaks RAM through its Macromedia Flash plugin (I bet) I would get 100 MBs back. I bet that most people don't use anything close to 1GB of RAM, and that most people don't cross the 768MB, and don't have any good reason to cross it. It may be interesting to proove it with a pole: "Did your computer peaked more than 768MB, and was up for less then 5 days?"

[Nolonemo]

2 points:

1. Working with large files in Photoshop may require more RAM than the normal user would need.

2. As far as memory becoming valueless, it depends. I just had to pay $100 for two sticks of IBM PC100 256MB for my T22, a decent eBay price. And they were pulls. That's more than it costs to buy RAM new for current machines.

[mdarnton]

jhonyl, thanks for that, which I hadn't previously understood. The most important application I use is Photoshop, and I've got 768M memory. I'm going to watch for a while and see how my "do I need more?" question plays out in the statistics.

[Blake]

where did you find the kingmax for 150

[plinius]

here u go dude--> http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 111&depa=0

where did you find the kingmax for 150

[JHEM]

where did you find the kingmax for 150

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductde ... 20-155-111

Regards,

James

[Leon]

Also, notice 138 votes, 5 Star Rating.......

[bevross]

Press Ctrl+Alt+Del and choose 'task manager'. Go to the performance tab, and look at the 'Commit Charge (K)'. Total is the total amount of memory you are using now. Peak is the biggest amount of RAM that you have used since your last reboot.

Well, this seems a bit misleading. See, for instance, this from a Microsoft site --
http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -gb;842628

When Windows XP needs to put a data file or part of a program into virtual memory it creates a hidden file on your hard drive called a paging file. The file or program you’re using the most will be in real memory; the other applications you have open may be in the paging file and Windows swaps the information back and forth when you switch to using the other application. Some of the memory in your PC will be set aside for the Windows XP kernel and for device drivers to use; this is called Kernel memory. The memory that Windows is using itself or that it has handed over to applications is called the Commit Charge, because Windows has committed it to use..

My interpretation -- more memory means less swapping to disk.

[kernel32]

I've had 2 transcend 1gb sticks now. The first one flaked out after about 6 months, I RMA'd it, they sent the same stick back saying it was fine. After replacing the system board of the laptop, it was determined that the problem I was having was definetly the ram, so Transcend RMA"d it again and this time sent me a new stick.. I've been running about a month now with the new stick and everything's great. They have nice and fast tech support, although I was a bit saddened my 2nd day airing a 2 oz piece of plastic twice for $20 each time only for them to send it back ground and it taking 7 days to get back

As for 768 vs 1.3gb, I prefer 1.3 because I enjoy having no page file.

[ashleys]

I'm with "jhonyl" on this.
You need to use task manager or the storage statistics counters to accurately calculate your storage requirements.

Windows understanding of real/virtual and auxiliary storage is ridiculous. They also talk about swapping when in fact, they're not swapping at all, they're paging, swapping is a completely different concept.

I've always laughed about the "default" pagefile allocation. Take for example a user with peak requirements of 256MB RAM and a 346MB pagefile, of which 128Mb is used (ie total working set requirements plus system of 384MB).
He upgrades his ram to 512MB (now large enough to accomodate all his existing requirements) and Windows now thinks he needs a pagefile of 768Mb !!!

Memory intensive appplications may well require suitable sized RAM configurations but this concept of "yeah I'll get 1Gb or 2GB and everything will run faster" is misplaced.

I have 768Mb and the only time I push that is when I've got VMware running both a W2K and a Linux guest.

Ashley.

[combustion]

how does Corsair ram run on thinkpads?

[JHEM]

how does Corsair ram run on thinkpads?

Full and bye matey! Arrrrrrhhhhhh.

Long John Silver

[aamsel]

Wow!
I guess that means good!???

Ahoy!!

Andrew
Austin, TX

how does Corsair ram run on thinkpads?

Full and bye matey! Arrrrrrhhhhhh.

Long John Silver

[jhonyl]

Hi,
I have just talked to one professional who does photoshop for a living and he told me two things that may be important to you people who use photoshop. First he said that 256MB will cause disk threshing, but with 512MB you can work normally. Second he said that Photoshop may use its own Virtual Memory, therefor it may not use the Windows Virtual Memory, and therefor the statistics in the task manager may not describe the Photoshop's memory activity.

I googled for photoshop+virtual+memory and found an article that said that since Photoshop was written at a time when the OS didn't have virtual memory, the Photoshop programmers had to write their own implementation of virtual memory. Now all the OSs have virtual memory but Photoshop decided to stick to their own VM, so Photoshop still arrives with that virtual memory implementation. Now in windows, that Photoshop VM implementation takes away from Windows physical memory the RAM that it needs in a way that windows can't use it for other things, and therefor for example one computer that had 64MB and NT stayed with 16MB to run NT after Photoshop took 48MB from it. NT couldn't operate reasonably with only 16MB.

I didn't get to much into it, and I don't know if that old article that I read is still relevant today, so who uses Photoshop may wish to explore it more. Maybe you can still get statistics for the Photoshop VM usage from some other source. But I think that I have also seen that there is an option to switch the Photoshop own VM on or off. If you switch it off it will probably use the Windows VM, and then the statistics and everthing would be correct. However if you switch it on and it decides to take 512MB away from windows, and your system has 768MB, then you would be left with only 256MB for everything else.


Check it out.