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Eeking out every usable between 2 T60s, 2 1gb ram, and 2 2gb ram pieces.

T60/T61 Series
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fefrie
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Eeking out every usable between 2 T60s, 2 1gb ram, and 2 2gb ram pieces.

#1 Post by fefrie » Fri May 25, 2018 6:51 pm

I work with 2 t60s. My workstation has a better ATI card, SXGA display, Intel 330SSD

The 'server' t60 has XGA, Integrated graphics, mechanical hard drive with external hard drive for more storage.

Both running XP, both with a 1gb ram piece and 2gb ram piece.

So both have 3gb of ram.

It's most important that I get the most efficient workstation experience.

Would it make any difference if I put 4gb ram in my workstation and just 2gb in my server.

I know that XP has a ram limitation of 3gb. But on further reading, it's 'technically' 3.25gb?

.25gb isn't that much of a difference. I know that, but is that gain still marginally effective?

And on the flip side, is the loss of ram on the server from 3gb to 2gb really that noticeable for something that runs in the background encoding?

If it means that I get to open 2 more tabs without bogging down and pagefiling, it would be worth it to me.
IBM Thinkpad T23 1.13 2647-9LU 640MB Ram 40GB hard drive SOLD!
T42 SXGA 1.7 64mb xp

Cigarguy
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Re: Eeking out every usable between 2 T60s, 2 1gb ram, and 2 2gb ram pieces.

#2 Post by Cigarguy » Fri May 25, 2018 7:12 pm

Love the T60s. My daily machine these days is a T60. I have 3 T60 15" and 2 T60 14" all in 4:3 format. I have 1 Frankenpad that hardly gets used.

All my T60s have 3 GB or 4 GB RAM. All except for 1 have a T7200 while the 1 have a T7600. I found the T7200 is a good compromise of speed and battery usage. All either have a AR9380 or Intel 6200 wifi card. I have 1 SSD that acts as the Windows 7 and programs drive and a 1 TB HDD serving as data drive in the Ultrabay. The data drive moves from laptop to laptop while the SSD moves within the T60 family depending on which particular machine I'm using at the time.

3 GB of RAM is the max for these machine as far as I'm concern. Sure one can channel Houdini and get 3.25 usable and I've done this and found it was not worth the effort. 1 GB is plenty for XP while 3 GB is great for Win 7. Update CPU, max RAM to 3 GB, upgrade to SSD and upgrade wifi is about max for this platform.

Sweater Fish Deluxe
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Re: Eeking out every usable between 2 T60s, 2 1gb ram, and 2 2gb ram pieces.

#3 Post by Sweater Fish Deluxe » Sat May 26, 2018 5:46 pm

The T60 BIOS maps memory in such a way that there's a hard limit of 3.0 GB regardless of what OS you use. You might see a slight memory speed increase on both systems by switching to dual channel mode, but no extra space in the one with 4GB installed. I'd say just leave them as they are since that dual channel speed increase isn't really noticeable.

fefrie
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Re: Eeking out every usable between 2 T60s, 2 1gb ram, and 2 2gb ram pieces.

#4 Post by fefrie » Sun May 27, 2018 3:39 pm

Found a bit of a blurb to possibly use the non addressable as a ramdrive

https://www.megaleecher.net/RAMDisk

Not sure of the bios reference, but if I can get .75gb of a ram drive, I can actually make that very useful for me by putting TWO of my daily web browsers in it.

I'll post updates.
IBM Thinkpad T23 1.13 2647-9LU 640MB Ram 40GB hard drive SOLD!
T42 SXGA 1.7 64mb xp

Sweater Fish Deluxe
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Re: Eeking out every usable between 2 T60s, 2 1gb ram, and 2 2gb ram pieces.

#5 Post by Sweater Fish Deluxe » Sun May 27, 2018 7:43 pm

The T60 has an additional problem beyond the limitation of 32-bit OSes. Hardware addresses occupy the memory map above 0xC0000000, which would be the RAM above 3.0GB. Without modifying the BIOS memory map, this memory region is completely unavailable at the hardware level. Nobody has been successful in customizing the BIOS to make it available as of yet.

You can read more here: https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=44749

YoniG
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Re: Eeking out every usable between 2 T60s, 2 1gb ram, and 2 2gb ram pieces.

#6 Post by YoniG » Sun May 27, 2018 10:03 pm

I suggest you use Firefox as your browser, and install Firemin, a free utility that cuts FF RAM usage by about 80-90%.
X61s, W500, T430, T470s

kfzhu1229
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Re: Eeking out every usable between 2 T60s, 2 1gb ram, and 2 2gb ram pieces.

#7 Post by kfzhu1229 » Sun May 27, 2018 11:38 pm

I use my T43 for occasional web browsing and reading online with that UXGA IPS display. For that purpose, my T43's 2GB RAM and Microsoft Edge with adblock does the job just fine, so I don't see why a T60 couldn't do it unless you have a Celeron and 1gb ram installed in it.
Dell Lat CP MMX-233 64mb 40gb W2k
600 PII-266 416mb 40gb WXP
T23 PIII 1.13ghz 1gb W7
Precision M4300 X9000 8gb 160gb WUXGA Ultrasharp fp W10
T530i 15.6" i7 16gb fp W10
UXGA:
A30p PIII 1.2 1gb W7 (IDTech)
T43p 2.26 2gb fp W10 (Sharp)
Lat C840 P4-2.5 2gb 60gb W7 (Ultrasharp)

fefrie
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Re: Eeking out every usable between 2 T60s, 2 1gb ram, and 2 2gb ram pieces.

#8 Post by fefrie » Wed Jun 20, 2018 2:03 pm

Cigarguy, could you post the numbers of the amount of ram thats reported on your 3gb machines and 4gb machines?

I'm working with a t500 with 8gb of ram right now and made a 1gb ram drive and put a portable chrome install on it and it works stupid fast on a machine with a mech hd.

I'm trying to squeeze a ramdrive onto the t60 for the same purpose (with the ssd) for a portable chrome browser, but the file size is around 300mbish which starts to eat away at free ram.

Even if it's 20-50mb of extra ram it's worth it. If it's an extra 100mb I'd be in heaven.
IBM Thinkpad T23 1.13 2647-9LU 640MB Ram 40GB hard drive SOLD!
T42 SXGA 1.7 64mb xp

kfzhu1229
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Re: Eeking out every usable between 2 T60s, 2 1gb ram, and 2 2gb ram pieces.

#9 Post by kfzhu1229 » Wed Jun 20, 2018 5:58 pm

From my experience with 4GB RAM on x86 (non-x64) computers, you get around 3.25-3.5 GB of RAM that is available to use. Unless you have the Core 2 Duo variant of the T60, you cannot run x64 anyways
Dell Lat CP MMX-233 64mb 40gb W2k
600 PII-266 416mb 40gb WXP
T23 PIII 1.13ghz 1gb W7
Precision M4300 X9000 8gb 160gb WUXGA Ultrasharp fp W10
T530i 15.6" i7 16gb fp W10
UXGA:
A30p PIII 1.2 1gb W7 (IDTech)
T43p 2.26 2gb fp W10 (Sharp)
Lat C840 P4-2.5 2gb 60gb W7 (Ultrasharp)

wujstefan
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Re: Eeking out every usable between 2 T60s, 2 1gb ram, and 2 2gb ram pieces.

#10 Post by wujstefan » Fri Jun 22, 2018 5:11 am

T60 board is limitted to 3Gigs, and even though it will display more, it will not be able to use more than that.

And so, running a x64 does not make a sense; performance-wise.
Too many thinkpads not enough time!
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kfzhu1229
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Re: Eeking out every usable between 2 T60s, 2 1gb ram, and 2 2gb ram pieces.

#11 Post by kfzhu1229 » Fri Jun 22, 2018 6:25 pm

Thinkwiki says the maximum is around 3.25GB, I don't know how reliable that information is.
Dell Lat CP MMX-233 64mb 40gb W2k
600 PII-266 416mb 40gb WXP
T23 PIII 1.13ghz 1gb W7
Precision M4300 X9000 8gb 160gb WUXGA Ultrasharp fp W10
T530i 15.6" i7 16gb fp W10
UXGA:
A30p PIII 1.2 1gb W7 (IDTech)
T43p 2.26 2gb fp W10 (Sharp)
Lat C840 P4-2.5 2gb 60gb W7 (Ultrasharp)

fefrie
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Re: Eeking out every usable between 2 T60s, 2 1gb ram, and 2 2gb ram pieces.

#12 Post by fefrie » Sat Jun 23, 2018 8:43 pm

I'm looking at task manager and it says that there is 3144010 or something like that.

Even 324000 or something like that would be worth if as I wouldn't notice any real loss on the server, and the psychologial gain on the DD would help.
IBM Thinkpad T23 1.13 2647-9LU 640MB Ram 40GB hard drive SOLD!
T42 SXGA 1.7 64mb xp

CrazyTPFan
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Re: Eeking out every usable between 2 T60s, 2 1gb ram, and 2 2gb ram pieces.

#13 Post by CrazyTPFan » Sat Sep 29, 2018 8:53 am

fefrie wrote:
Fri May 25, 2018 6:51 pm
I work with 2 t60s. My workstation has a better ATI card, SXGA display, Intel 330SSD

The 'server' t60 has XGA, Integrated graphics, mechanical hard drive with external hard drive for more storage.

Both running XP, both with a 1gb ram piece and 2gb ram piece.

So both have 3gb of ram.

It's most important that I get the most efficient workstation experience.

Would it make any difference if I put 4gb ram in my workstation and just 2gb in my server.

I know that XP has a ram limitation of 3gb. But on further reading, it's 'technically' 3.25gb?

.25gb isn't that much of a difference. I know that, but is that gain still marginally effective?

And on the flip side, is the loss of ram on the server from 3gb to 2gb really that noticeable for something that runs in the background encoding?

If it means that I get to open 2 more tabs without bogging down and pagefiling, it would be worth it to me.
Just keep the ram the way it is. It's not to going to make that big of a difference seeing as the T60/p can only use up to 3GB ram due to chipset limitation.

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