Thinkpads Forum

I have a t60 on order which comes with 1gig. I was wondering what kind of improvements I would see by adding another gig of ram. I never pc game, or photoshop or anything like that. I do like to rip and encode dvds to mpeg4, but thats about it. The rest my useage is firefox, itunes, watching videos, word, ect. So, if I added another gig, would I experience any difference in performance?

It sounds like you will be fine with 1Gig. I would stay with 1Gig for now, and perhaps upgrade to 2GB if and when you upgrade to Windows Vista.

One downside of extra RAM is that it takes that much longer for the system to hibernate, as it write the contents of memory to the hard drive.

The reason is Dual channel. Speed increase of about 10% with two banks of ram.

a31pguy wrote:The reason is Dual channel. Speed increase of about 10% with two banks of ram.

Whether that helps you out enough to notice it, however, is another matter entirely.

For this sort of question, my philosophy has been: buy what you need now.

Computers are not like gold. Its values decrease very fast. So always buy what you need. Never fancy with new gears all the time. My wife is a scientist and she only needs to process email and use the web. She finds herself very comfortable with X24. I proposed to offer her a X40 but she refused.

So for your purpose, I think 1 G is enough. Only upgrade when you find a good reason to upgrade. For movie stuff, if your software can handle more than 1G memory, I would suggest a Go-For-It. But I suspect there is any.

I also do a lot of movie editing. I use Adobe premier 6.0 and the memory usage never exceed 1G.

Given the Lenovo load on startup, plus the memory usage of multiple simultaneous applications, I have found 1.5Gb to be significantly better than 1Gb, purely in terms of subjective responsiveness. So I would recommend the extra gig. Like the dual core, you won't use the second core all the time, but it gives you an overhead for responsiveness.

mj

Thesp wrote:Given the Lenovo load on startup, plus the memory usage of multiple simultaneous applications, I have found 1.5Gb to be significantly better than 1Gb, purely in terms of subjective responsiveness.
mj

I also recommend 1.5GB RAM at least!

I've had T60's with the same processor but the first one has 1GB RAM (1GBx1) while the second with 1.5GB. Definitely, there's a noticeable improvement on the machine with 1.5GB RAM even for common multitasking tasks. Same thing with gaming (Civ 4) as the one with 1.5GB loads a turn faster especially in large/huge maps.

I think notebooks usually load a lot of programs during start up and it eats resources alot. Before the T60, I've had Toshibas and HPs with 1GB RAM and they weren't exactly fast or good enough.

If it was an option, I wouldn't mind even 2GB RAM on a notebook.

I used my new T60 with 1GB for one month before adding another memory module to bring it up to 2GB. This is my usual practice with a new computer as I like to see how it performs in it's original state from the factory, and also to insure that all is ok. Then I add the additional memory.

It is true that individual requirements vary depending on what you use your computer for, it does however also hold true that every year new software and changing usage demand more resources. Simply looking back at a few years ago, tells the tale of accelerated demand for more memory, bigger hard drives, faster processors etc.

If you plan on keeping your computer for a number of years the cost of the ram becomes quite small and the time savings when working adds up to a more enjoyable user experience. While you may not need "all" of it today, you may find going forward a few years from now you will be glad you did the upgrade.

archer6 wrote:I used my new T60 with 1GB for one month before adding another memory module to bring it up to 2GB. This is my usual practice with a new computer as I like to see how it performs in it's original state from the factory, and also to insure that all is ok. Then I add the additional memory.

It is true that individual requirements vary depending on what you use your computer for, it does however also hold true that every year new software and changing usage demand more resources. Simply looking back at a few years ago, tells the tale of accelerated demand for more memory, bigger hard drives, faster processors etc.

If you plan on keeping your computer for a number of years the cost of the ram becomes quite small and the time savings when working adds up to a more enjoyable user experience. While you may not need "all" of it today, you may find going forward a few years from now you will be glad you did the upgrade.

I would recommend doing something similar to this; a 1/2 ratio split or a double-after-test strategy. I did that with my T43, I got it with 512MB first off and ordered another 512MB stick with an ETA of a week. That way, I could gauge the difference and determine how much of a gain I got after I installed the stick.

Does the brand of RAM purchased for the upgrade matter in terms of making sure both sticks run in dual channel mode?

I opened up my T60 and found 1 stick of Samsung PC2 5300 S-555-12 memory and searched for the same stick of ram online to no avail (except for eBay, which makes me a little hesitant).

I was thinking about purchasing the stick of Transcend ram listed on the forum, but if I do take the leap, I want to get the max out of it.

brand of ram does not matter on the T60p. Will accept different brands of RAM and still go dual channel with speed increase..

a31pguy wrote:The reason is Dual channel. Speed increase of about 10% with two banks of ram.

I would say that depends how many banks there are for the ram.
If you fill every available bank of ram the motherboard usually has to increase it's ram timing and latency to handle it.