Thinkpads Forum

Im getting a new laptop but it comes with factory fitted 512mb DDR 2 667 Mhz. I wanted to upgrade it to a single 1gb chip... something i read about a single chip of ram giving better performance than 2 of half the MB value. However, this is what my dealer told me. He said that the company doesnt upgrade the laptop itself, which is probably true bcuz IBMs pretty rigid in India, and he said that he doesnt advice opening up the laptop and putting a 1gb chip instead of the 512. Instead he said that the ram expansion slot at the back of laptop was where he could just add another 512... im sceptical....

also, will performance be affected if i mix 2 different companies, say a an orignal 512 lenovo chip with a 1gb transcend ram chip?

Enlighten me!

TWO modules can sometimes be faster than ONE moudle. It's called dual-channel memory. I don't know if your system will support this mode or not, but generally speaking, when using the same amount of total memory, one or two modules doesn't make any difference in speed.

The tech probably said that because he doesn't want to open up the system to replace the existing 512MB module under the keyboard. You have the better idea of replacing it with a larger module since that will still leave an open slot for more memory later on, as long as your system can support 1GB modules in each slot.

zahir wrote:I wanted to upgrade it to a single 1gb chip... something i read about a single chip of ram giving better performance than 2 of half the MB value.

It's actually the other way around 2x512MB is faster than 1x1GB due to the Dual Channel mode, though it's only about 5% faster.

zahir wrote:Instead he said that the ram expansion slot at the back of laptop was where he could just add another 512... im sceptical....

He was indeed wrong. For the T60, both memory slots are under the touchpad and can be accessed only by removing the palm rest. Not hard to do at all. The instructions are in the Hardware Maintenance Manual.

zahir wrote:also, will performance be affected if i mix 2 different companies, say a an orignal 512 lenovo chip with a 1gb transcend ram chip?

Nope, as long as they are both PC2-5300, i.e. 667MHz. If one is PC2-4200, then that would slow things down.

so u guys are certain that 2 chips or 1 doesnt make a diff and that using lenovo original ram with Oem ram of the same speed wont affect anything right? is 1.5 gigs a weird combo?

zahir wrote:so u guys are certain that 2 chips or 1 doesnt make a diff and that using lenovo original ram with Oem ram of the same speed wont affect anything right? is 1.5 gigs a weird combo?

Yes to the first question, and no to the second. Lenovo sells many Thinkpads with 1.5GB preinstalled.

thanks a ton....