Thinkpads Forum

Hi guys,

its time to upgrade the memory on my T61.... As it only comes with 1x1gig memory...

Which one of hte following options is going to be the better idea:

Option1: 1x1gig and 1x2gig = 3gig ram
Option2: 2x2gig = 4gig ram

Im considering Option 1 as im only using Vista Ultimate 32bit Edition....

If you guys could give me some feedback and some advice that would be ideal!

Cheers
Will

32-bit widows can't address all 4GB so you're better off with 3GB total if you plan to run vista 32.

Just a question to satisfy my curiosity: What apps do you run that would require so much memory??

firefox... lol JK but now seriously. most newer games eat ram like crazy.

mattbiernat wrote:most newer games eat ram like crazy.

Although, if the OP really is a hardcore gamer, s/he would most likely have bought a T61p instead.

for me; illustrator, photoshop, and lightroom.   adobe apps love having more memory, especially when two or three of the above are opened (let alone adding brief instances of indesign or acrobat).   autocad and solidworks don't eat much during normal wireframe tasks but can use quite a bit when rendering.   i could care less about games -- i don't have any and wouldn't have time to play them if i did.

erik wrote:32-bit widows can't address all 4GB so you're better off with 3GB total if you plan to run vista 32.

There are a couple of published workarounds for enabling Physical Address Extensions (PAE) in 32-bit XP and Vista. Since the T61(p) is an Intel P965 based machine, these should work on both. I mostly use OpenSuse 10.2/10.3, which natively sees all 4 GB with the 32 bit version.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductRe ... 6820144066

Pros: 4 gig in XP or XP Pro is great except it cant be seen , Unless you go to system properties and in the advanced tab , first remove the OPTIN statement and replace with "alwaysoff" then at the end of the statement put in caps TAE click save and reboot. The first improvement you will notice is the DEP is now disabled, and second the amount of ram seen will be 4 Gig, and the file system will be 36 bit . run a defrag if you have Diskeeper 10 you can also increase the MFT to the proper size to keep fragmentation at a minimum. Its good to be a Geek

Edit Startup options:

Change boot.ini from:

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

to

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=alwaysoff TAE

Here are the Vista instructions:

http://www.thegeeksweek.com/blog/enabli ... vista.html

Enabling PAE on 32-bit Windows Vista
Written by The Geeks Week
Thursday, 07 June 2007
On 32-bit Windows Vista computers with 4Gb of memory installed you may enable the PAE boot switch to allow the operating system to see the maximum amount of memory. The BOOT.INI file no longer exists in Windows Vista, to configure boot options you must use the “BCDEdit” boot configuration editor, in Administrator mode obviously, that is included in Windows Vista.
To Enable PAE Boot Option

1. Start the command prompt by typing “CMD” in the Start menu’s Search space, hold CRTL+Shift+Enter and this will launch the command windows in Administrative mode.
2. At the command prompt type

BCDEdit /set PAE forceenable

This should work on a machine with one of the following chipsets and 4 GB of ram installed:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605
WORKAROUND
For Windows Vista to use all 4 GB of memory on a computer that has 4 GB of memory installed, the computer must meet the following requirements:
• The chipset must support at least 8 GB of address space. Chipsets that have this capability include the following:
• Intel 975X
• Intel P965
• Intel 955X on Socket 775
• Chipsets that support AMD processors that use socket F, socket 940, socket 939, or socket AM2. These chipsets include any AMD socket and CPU combination in which the memory controller resides in the CPU.

mdtaylor69 wrote:There are a couple of published workarounds for enabling Physical Address Extensions (PAE) in 32-bit XP and Vista.

well, i could have saved you from writing all of that.   i've tested 4GB on my T61p under XPP, vista 32, and server 2003 standard (yes, i have licenses for all of them) and none of them could see more than 3.25GB on this machine with PAE enabled.   3.5GB might be a possibility on systems with 128MB discreet GPUs and 3.75GB might be possible with integrated video.   currently i run vista ultimate x64 because of IIS7 and 4GB support so none of this affects me anymore.   if vista proves unstable then i'll go back to server 2003.

anyway, the point of it is that the OP would be paying extra for .1GB additional memory under vista 32.   it's not worth it.

hi - thanks for all your replys!

so lets assume i just slap in a 2gig module into the spare slot and away i go with 3gig ram...... im now thinking, how is this going to effect my dual channel performance?

surely i cant have true dual channel with non-matching-sized memory? if this is true, then 2x2gig will give me the total available ram to the windows system AND will maximise the memory bandwidth?

my vista machine runs a couple virtual machines (XP, Ubuntu and 2003 server) as well as SQL2005, MySQL, and yes, you've guessed it Visual Studio 2k5

I like having everything in memory! The next tihng i will be upgrading is the HDD to a 7200, but thats another story!

Cheers for your feedback guys!

you will never, ever humanly notice a difference in speed between your memory running in single channel versus dual.

Replying to steveg47:

When running Oracle 10g and IBM Rational Application Developer (RAD), you will want 4 Gig memory.

Oracle will occupy at least half of your physical memory no matter how many you have. It normally use 1 Gig at least. RAD will use 500 MB when doing normal programming and use 1-1.5 GB when compiling and building a web service project. You also need at least 300 MB to run Windows XP and other applications, e.g. FireFox and MediaPlayer.

Let's do a quick plus: 1+1.5+0.3=2.8. So if you only have 2 Gig memory, you can do nothing at all. Even 3 Gig is not enough always. You definitely want 4 Gig, even more !!!!

P.S. Windows XP 32bit and 64bit don't accept 4 Gig, and I hate Vista. So I use Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition which can recognize 4 Gig. Because it usually runs on servers which have 4 Gig or more memory. Please notes that you must install Enterprise Edition. Other editions of Windows 2003 Server will not accept more than 3 Gig memory.

Enjoy !!

luning wrote:Replying to steveg47:

When running Oracle 10g and IBM Rational Application Developer (RAD), you will want 4 Gig memory.

So on a T61 running OpenSuse, I have Oracle Applications 11.5.10.2 with 10gR2 RDBMS, 9iAS Apache, Oracle Applications R12 with 10gR2 RDBMS, 10.1.2 Forms, 10.1.3 AS Apache, plus 10.1.3 Oracle Applications Server with Demantra and BI Publisher deployed, Qemu/KVM Windows XPP VM.

With 4 GB of RAM, swap is barely touched when they are all running.

thanks for the tips guys!

I think ill stick with my 2+1 configuration for the time being, and invest hte money replacing me 5400rpm disc with a seagate momentus 7200rpm (i will probably get a more noticable speed increase that way!)

one last question about going to 4gig on 32bit.... eventually i will stick another 2gig stick in to replace the 1gig and make 4gig ram.... im assuming vista 32bit will boot as normal with that config but only see 3.2gig? I only ask because i thought i read somewhere that some o/s wouldnt even boot if you go over there maximum memory....

cheers
Will

Kryptonic wrote:one last question about going to 4gig on 32bit.... eventually i will stick another 2gig stick in to replace the 1gig and make 4gig ram.... im assuming vista 32bit will boot as normal with that config but only see 3.2gig? I only ask because i thought i read somewhere that some o/s wouldnt even boot if you go over there maximum memory....

yes, it will boot but chances are that you'll only see 3.1GB regardless of PAE.