Thinkpads Forum

I ran Crucials system scan tool and it said my X61T supports Dual Channel Memory, but my T60 does not. What?

I thought the whole concept here was by using two pairs which are the same..Ex: 1gb x1gb or a 2Gb x2Gb strip, the system sees this in uniformity and you get a bit of speed boost. Reading other threads, sounds like if I mix a 2GB and a 1 Gb to max out my XP system for max 3GB - you loose that dual channel uniformity for like about a 2-8% perf hit...

Thats not whats bothing me...Maybe I need to understand dual channel. I assumed T60 supported Dual channel memory. Or is the crucial tool wrong?

The T60 is dual channel capable. Run CPU-Z to check.

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

Alltweed wrote:I ran Crucials system scan tool and it said my X61T supports Dual Channel Memory, but my T60 does not. What?

I thought the whole concept here was by using two pairs which are the same..Ex: 1gb x1gb or a 2Gb x2Gb strip, the system sees this in uniformity and you get a bit of speed boost. Reading other threads, sounds like if I mix a 2GB and a 1 Gb to max out my XP system for max 3GB - you loose that dual channel uniformity for like about a 2-8% perf hit...

Thats not whats bothing me...Maybe I need to understand dual channel. I assumed T60 supported Dual channel memory. Or is the crucial tool wrong?

There are two types of dual channel operating modes - symmetric and asymmetric. The symmetric one requires a pair of memory sticks with same capacity, the asymmetric requires only that both slots are occupied (the capacity of both sticks is different). If symmetric dual channel mode provides at max about 10% speed increase when performing memory intensive tasks, the asymmetric dual channel reaches about 8% performance boost for the same tasks. As you see there is no significant difference.FYI I don´t notice any real life performance difference between dual channel mode and no dual channel.

Hope this helps

Marin

Thanks TP...

Said much more clearly...

Re: Dual Channel memory, I guess that's nothing more then having two slots. How the slots work together is the asym vs sym issue. I am surprised Crucial got that wrong. They have invested a lot in their website and tools to educate and help people get the right memory etc...I suppose I should pass it along to their techs, T60 cretainly does support DC memory. Duh.

Harryc wrote:The T60 is dual channel capable. Run CPU-Z to check.

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

I did run CpuZ...

Under memory I see two relavant columns:

1) # Channels = Dual
2) DC Mode (No Data): It was blanked out

***Am I to interpret #1 or #2 to define if my system as dual channel?. Also, what is the DRAM Frequency? Thats not Ram Speed is it? T60s come wiht PC5300 667mhz?..This column says my T60 = 332.5

Alltweed wrote:I did run CpuZ...

Under memory I see two relavant columns:

1) # Channels = Dual
2) DC Mode (No Data): It was blanked out

***Am I to interpret #1 or #2 to define if my system as dual channel?. Also, what is the DRAM Frequency? Thats not Ram Speed is it? T60s come wiht PC5300 667mhz?..This column says my T60 = 332.5

Your Thinkpad is capable of dual channel. If both slots are occupied, then the memory operates in dual channel mode (symmetric or asymmetric). 667 MHz is the FSB (front side bus), i.e. this if you have DDR2 667 MHz, it can "communicate" to the cpu in 667 Mhz clock, but the operating frequency of the memory itself is 332.5 MHz. DRAM is just the type of the system memory, i.e. dynamic random access memory (note the so called DRAM:FSB ratio is 1:2).

Marin

Cool, Got it - Thx again.

Was just wonder'n what in the tool itself supposedly tells you if you have dual or not... And still perplexed how Crucial's tool missed this. It must use info from what people into the databse about various systems and not anything it analyzes on your system...It did see the 3 gig however....Nothin to loose sleep over.

Good weekend..