Thinkpads Forum

I always compare ram with a desk. It gives you more freedom to access things- if your desk was small, everything would be crammed in and it'd be hard retrieving.

However, if your desk was the size of one of heathrows runways it doesnt mean you'd be faster than a 2m desk.

My point is that would 4GB of ram be too much? Which applications would you see benefit from it? Office processing? Photoshop?

You really will see little benefit with Office. But if you edit large images with Photoshop, extra memory beyond 2 GB will come in handy, whether 3 GB or 4 GB.

The wildcard is Vista's ReadyBoost, which will do caching of files in memory if you have lots available. But it's hard to say how much difference it will make as a lot of the factors are highly dynamic.

tomh009 wrote:You really will see little benefit with Office. But if you edit large images with Photoshop, extra memory beyond 2 GB will come in handy, whether 3 GB or 4 GB.

The wildcard is Vista's ReadyBoost, which will do caching of files in memory if you have lots available. But it's hard to say how much difference it will make as a lot of the factors are highly dynamic.

im just trying to figure out why 4GB is available for the x61, its a lightweight business laptop- why would the business person be editing videos etc?

I cant think of anything else that would benefit from more than 2GB ram.......

The X61 is a very powerful machine, several times faster than my current desktop machine (Athlon XP 2600). I think it is a bit presumptuous to assume the only thing people will do with the X61 is use MS Office.

There are tons of things that benefit from lots of memory - running virtual machines for development purposes, doing CAD/CAM, Photoshop, video editing, coding etc.

futureaussiecto wrote:im just trying to figure out why 4GB is available for the x61, its a lightweight business laptop- why would the business person be editing videos etc?

I cant think of anything else that would benefit from more than 2GB ram.......

I am a computer programmer by day and a photographer the rest of the time. I just spent the evening in Photoshop CS3 working on a photo shoot on the X61 multiview/multitouch 12.1" screen. It's great, and although the machine only uses 3 of the 4 gigs its memory, it's fast, responsive, great. Eventually, I intend to go to 64- bit Vista to get my extra gig. Additionally, when I run Virtual PC for testing programs, the extra space will be very welcome to run 1 gig-sized Windows 2000 and XP VMs... Oh, yes, I am a SF author also, and I will also run MS Word. IMH0, more memory makes for a more versatile machine.

(Written using Vista TIP.)

About Upgrading RAM;

tomh009 wrote:with Photoshop, extra memory beyond 2 GB will come in handy, whether 3 GB or 4 GB.

I'm Planning to upgrade the 2x512Mb RAM on my X60S, I run XP Pro 32 bit . Choice of OS will not be changing anytime soon, the eventual switch will be the fastest/lightest possible OS that works with my music apps.
I use the X60S for audio applications (dj'ing)and recording, plus the normal home/office progs.
From time to time I run VMware if my assignment requires so. I never do anything with graphics/photography.

What's the best option with the X60S?
2x1GB RAM and keep dual channel functionality
Or 2+1GB RAM single channel

Eric Giles wrote:It will probably do fine with your 2GB of total RAM, but you might find replacing one of the 1GB DIMMS with a 2GB for 3GB total might be in your best interests. I say this because 32bit operating systems like Vista Business will only see 3GB maximum-you would have to install a 64bit version of Vista for it to take advantage of your maximum allowable 4GB.

tomh009 wrote:Based on reading various benchmarks, dual channel can provide maybe an 80% improvement in a strict memory benchmark. However, any sort of realistic benchmark will stress the CPU more than memory, and then the difference is in the 5-10% range. And the extra gigabyte will make Vista more than 10% happier.

I Understand 4GB is a real no-no for XP? (So do) you have more than 2B Gb RAM available with the 2x2GB RAM and retain dual channel functionality? Or are ther more down than upsides in this?
Is 3GB a better choice?

So. X60s, XP... 2..3..4GB's RAM...?

(ps this is my first post here hope I read the forumfaq and previous posts about my question carefull enough!)

A few quick points. XP Pro (32 bit) doesn't deal well with more than 3GB RAM. 64-bit XP won't run on the X60s. The X60s uses the Napa chipset, so the hardware will only properly address 3.2GB RAM anyways.

The advantage of 3GB over 2GB dual-channel depends on whether you'll use that extra 1GB. If you never hit exceed 2GB in use, dual-channel may be marginally faster. If you do exceed the 2GB though, extra memory will be far more useful than the 3-5% real-world advantage of dual-channel memory.

As for your uses, the only thing that might really take advantage of the extra RAM is VMWare. If you only expect to give .5GB RAM to the VM, 3GB is probably overkill. If you want to give 1GB or more to the VM, it's probably justified.

Either way, the longer you wait, the lower the price of the 2GB memory modules. 5 months ago, they cost ~$500. 2 months ago, they cost almost $200.

futureaussiecto wrote:
My point is that would 4GB of ram be too much? Which applications would you see benefit from it? Office processing? Photoshop?

I have 2GB on my X60 tablet. One of the uses i have for extra ram is to put the page file, the printer spooler, the internet cache, the java cache and watever things that need to be FAST on the Ramdisk.

So far, the only working Ramdisk software I found is RamDisk from Superspeed

I put 512MB as a Ramdisk, set my page file to 2MB to 50MB (XP will never touch this) and point all my other stuff there.

For those daring enough (and have enough ram), you can lets say allocate 1GB out of 3GB for a ramdisk, get supercache II from the same company and RUN your programs from there. The speed will be fast as the disk i/o will be eliminated.

Thanks for the reply! I'll go tor 2GB, and might try ramdisc. (:

Ideasmiths wrote:

futureaussiecto wrote:
My point is that would 4GB of ram be too much? Which applications would you see benefit from it? Office processing? Photoshop?

I have 2GB on my X60 tablet. One of the uses i have for extra ram is to put the page file, the printer spooler, the internet cache, the java cache and watever things that need to be FAST on the Ramdisk.

So far, the only working Ramdisk software I found is RamDisk from Superspeed

I put 512MB as a Ramdisk, set my page file to 2MB to 50MB (XP will never touch this) and point all my other stuff there.

For those daring enough (and have enough ram), you can lets say allocate 1GB out of 3GB for a ramdisk, get supercache II from the same company and RUN your programs from there. The speed will be fast as the disk i/o will be eliminated.

Interesting. Gives me something to think about.