Thinkpad X60 Memory

[orion]

Hi every, new to the forums here so forgive me if this has been clarified already. I did a search and didn't quite find what I was looking for.

I bought a used X60 on ebay, still waiting for it to arrive. Specifically it is a Core Duo 1.83 GHz. It only has 512MB of ram.

What I want to know is, if I buy a two pack of ram (2x 2GB) will the system be able to use both ram sticks?

As I understand it, the maximum ram you can put into one of these is 3GB (1GB + 2GB).

If I put in the 2x 2GB, will it work as 3GB (even though they really add up to 4GB)? Apple's original Core Solo/Duo Macbook / Macbook Pros featured this behavior. This way, you get the benefit of dual channel ram, which you can't with 1GB + 2GB sticks.

I don't care about the unusable 1GB of ram, as long as 3GB is usable I'll be happy.

I'd just buy a 2GB + 1GB if it weren't for the dual channel performance gain, which would help the pokey GMA 950 a bit. Plus it's a couple dollars cheaper to buy the two pack, instead of a 1GB and 2GB stick separately.

Thanks.

[Marin85]

Welcome to the forum! A few things:
1. Yes, you can put 4 GBs of memory in a X60, but only about 3 GB will be utilized no matter what OS you install, due to hardware limitations of the chipset.
2. If you put 2-1 GB sticks, the memory will be still operating in dual channel mode, so called asymmetric dual channel mode. In memory intensive tasks (read synthetic memory benchmarks) the asymmetric dual channel delivers about 8% performance increase over non-dual-channel-mode. If you put 2+2 GB memory sticks, the memory will be operating in symmetric dual channel mode, which delivers about 10% performance increase over non-dual-channel in memory intensive tasks. As you see, the difference between symmetric dual channel and asymmetric dual channel performance boost is almost marginal. Also, I have never been able to notice any real life performance difference between dual channel and no dual channel operation mode (I don´t take the amount of available system memory here into consideration).

Hope this helps

Marin

[orion]

Thanks for the reply, it was very helpful.

My chief concern was whether or not the laptop would boot/function properly with two 2GB sticks (due to the hardware limitation).

This asymmetric dual channel is news to me however, haven't heard of it till now. Are there any special prerequisites to get this function of the ram? I assume the ram sticks have to be the same make/speed/type etc?

Other than that, I guess what it'll come down to is whether or not I can find a 2x 2GB pack cheaper than a separate 2GB stick & 1GB stick.

Thanks again.

[Marin85]

You should be anyways looking for RAM of same make/speed/type (incl. same manufacturer and same latencies) no matter if you care for dual channel or not (the safe way is to look for RAM kits like 2+1 or 2+2). And, no, there aren´t any special prerequisites to get the RAM working in dual channel mode, it´s pretty automatic. And, yes, the laptop should be able to boot with two 2 GB sticks unless it´s somehow faulty or the RAM sticks are faulty. After getting the RAM, I would recommend you to tun memtest86+ to check out for problems (at least 2-3 passes, but note that it may take some time due to the great amount of memory). Should anything turn up, you will be able to return the sticks in time.

Good luck

Marin

[orion]

Thanks for all the help Marin.

I'll either find a 2+1 pack or a 2+2 pack, whichever winds up being cheaper overall.


Can't wait to get this laptop. First ThinkPad I've ever bought and used.

[Marin85]

NP, glad to have helped

Cheers,

Marin

[PhilD]

i just checked Crucial's web site to get an estimate on 4Gb ram for an X60, and it says that it can only hold 1Gb per slot, is that correct? i have a few T60's and X61S's and they all accept 2Gb sticks per slot (max of 3Gb recognized in 32bit Vista even if 4Gb installed). i don't know if Crucial's site is correct, but i recommend that the OP checks it out before ordering a 2GB stick. at any rate, looks like you want "PC2 5300" memory.

http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts. ... 20Types%29

Orion <- you're going to love your new ThinkPad

[Marin85]

Some reviews also claim that X60 can take up to 2 GB in total (which means up to 1 GB per slot), but I happen to be aware of working configurations with 3 GB of total system memory, so I think this shouldn´t be a problem.

[orion]

I think Crucial plays it safe and only goes by what the manufacturer claims the maximum memory is. I've seen this a few times with different computers on their website.

[orion]

I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier, but...

A few months ago I put 4GB of ram in my Macbook Pro (2x 2GB), and that displaced the original ram it had (2x 1GB) which has been sitting around doing nothing since then.

As it turns out, these two laptops take the same exact ram (speed, pins, voltage... etc). So I'll just stick in the two 1GB sticks I have into the X60 when I get it, and later down the line I'll buy a 2GB stick.

Even more glad I decided to do that upgrade a few months ago now.