Thinkpads Forum

I see that x220 units come w 4 GB RAM. Is that enough in today's world or should I consider opting for 8.
I see that Lenovo charges $ 160 to upgrade from 4 to 8. Seems steep???
Thoughts??
Thx.
Frank

RAM upgrades from the OEM are rarely a deal - I wouldn't pay it. 4GB should be more than enough for everyday use unless you're going to do something like video editing. If you really need to upgrade the ram, find out from a site like crucial.com what memory it takes and pick some up from newegg.

Most users don't need more than 4gb. If you want 8, get it from a place like newegg that sells it for 30-40.

I just added 4GB of RAM so now have 8. I purchased the Lenovo 4GB through NCIX in Canada for $38.94CAD ($44 taxes in). Part No. 55Y3711 made in Korea (with 55Y3717 stamped on the actual stick). I do photo editing and the 8GB is working fine!

The 4GB that had shipped with the X220 (that I got earlier in December) was a Samsung 4GB that had been manufactured in the Phillipines.

Buy it separately as others have said.

You can also install faster RAM - up to 1866 on the i7 - which gives higher benchmarks for RAM and graphics in WEI. Should translate into noticeable performance improvement, but depends what you're doing of course. Kingston Hyper X is the product.

S

Just wondering, with current offerings, as the speed of the RAM goes up, the CAS latency goes up too, would the fast RAM not have too much latency in real-life use? What sort of speed increase will we see? I upgraded from 4GB to 8GB of DDR3 PC10500 (1333MHz) in my X220 and I saw the windows index go up from 4.9 to 5.8 in aero and gaming, can extra fast RAM increase those indices further?

Neither RAM speed nor latency have significant impact on real-life performance, with the former being a bit more important.