Thinkpads Forum

Hi. Will adding additional 4GB of RAM to my thinkpad x220 increase battery consumption?
Also, will the additional memory increase graphics performance?

yes to both

Kirill wrote:Will adding additional 4GB of RAM ... increase battery consumption?

Unanswerable -- there are second order considerations which trump the first order considerations, e.g., additional memory may reduce swapping. Furthermore, if you are replacing two memory strips with two others, there may be even a reduction of power consumption, depending on the type of chips -- newer higher density chips produced of finer "feature size" consume less than older smaller chips using larger "feature size". Regardless, the differentials are in the fractional percentage range, inconsequential to the decision to increase memory by increasing density.

Adding additional memory strips may increase power consumption even after applying second order considerations noted above, but the benefits may still well outweigh the marginal diminution in battery time.

EOMtp wrote:No matter how one evaluates the question in the abstract, the differentials are in the fractional percentage range, totally inconsequential to the decision.

what a mouthful. is that a fancy way of saying "you won't feel a difference unless you have your power settings turned up and are doing something that uses a lot of resources"?

also. how much of RAM is Intel HD3000 using anyway?

Kirill wrote:what a mouthful. is that a fancy way of saying ...

No, it is not, because the statement, as you rephrased it, is actually incorrect! Here is why:

If, as you say, "you have your power settings turned up and are doing something that uses a lot of resources", then small differences in power consumption have minimal effect that is not felt. It is only when you minimize power consumption that you maximize the effect of small differences, perhaps making them visible.

Consequently, if you are not doing much, then it does not matter; and if you are doing a whole lot, then it also does not matter -- it just does not matter!

Or to put it another way...

Having the extra memory will increase battery consumption permanently, every minute the laptop is running.
On occasions when memory-intensive operations are actually processing, you may make up for that extra consumption for seconds or minutes at a time.

On average, in the long term, adding more RAM modules increases battery consumption, period.

All other things equal, +0.1V of consumption equates to +0.1V of consumption. Problems?

I'd just not worry about it that much. Improve the amount of time spends idle (C-States and all that).

If you want a noticable bump get an SSD.

Just wondering out loud here....as the original posts asks, will more RAM (or an SSD, now that it's been brought up) improve graphics performance? If so, how? I mean, even with integrated graphics, only so much of it will be allocated to VRAM, whether the total system RAM is 4GB or 8GB, right? The extra RAM might benefit applications and other system services, but not really gfx...or am I just way off?

Neil wrote:... or am I just way off?

Perhaps! ... yet you are absolutely correct on this point.

But faster RAM or two RAM-modules instead of one (singlechannel → dualchannel) could improve graphics performance.

Dual Channel RAM does not affect PC speed measured by any metric. It is of benefit on some architectures, but not the architecture of a PC. For PCs, its only benefit is in advertising. A few benchmarks below:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/PAR ... 05-11.html

EOMtp wrote:A few benchmarks below:

The one recent comment amongst those primarily 2007/8 benchmarks, says differently

Indeed, we have had 4 years of more tests since those benchmarks. Yet no speed difference between single- and dual-channel memory on a Thinkpad has ever been demonstrated, has it?

[I see no point in leaving the impression that there might be some configuration, albeit 3-sigma out, which might display some esoteric difference. Anyone seeking clarification here does not have such a configuration, and anyone who has such a configuration does not need any clarification.]