Upgrade RAM on ThinkPad W520

[ngotrongkhue]

Hi, i'm new to this forum and this is my first post
I'm now using thinkpad w520 with hardware as below:
Core i7-2620M 2.7GHz
Mainboard type 4270CTO
VGA Quadro1000M
RAM: using 2 slots with 2 SAMSUNG SO-DIMM DDR3 SDRAM speed of 1333 (667MHz), 2x2GB
I'm running windows 7 32bit ultimate on this lap and i wanna upgrade ram for the lap. So I'm wondering up to how much GB of RAM can this lap support?
And if I wanna upgrade the video card, up to which card can I?

[wolfman]

Hello, since you are running a dual core processor and not a quad core, I believe you will be limited to using 2 of the 4 memory slots in the machine. Also, since you are using a 32 bit operating system, you'll be limited to using at most 4gb of RAM. However, that aside, assuming you install a 64 bit operating system, you should be able to install 16 gb of ram (2 8gb sticks) as the maximum.

[ngotrongkhue]

thanks for the reply, but i thought it's a quadcore processor ? So only if i switch to the 64bit version then i'll be able to upgrade the memory?

[wolfman]

Hello,

It's a dual core processor and each processor core is hyper threaded. So it "looks" like there are 4 CPU's to the operating system, but it's really just 4 threads of execution, which isn't the same as 4 physical cores. See the spec sheet from Intel here: http://ark.intel.com/products/52231/Int ... -3_40-GHz).

Not all of the Core i7 series chips are quad core, the 2620M and the 2640M are Core i7 series, but dual core not quad core.

You can upgrade the memory with a 32 bit OS, however, Windows 7 ultimate 32 bit is limited to using 4gb maximum. To leverage all of the RAM you can install (e.g., 16 gb), and leaving server OS's out of consideration, you'll need a 64 bit operating system. Here is a chart for Windows 7: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... _windows_7. The "Limit on X86" column is for 32 bit OS and the "Limit on x64" is for 64 bit OS.

Steve

[ngotrongkhue]

thanks Steve
so I'll just reinstall my windows to the 64bit version and then replace 2 sticks RAM then.
And one more question, can I replace the Quadro 1000M video card with another Quadro X000M video card?

[wolfman]

Unfortunately I do not think that the graphics card is replaceable short of a motherboard swap (e.g., for a W520 with the 2000M card - and then that's the only option). If you need a more powerful card, you might have to look into an external solution - I believe if you search here you can find some references to the ViDock - here's an article that describes it with a Thinkpad T410: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.a ... s+notebook.

I haven't done this myself, but other forum members might have. I also don't know what the top end card you can use would be and how much better that card might be in games, etc vs. what you have with the 1000M the W520 came with.

Good luck and please keep us posted if you go the ViDock route...
Also, here is the company link and they have a more "standard" boxed solution as well: http://www.villageinstruments.com/tiki- ... age=ViDock.
Steve