1 GB RAM vs. 512 MB in X40 worth it?

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ManUtdFan · #1 Post by **ManUtdFan** » Fri May 27, 2005 3:58 am

Hey guys,

I hope to be buying a Thinkpad X40 soon, and was wondering what your experiences are with adding more RAM to it - would it be worth it to expand from 512 MB to 1 GB? I would argue that it is indeed worth the extra cost, seeing as the hard drive is relatively slow and this could reduce swapping to some extent... Will be using the machine for web surfing, word processing, programming and equivalent tasks (mics. university use

). But those of you that have an X40 (or similar machine): what's your take on it?

Thanks beforehand!

DavidNZ · #2 Post by **DavidNZ** » Fri May 27, 2005 4:06 am

I have 512 (came with 256, but bought an extra 256 module with the machine) and I find quite fine. Have often thought about upgrading to 1GB, but reasoned that the slow hard drive would still act as a bottleneck, regardless of the amount of RAM. Dunno. I'd be interested in what others thought/think as well.

LordGop · #3 Post by **LordGop** » Fri May 27, 2005 10:16 am

Mine came with 512 installed and I added a stick of 512 to my order. I got the RAM before the computer so when my x40 came I put the came in before even starting up the computer. So I can't really really tell you the difference, but if I were you and it wasn't going to kill my $ I'd upgrade to 1GB.

I kept hearing that boot and shutdown took a long time and I find mine boots in under a min(never really put a watch to it) and shuts down pretty [censored] quick hehe like 15 secs or so. Once you look at what does what, once you have all your programs up and running and you are just switching back and forth between them you will notice better performance.

Cliff Notes: If you can afford it, get 1GB

elmalloc · #4 Post by **elmalloc** » Sat May 28, 2005 6:32 am

That's the thing Lord GOP, those are slow times. My desktop and laptop are like that too. My desktop is only like that cuz I hvaen't formatted in years. There are PCs that complete a boot procses in under 10 seconds, and shut down in 5 or less.

ManUtdFan · #5 Post by **ManUtdFan** » Sat May 28, 2005 8:21 am

Ordered 512 MB extra RAM for it, wasn't too expensive so I chose to do so. Can't hurt anyway

skhamron · #6 Post by **skhamron** » Sat May 28, 2005 9:19 am

It is a must doing if you can. Why?
If you have a 1GBs ram, then you can improve the performance of
TP by disable the virtual memory usage. My suggestion is you should put the ram as much as possible (It depends on your money).

You can check that how much ram the programs is taking from the Task Manager.

LordGop · #7 Post by **LordGop** » Sat May 28, 2005 1:00 pm

elmalloc wrote:That's the thing Lord GOP, those are slow times. My desktop and laptop are like that too. My desktop is only like that cuz I hvaen't formatted in years. There are PCs that complete a boot procses in under 10 seconds, and shut down in 5 or less.

I don't expect anything faster from my ultraportable, maybe it was a desktop replacement

. My PC will well within the uber boot/shutdown times

emorphien · #8 Post by **emorphien** » Sat May 28, 2005 1:48 pm

DavidNZ wrote:I have 512 (came with 256, but bought an extra 256 module with the machine) and I find quite fine. Have often thought about upgrading to 1GB, but reasoned that the slow hard drive would still act as a bottleneck, regardless of the amount of RAM. Dunno. I'd be interested in what others thought/think as well.

Your logic is completely backwards I'm afraid. Those with a slower hard drive can only benefit more from faster RAM because it means you can access the hard drive once to get everything you need in RAM so that hopefully as you continue to work it wont have to access the drive as often.

512 is probably enough if you surf the web and do light office work, listen to music or do some small image editing. But I multitask a lot and 1gb is my bare minimum right now. It's up to you and how you use it though. A lot of people will find 512 fine.

ManUtdFan · #9 Post by **ManUtdFan** » Sat May 28, 2005 2:30 pm

I wholeheartedly agree with you on that. I'm a heavy multitasker as well - will also be using my X40 for distributed computing, Maple, Matlab, programming etc. as well as ordinary web surfing and "office stuff". My desktop system also has 1 GB RAM and I would never want to go back - actually I can't believe I doubted my decision to expand to 1 GB RAM in my X40-to-be...

DavidNZ · #10 Post by **DavidNZ** » Sat May 28, 2005 4:08 pm

Hmmm... I see what you mean, emorphien. Makes sense.

I guess the question is how much multitasking I do. I'm pretty limited to, at any one time (max), Word, Outlook 2003, Acrobat 7, OneNote, Firefox and that's about it. If I need to use Photoshop, I usually close everything down to give the system a fighting chance!

ivan · #11 Post by **ivan** » Mon May 30, 2005 10:59 am

skhamron wrote:It is a must doing if you can. Why?
...then you can improve the performance of
TP by disable the virtual memory usage.

I have 1GB memory. Would you recommmend I disable virtual memory usage? How do I do that?

Thanks!

1 GB RAM vs. 512 MB in X40 worth it?

1 GB RAM vs. 512 MB in X40 worth it?

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