1GB vs. 512MB memory resource in your Thinkpad

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gunston · #1 Post by **gunston** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 6:25 am

hi,
i just wonder if anyone else have observe or notice the significant changes after upgrading your current memory; let say, from 512mb to 1Gb.
Please share your experience, thanks.
because, i am not so convince to upgrade to 1Gb memory module.

#2 Post by **Kyocera** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 6:52 am

Funny you should ask, two weeks ago i upgraded my t30 from 512 to 1g and my t42 from 512 to 768, I do not run any heavy duty programs or anything like that, my computers are used for troubleshooting others computers and networks. There was an ever so slight difference in some areas, but a couple of days later they both got 60g 7200rpm hard drives and that was a huge increase in overall speed.

#3 Post by **bill bolton** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 7:00 am

gunston wrote:because, i am not so convince to upgrade to 1Gb memory module.

But according to your signature block you already have one.....

IBM ThinkPad T43 14.1" SXGA+
1.86GHz
60GB HD 5400 RPM
1GB Memory

gunston · #4 Post by **gunston** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 7:08 am

that was my plan to upgrade to 1GB memory

gunston · #5 Post by **gunston** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 7:09 am

Kyocera wrote:but a couple of days later they both got 60g 7200rpm hard drives and that was a huge increase in overall speed.

oh 60g 7200rpm hard disk with 2mb buffer or 8mb buffer size?

#6 Post by **Kyocera** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 7:11 am

Go ahead and do it, it is worth it, every little bit helps

umern · #7 Post by **umern** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 11:04 am

One thing to bear in mind - if you use Hibernate a lot then it will take approx twice as long to Hibernate and Wakeup as it has twice as much memory to save and restore!

I recently upgraded from 512MB to 768MB (spotted a 512MB module very cheap on Ebay) and have not noticed much change in speed - but then I only use my PC for browsing, watching DVDs and the odd bit of Word etc

christopher_wolf · #8 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 11:18 am

It shoud not take twice as long to resume; it doesn't matter what the bounds of the memory are but rather how much of it is used. In either case, 1GB or 512MB, the entire contents over memeory are imaged to the HDD and then later reloaded into memory. So if there is 256MB in RAM at the time in either case, only that portion will be imaged, this is the default setting and can be changed, to the HDD. This is from what I have observed in upgrading my T43 from 512MB to 1GB.

Unallocated memory during a hibernation is usually *not* saved; in other words, it takes the 256MB of active data in RAM, registers the addresses, then packs it into a file on the HDD; somewhat like removing the "blank space" and "compressing" it. So, regardless of whether or not you have 1GB or 512MB, you should have the same resume-from-hibernate time as you are only reloading, in the given case, 256MB into the proper registers and not doing a full load into the RAM that happens to equal the storage capacity of all the RAM you have on your system (i.e. For 1GB of RAM, you will not be loading 1GB worth of data back in unless you were actually *using* 1GB of data; same goes for 512MB of RAM). There are also certain types of hibernation that actually overlay another layer of data compression or other (not too well documented) format, but that doesn't affect this.

I noticed no difference in the resume-from-hibernate time for my T43 when it had the 1GB of RAM versus only 512MB of RAM. True, the hiberfile.sys file is usually the same size as the physical RAM you have, but I have very rarely seen all of this used unless there were many processes in memory that had to be saved or a core dump that happened right after the hibernation.

In XP, and this has been taken from OSes like BSD and other forms of Unix, unused memory pages are freed (and not written to disk, but the register location is referenced and stored in what I believe is a parallel linked array), reducing the overall amount of memory that needs to be saved. The remaining physical memory pages are compressed as well. The compressed memory pages are then written to disk, usually using DMA. Windows XP also overlaps compression as well for large (i.e. over 64K) memory blocks and winds up doing two things at once (e.g. writing/reading, compressing/writing, etc).

The rate-limiting bottleneck occurs upon resume where the BIOS has to read out all the data that was compressed; this occurs serially. So whilst Windows can support resume times of 2-3 seconds, it actually depends on the BIOS version/revision and how fast it goes through the actual hardware. This isn't a problem for a modern BIOS, especially the ones in the T4X Series Thinkpads.

That said, I really enjoy having 1GB of memory instead of just 512MB...The difference is quite significant.

umern · #9 Post by **umern** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 11:44 am

That is interesting....

I am no expert and was just sharing what I had observed when I upgraded the RAM on my previous NEC Versa laptop from 512BM to 1GB (just for the fun of it!) . Once I upgraded the RAM on my NEC I did notice a dramatic increase in Restore time. And since I never have much open in the way off Applications etc I cant put that down to increase in *Used* RAM. I am pretty sure the hiberfil.sys went upto approx 1GB after the upgrade.

I havent notice too much of a change on my T40 but then I only went up from 512 to 768.

w0qj · #10 Post by **w0qj** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 11:45 am

I have a T42s (2373-K5H) that came with 512 MB RAM and 5K40 HDD...

1) upgraded 512 MB to 1GB RAM, and the general Windows UI response was quite noticably faster.
OK, I usually have my Outlook Express running (4 GB of emails), MS Word, MS EXcel, and my X1 Desktop Search program running.
www.x1.com

especially noticeable when i switch programs on the Windows Taskbar--guess HDD swap file use was minimal.

2) then with 1 GB RAM, i upgraded my HDD to 7K60.
disk intensive usage was much faster, and even time for right-click Windows Context Menu was noticably faster.

All in all, upgrading your computer with Win'XP-Pro to 1 GB, and adding 7200RPM HDD makes your computer almost as good as those T43P or T42P, quite fast.

Money well spent, IMHO...

[Edit: I also bought Port Replicator II & spare power brick with the money i've saved by *not* buying a T42p, instead buying a T42 & upgrading RAM & HDD]

brentpresley · #11 Post by **brentpresley** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 12:18 pm

gunston wrote:
Kyocera wrote:but a couple of days later they both got 60g 7200rpm hard drives and that was a huge increase in overall speed.
oh 60g 7200rpm hard disk with 2mb buffer or 8mb buffer size?

7200RPM drives ONLY come with 8MB cache.

kam_ · #12 Post by **kam_** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 12:43 pm

By far upgrading to a 7200 RPM drive will make the most difference for most people if you have 512mb OR more.

The biggest advantage of 1GB or more is that you can turn off kernel paging in windows XP. This isnt the same as turning off your pagefile completely and requires a registry entry.

By disabling kernel paging the windows kernel itself is always held in RAM. This speeds windows up dramatically unless you only use 1 or 2 programs.

Basically from my findings it works like this:

IF 512 is enough PROGRAM memory for you now, 1GB will allow you to page less of windows out, and give you a slight increase in program speed due to less program paging.

Equally if 1GB is enough program memory for you know 1.5GB will allow you to page less of windows out etc

Personally 1GB is borderline for me, so i went right upto 2GB. I've restricted my page file to 1/4 of my total memory and stopped kernel paging. My computer seems about 30% faster.

simms · #13 Post by **simms** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 1:50 pm

How do I turn off kernel paging?

Is doing everything in this guide recommended?

http://kadaitcha.cx/performance.html

kam_ · #14 Post by **kam_** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 3:49 pm

I would say all those tweaks are relatively safe and can be undone easily.

Having said that, if you don't understand the explanation of each tweak there, then don't use it. Also make a complete registry backup before playing with all these settings.
Kernel paging is in tweak #5. LargeSystemCacheis not advisable if you have minimal ram.

pianowizard · #15 Post by **pianowizard** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 5:30 pm

I upgraded my X40 from 512MB to 1GB and haven't noticed any difference in performance, though I haven't done anything very demanding on this machine yet.

gunston · #16 Post by **gunston** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 1:31 am

hi,
i have just upgraded to 1GB memory, it is advisable to turn off my virtual memory/ file paging ?

kam_ · #17 Post by **kam_** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:16 am

No!

Turning of virtual memory is a bad idea regardless of how much memory you have. There's alot of threads about it on the net.

You can turn off kernel paging, which stops windows being paged out. Depending on how you use your computer it may or may not improve things.

Use something like Tune Up Utilities 2006:

http://www.tune-up.com/

* 30 day trial, which you can use to tweak, then uninstall it

If you're confident everything it can do can be done using the registry, but it offers a nice GUI and wizard type interface recomending changes for you.
One really good trick make your computer seem faster is to decrease the start menu delay from 400ms to 0ms.

gunston · #18 Post by **gunston** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:22 am

so how much of paging file you have set?

monkey243 · #19 Post by **monkey243** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 11:04 pm

I have T43 coming from 512M memory.
I upgrad to 1G memory,and ture off the virtual memory.In this case,I can feel some diffrence at usual use.Opening windows,running software more quickly.
When I play need for speed most wanted 2,I feel a huge advantage!

gunston · #20 Post by **gunston** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 11:22 pm

monkey243 wrote:I have T43 coming from 512M memory.
I upgrad to 1G memory,and ture off the virtual memory.In this case,I can feel some diffrence at usual use.Opening windows,running software more quickly.
When I play need for speed most wanted 2,I feel a huge advantage!

you mean, that turning off the file paging would increased the gaming performance?

nirvana0001 · #21 Post by **nirvana0001** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 11:26 pm

big different for running big program. example: maya, solidwork, i got them both.

FRiC · #22 Post by **FRiC** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 3:32 am

In my experience, unless there's a significant speed increase, you can't really feel the difference when upgrading. However, once you upgraded, it becomes really painful to use the original configuration. My ThinkPad has 2 GB RAM, and a few weeks ago I had to swap RAM with someone so I went to 1.5 GB temporarily. It was so painfully slow...

Naturally, the guy that swapped RAM with me said the same thing. He couldn't feel much difference besides faster loading times. Then after we swapped back, he couldn't stand it anymore and he went to buy more RAM.

gunston · #23 Post by **gunston** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 10:35 pm

upgraded to 1GB memory,
not much obvious changes in performance.

gunston · #24 Post by **gunston** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 10:36 pm

gunston wrote:upgraded to 1GB memory,
not much obvious changes in performance.

maybe my thinkpad is already at the upmost performance

woo, delicious...

gunston · #25 Post by **gunston** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 10:37 pm

gunston wrote:
gunston wrote:upgraded to 1GB memory,
not much obvious changes in performance.
maybe my thinkpad is already at the upmost performance
woo, delicious...

i am loving it.

monkey243 · #26 Post by **monkey243** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 2:25 pm

gunston wrote:
monkey243 wrote:I have T43 coming from 512M memory.
I upgrad to 1G memory,and ture off the virtual memory.In this case,I can feel some diffrence at usual use.Opening windows,running software more quickly.
When I play need for speed most wanted 2,I feel a huge advantage!
you mean, that turning off the file paging would increased the gaming performance?

Yes,it did increased the gaming performance in NFS.But maybe litter thing to do with the turning off the file paging.The gaming performance increased is because of memory increaced from 512M to 1G.
With 512M memory,I have to wait for a long time,about 10s,to get into NFS9 first piture.When in gaming,sometime it will stuck,because HDD can not hand up the data so quckly.
With 1G memory,I just have to wait for about 3s to get into the first piture of NFS9.And almost not stuck during gaming.Finally,the task of HDD is not so heavy.
After all,I am so sorry about my broken english.

yossarian · #27 Post by **yossarian** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 1:26 am

I've operated my thinkpad with 1.5gb and no page file for almost half a year now, with no problems. So dunno what concerns those websites have about not having a page file.

hnq · #28 Post by **hnq** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 1:59 am

increasing from 1gb to 2 gb really sped up how quickly resource intensive apps load for me - like Unreal Tournament 2004 loads much faster with 2 gb. Also, Crucial sells the same RAM under different product ID's with different prices. The "official" one for the T42p was about $70 more than the generic crucial ram that wasn't linked to a specific computer. A chat with Crucial tech support verified that they were identical parts and they recommended that I save the $70...

1GB vs. 512MB memory resource in your Thinkpad

1GB vs. 512MB memory resource in your Thinkpad

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