Viking1064

Hey Guys,
A friend at work is buying a laptop. We are not sure if she should go with the 512 memory it comes with or for $100 she can get 1 gig. I know she can upgrade with another 512 after she gets it for less than $100, but she doesn't want to do that. Is the 1 gig of memory worth it over the 512 it comes with? Her concern is she will be building webpages using FrontPage. She make be importing video from a camcorder too to burn DVD's. I feel she can't go wrong getting the upgrade to 1 gig.

cj2112

Yes. although 100 bucks is a bit pricey for the exra memory, she's already said that she doesn't want to upgrade later. I'm of the opinion that more memory is usually a good thing.

itch vaccine

It depends if its 512x2 or 1024 as one piece

If it's 1024 as 1 piece, it's worth
But if it's 512x2, I'd rather you stick to 512, unless the mobo has dual-ddr support where 512x2 = 1024x1

512x2 is slower than 1024 a stick, because computer randomly puts stuff on your RAM, and re-reading stuff on the ram on seperate sticks would cause it to *slow* down a *bit*

Correct me if I'm wrong though

p/s : I'm running 512x2 as dual-ddr

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Viking1064

Thanks itch. That is the type of technical info that I was looking for!!! Have a good day.

MikeSty

512 + 512 = 1024. I've never heard of it being slower because of using two sticks as opposed to one. Can you explain a little more on how you came to that conclusion? If you have dual channel DDR support, 512x2 will go FASTER, but if it isn't there, it's not inherently slower.

In addition, 2x512 will have better timings than 1 stick ... this is a laptop though, so I'd think it's probably a 1GB stick they would put in, but god only knows.

In the big picture though, I would not go with the extra 1GB of mem0ry

n0nsensical

Assuming the same timings, two RAM sticks shouldn't be slower than one, and if your motherboard supports dual channel they'll be faster. It doesn't matter where data are physically located in the RAM because lookups are in constant time based on the timings anyway. (Again except in the case of dual channel where the physical location does matter, but you can only have a speed INcrease from that.) Think of phone books. Whether you have one giant phone book with A-Z or two books split A-L and M-Z doesn't matter because you know which one to grab from the start. The advantage in having one stick versus two is that you have an extra slot available for future expansion.

That said, motherboards don't necessarily support the same timings for all of their RAM banks. If the additional stick needs slower timings then yes it will be slower compared to one fewer. In any case, dual channel or not, slower timings or not, there's not going to be much of a difference in real world performance between RAM configurations for most purposes. The fact is RAM accesses are so slow compared to your cache and CPU that even if you make them slightly faster they'll still be orders of magnitude behind. Having too little RAM is a much bigger problem than having slightly slower RAM and to answer the original question, I would definitely go for the 1 GB. I have 1 GB and even that's not enough to avoid swapping to disk.

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spindles

My rule of thumb - If I had to choose more ram or faster CPU, I'd buy more ram instead of faster CPU. Basically buy as much ram as your hip pocket can cope with.

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MooseMan3000

1 GB would be a waste of money in this case. The applications she'll be using it for won't use the extra memory.

If she plans to listen to music while she's doing the other stuff, however, get it. Multitasking (as in listening to music WHILE importing video) uses a boatload of RAM. FrontPage and video editing really don't.

Here's some good reading on what sort of effect RAM has on your performance. If you look at the sort of applications she'll be running, there's virtually no difference between 512 MB and even 2 GB.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/...eed/page8.html

Dilbert1234567

Well I disagree, the extra ram will allow the system to load more into real memory, lowering the use of the hard drive for Virtual Memory, this leads to 2 things, increased speed for applications react quicker and snappier, relying less on the hard drive as apposed to the memory, and secondly by using the hard drive less it will last longer.

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mikec

just using xp and lotus notes on my work machine chews up over 300mb...add in a couple apps and it's over 500 before you know it. for an extra benjamin it's absolutely worth doubling the ram!

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Viking1064

OMG This is too funny. There probably really isn't a cut and dry answer to the question, huh? I found a 10% off coupon for her which is saving her about $80. So for $20 I think there is no way she can go wrong with the 1 gig. MooseMan, I am going to check out the link you posted. I am always trying to learn as much as I can about computers. It seems like we learn something new everyday. Thanks, everyone, for all your help.

Dilbert1234567

Cut and dry in computers, ahahaha... actually the cut and dry answer is 'I’m right' but seriously $20 is well worth it.

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