RAM upgrade question

[jeffreyac]

Hello all,

Just upgraded my laptop to 3G ram (from 2G) and had a question. My understanding is that because of the way the memory is utilized in Vista (yeah, I've got Vista, the 32 bit version) there isn't any real point in trying to get to 4G ram vs the 3G that I have now. Is this correct?

Also, I noticed something strange... Vista has that little 'system performance' section that gives you a numerical rating based on your specs, so after dropping my new RAM in I eagerly re-ran the scan to see how much I improved. My old score was a 4.8, limited by my RAM and my hard drive - and I expected the overall score not to change (as I didn't change the harddrive) but thought the number for the memory would improve.

It actually dropped - to a 4.7! The computer is recognizing the RAM, and I didn't break anything, and for what it's worth the computer's performance SEEMS much faster to me in loading games, etc - anyone else see wierd stuff in Vista's performance evaluation?

 

[Speedo]

Just upgraded my laptop to 3G ram (from 2G) and had a question. My understanding is that because of the way the memory is utilized in Vista (yeah, I've got Vista, the 32 bit version) there isn't any real point in trying to get to 4G ram vs the 3G that I have now. Is this correct?

32bit Windows has a hard limit of 3.5GB useable RAM (you can install 4GB, but only 3.5GB will be useable - the rest is reserved for VRAM, BIOS, PCI, etc).

Not much point IMO, but if you actually want/need that additional 512MB...

Also, I noticed something strange... Vista has that little 'system performance' section that gives you a numerical rating based on your specs, so after dropping my new RAM in I eagerly re-ran the scan to see how much I improved. My old score was a 4.8, limited by my RAM and my hard drive - and I expected the overall score not to change (as I didn't change the harddrive) but thought the number for the memory would improve.

It actually dropped - to a 4.7! The computer is recognizing the RAM, and I didn't break anything, and for what it's worth the computer's performance SEEMS much faster to me in loading games, etc - anyone else see wierd stuff in Vista's performance evaluation?

Was new RAM the same speed as what you already had? If it was slower, then all of your RAM will now be running at the slower speed.

 

[jeffreyac]

Yep, at least I believe so - the original specs for my computer show 667 MHz DDR2 for RAM, so that's what I added...

The new ram is Kingston, which I thought was decent as far as components go... so I have a 2G stick of the Kingston 667 DDR2, and a 1G stick of whatever the computer came with (most certainly not Kingston, but if the speeds are the same, should it matter?)

 

[ainwood]

It might be the same speed, but it may have different latency etc.

 

[Zelig]

Latencies likely won't affect windows performance index scores.

I wouldn't worry about the score, it's only an overall approximation anyway, and the difference of 0.1 in one component is pretty negligable.