Dell Inspiron 6000 RAM and FSB speed asynchronous

[Pr0d1gy]

Originally posted by: Choppedliver
Can someone tell me what Memory I can use to upgrade this? Dell wants $250 for a 1 GIG total upgrade. Thats crap. When I go to pricegrabber and look for DDR2 PC4200 SODIMM, I can find one for $100 bucks or so from Kingston, but when I go to the kingston website, and select Dell 6000, it gives me some part number which when searched for in Pricegrabber is way more expensive.

What the hell? Does it use anything special? Or do I have to buy ram that specifies it works with my dell?

I havent bought the machine yet, but I want to put 1 GIG or 512M in addition to the 256 that it comes with, and I dont want to pay Dell's ludicrous prices for an upgrade.

Welcome to Dell. I hope you enjoyed not paying for customer service or a salesperson who you could call & get a solid answer from.

As someone working in the business, I hope that many of you read this thread & realize that this is all fact. When someone comes into my workplace asking about Dell I just tell them to leave. Unrealistic expectations = bad end result. This guy even started asking me how he could add more RAM to his Inspiron 6000....so you're going to buy Dell but you're going to come into this company's store & waste their payroll by asking an employee how to install RAM into your Dell? COME ON PEOPLE, GET A FRIGGIN CLUE.

DELL sucks & good luck repairing anything they sell you if it breaks.

 

[niggles]

So does anyone know how to check the fsb? I've looked in the bios and can't find anything. When I looked under system devices it's not super clear what I was looking at. There was an Intel device that listed 266, but I'm not so sure that's what I should be looking for... anyone got an idea?

Originally posted by: JEDI
the 6000's comes with 400mhz ram standard. there's no way to change it, even if you upgrade to a 1.6ghz 533mhz chip.

i've tried

I'm not clear what this means, why couldn't you upgrade the memory to 533 if the FSB is 533?

 

[JEDI]

i meant there's no way to get dell to send me a 533mhz ram and i send them back the 400mhz. 400mhz ram is the standard for the 6000's.

it's very stupid since they offer 1.6+ghz chips running at 533mhz bus for this model.

 

[niggles]

After doing a lot of research on this topic over the past day I've found that the benchmarks are pretty much the same. There is no point in buying 533 RAM

 

[Choppedliver]

well, I guess in that case, Ill go back to using PC100 SDRAM. If it supports the higher speed RAM, they should put the crap in

 

[Choppedliver]

bump

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: JEDI
i meant there's no way to get dell to send me a 533mhz ram and i send them back the 400mhz. 400mhz ram is the standard for the 6000's.

it's very stupid since they offer 1.6+ghz chips running at 533mhz bus for this model.

Congratulations on repeatedly complaining about something you don't understand.

If you have the choice between getting a laptop with DDR2 400 and DDR2 533, you should choose 1 stick of DDR2 400, because it performs the same but it will be cheaper to add a 2nd stick.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: Choppedliver
bump

bump for what? what issue is there still here?

 

[niggles]

Originally posted by: Tostada

Originally posted by: JEDI
i meant there's no way to get dell to send me a 533mhz ram and i send them back the 400mhz. 400mhz ram is the standard for the 6000's.

it's very stupid since they offer 1.6+ghz chips running at 533mhz bus for this model.

Congratulations on repeatedly complaining about something you don't understand.

If you have the choice between getting a laptop with DDR2 400 and DDR2 533, you should choose 1 stick of DDR2 400, because it performs the same but it will be cheaper to add a 2nd stick.

Actually that's not entirely true. DDR works faster as a pair than by itself. It depends on whether the person buying the PC can wait to buy the second stick of RAM. The thing with doing this though is that because the RAM needs to be identical (usually down to the make) sticks you usually have to buy the second stick from Dell as well. I personally went with their stock issue of 2 sticks of 256. When I have the cash I'll simply buy 2 sticks of 512. It still works out cheaper than getting a single stick from Dell.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: niggles
Actually that's not entirely true. DDR works faster as a pair than by itself. It depends on whether the person buying the PC can wait to buy the second stick of RAM. The thing with doing this though is that because the RAM needs to be identical (usually down to the make) sticks you usually have to buy the second stick from Dell as well. I personally went with their stock issue of 2 sticks of 256. When I have the cash I'll simply buy 2 sticks of 512. It still works out cheaper than getting a single stick from Dell.

What you're thinking of is that DDR2 in Sonoma laptops can operate in Dual Channel mode, effectively doubling the memory bandwidth. While this is true, I think what the other person was pointing out is that it offers very little real world performance, if any. Currently the ideal configuration would actually be a single-channel 533MHz memory, as the FSB is clocked at 533MHz and theoretically would not be able to further saturate the memory if it were dual channel. If the data can only transmit at 533MHz, having two receiving channels at the memory won't do much better (if any) than one channel. Also, due to DDR2's high latencies right now, there isn't much (if any) performance advantage to 533MHz DDR2 over 400MHz.

In a few weeks I will have quantifiable data to substantiate all this, look for an article that I will link on here that completely examines the Sonoma platform and its benefits.

 

[niggles]

yes, I think you're right, thanks for clarifying.

 

[Roopam]

I just purchased an Inspiron 6000. Like others, I am receiving a 533 Mhz FSB with 400 Mhz DDR2 RAM. Luckily, I opted to only purchase 1 stick of 256MB because I wanted to add the RAM myself instead of paying the ridiculous prices of Dell. However, would I lose performance if I had 2 sticks of unequal RAM....I already have 256MB, but I wanted to add another stick of 512MB. Would it be better, performance wise, to take out the 256MB stick and add Two 512MB? If the performance increase is negligible, I rather leave the 256MB in there. Thanks.

 

[m9a1x7]

Is having two sticks of 512mb pc4200 (533mhz) ram overkill for a 6000 with 522mhz fsb? Would it be better to have two pc3200 instead and pocket the difference?

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

Originally posted by: m9a1x7
Is having two sticks of 512mb pc4200 (533mhz) ram overkill for a 6000 with 522mhz fsb? Would it be better to have two pc3200 instead and pocket the difference?

Price difference is negligible. In fact, I've seen pc3200 higher than 4200.

 

[Mingon]

I have 2 stick of ram in my aopen 1559, 1gb stick and a 256mb stick despite them being both capable of the same speed the chipset changes them to 400

 

[Choppedliver]

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak

Originally posted by: Choppedliver
Can a latitude laptop be bought from "Dell Home" versus "Dell small business". I cant find a link on the "Dell home" site for the latitude series, thus I cant configure one, put it in my cart and use the $750 off coupon

Nah, you can't order Latitude's from Dell Home; there's usually not Latitude coupons but keep an eye out

Hey man, I ended up getting the Latitude D610with one stick of 512mb ram... Thanks for the suggestion.

Would like to upgrade to 1 Gig, can anyone give me some idea on ram that will be compatible with the one stick that is already in it?

 

[fbrdphreak]

Do you want to add 1GB or bring it up to 1GB total?

Add 1GB

Add 512MB

 

[JEDI]

fbrdphreak,

eta on testing dual channel's effects on Intel 900 graphics?

 

[fbrdphreak]

1 week, maybe 2.

 

[Choppedliver]

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
Do you want to add 1GB or bring it up to 1GB total?

Add 1GB

Add 512MB

Well, Id consider either option. If the two sticks are same size, it will run dual channel right? but then they need to be exactly same timings dont they? For thta reason, I was thinking of going one 512 stick and one 1gb stick so i didnt have to worry about the relatively useless dual channel mode.

 

[Choppedliver]

Anyone?

 

[fbrdphreak]

Don't worry about dual channel mode. I'll have an in-depth article with quantitative conclusions, but my initial testing is showing no real benefit as of right now. Just get 1x1GB and you'll be fine More capacity is better than dual channel

 

[JEDI]

testing intel 900 graphics w/dual channel:

request: Test Age of Mythology

Age of Empires3 is coming soon

 

[fbrdphreak]

Our standard 3D test suite is composed of 3DMark01, 3DMark03, 3DMark05, HL2, D3. We're considering adding some new games in a while, but for now those pretty adequatly gauge a system's 3D performance.

Can't wait till AOE3 either, that looks HOT

 

[JEDI]

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak on 7/15/05
1 week, maybe 2.

so where's the review?