"Dude, you got a Dell!" a laptop that is....a question about memory

[statetech]

Just landed myself a dell inspiron 4100 with tech specs here.

It comes with 2 64mb ram (128 total) and I'm wondering if anyone knows whether the ram is CAS2 or CAS3. Or is there any way I can determine it.

I'm adding more crucial ram (1 stick of 256mb CAS2) to the laptop but was just wondering if I could keep one stick in if they are CAS2. If they aren't, I'd probably take the 2 original sticks out and just run with the Crucial CAS2 stick.

Thoughts, suggestions, ideas?

 

[neuralfx]

take the sticks out, write down all the information printed on the chips, or on the label, and do a search for them .. you *could* call dell, but they probably will have no idea what CAS is .. most likely, if i had to guess, CAS 3 .. hope this helps .. good luck .. looks like a pretty good laptop for the price ..
-neural

 

[apoppin]

Me too. We have twins (well, mine is probably the "baby" with a P3866M/ATI 16MB DDR and a 10GB HD - I opted for the extra battery and DVD-ROM for $1200).

Evidently it is CAS 3. Feel free to run the 64 MB along with your new stick of CAS 2.

Unless you are a performance freak, the extra 64MB makes up for the 3% slowdown.

I am running 64 plus 256 = 320MB and Win2K runs fine. However, I am going to dump that 64 MB stick as soon as I can afford another 256 CAS2 (it is going UP; I paid $44 just 2-3 weeks ago and it's well over $50 now).

 

[John]

If the bios is programmed to run cas3, using cas2 will not make a difference.

 

[apoppin]

I believe - from looking at my BIOS, both settings are available.

If you run CAS 2 and CAS 3 together, ALL the memory will run at the slower CAS 3 which is only about 3% slower.

I'll shut down and take a look.

 

[apoppin]

Nope, can't find ANY memory timings in the BIOS . . . My guess is it's all CAS 3 . . . I won't be in so big a hurry to upgrade . . . 320MB seems sufficient for a notebook running Win2K.

 

[statetech]

thanks guys for the info and suggestions.
i guess i was too anal since a 3% hit in performance between cas2 and cas3 isn't significant.