Memory Question

[RedPickle]

Just bought a Dell 6000D and was wondering whether its better to have a 1gb Kingston pc4200 @533 or to have the 1gb with the orginal 256 @400. Is there a huge performance difference?

 

[fbrdphreak]

The diff between 1GB & 1.25GB is minimal.
If you put 1GB 533 + 256MB 400, all RAM will run at 400 (if it runs at all). Personally I would just dump the 400 and get a 1GB stick. There is minimal to no performance difference with 400 vs 533, as 400 has lower latencies.

 

[Tostada]

Have you bought the 1GB stick yet? There's really no benefit to 533 memory, so you might as well just get a 1GB stick of 400, then it will match what's in there.

That said, you probably won't notice much of a difference between 1024MB and 1280MB unless you're doing something pretty hardcore. Personally, I'm having a hard time justifying an upgrade from 512MB to 1024MB because I don't want to double the amount of time it takes to hibernate/resume.

fbird: Would mixing memory give you the lower speed of the 400 and the higher latency of 533 at the same time, or do latencies of the 533 improve when it is running at 400?

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: Tostada
fbird: Would mixing memory give you the lower speed of the 400 and the higher latency of 533 at the same time, or do latencies of the 533 improve when it is running at 400?

That is a good question. I would say it depends on the particular 1GB 533 that you get. Different memory is rated for diff latencies @ diff speeds, obviously. If you were to get a quality stick of RAM, it SHOULD run @ CL3 @ 400MHz. I guess the best way to tell short of buying it is to look at the 400MHz version from the same manufacturer; i.e. look @ Crucial DDR2 400 & Crucial DDR2 533. If the 400 supports CL3, then the 533 should when running @ 400. Generally memory is speed-binned from the same basket of chips, not all chips will run okay @ 533 CL4 but generally the ones that can will run okay @ 400 CL3.

And an odd note in case you do try buying DDR2 400 for a machine that came with DDR2 533: IBM Thinkpads (T43 & R52) will not boot with DDR2 400 in them. This SHOULDN'T be the case with most SOnoma notebooks, I imagine its an IBM failsafe built in, but just an FYI if you're buying mem like that. Not that you would, but anyway