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Upgrading RAM on Dell Inspiron 6000?

L

lucckyone

Junior Member
I just purchased a Dell Inspiron 6000 with 512 MB DDR2 SDRAM 400MHz.
I want to upgrade my RAM to 1 GB. speaking as a newbie (I apologize!), which RAM stick should I purchase? manufacturer, etc? I am looking to entirely replace the 512 stick.

maybe a Kingston 1GB 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200) to entirely replace my 512 stick? will my 400MHz recognize the 533MHz stick?
or should I just get another 512 stick to add to the one already there?
thanks!!
 
It depends on your budget.

You can add a 1GB stick to the 512MB stick with no problems. If one is 533 and the other is 400, it will still work, the 533 stick will just get throttled back.
 
NewEgg has the cheapest 1GB DDR2 533, check prices here

I would just a 533 stick, that way if you ever ditch the original 1x512 then you can have 533 RAM all around.

Its up to you regarding the size: 512MB or 1GB, whichever you want to spend the money on 🙂
 
are you sure your laptop came with only one 512MB stick of RAM as normally Dell with supply you with two sticks of 256MB RAM to make up the 512MB?
 
I'm not sure. I just purchased the laptop but have yet to recieve it so I can't say for certain whether it's two sticks of 256MB. Would this make a difference if I purchased a 1 GB anyway? no, right?
 
I just bought a 1 GB stick of DDR2/400 on NewEgg for $100 for my Inspiron 6000 that is being built as we speak. I figured since my notebook will already have 1x256 DDR2/400 in there, I'd rather match it up instead of taking a chance with mismatched RAM working. Besides, from what I've seen, DDR2/533 has a higher CAS latency (4 instead of 3), so the performance gain of going to DDR2/533 is minimal at best.

Now, if your notebook comes with 2x256 sticks for your RAM (which it probably will unless you specified 1x512 stick), you're going to have to ditch one of those sticks if you want to upgrade, since they only have 2 RAM expansion slots. That's why I went with 1x256 stick. Sorry 🙁
 
There's one thing I'm not sure about - If I buy DDR2-533 and add it to a stick of DDR2-400 so it gets throttled down, will it also use lower latencies, or will it be stuck at the higher latencies?
 
Originally posted by: mmebane
There's one thing I'm not sure about - If I buy DDR2-533 and add it to a stick of DDR2-400 so it gets throttled down, will it also use lower latencies, or will it be stuck at the higher latencies?
Click to expand...
Great question -- chances are it will run at the lower latencies. Most RAM is speed-binned, meaning that two sticks of RAM are tested to see how fast they can go. The ones that are not able to run @ 533MHz CL4 are set to 400MHz CL3 instead. So it is very likely that your 533MHz RAM CAN run @ 400 CL3, its a matter of whether the BIOS will set it to do so; most likely, it will.
 
I'm not sure how much of a real performance benefit it will provide, but if you have 2 identical pieces of RAM (size and timings) you can take advantage of the dual channel capabilities on your motherboard. I was planning to buy two 512 MB DDR533 SO-DIMMS for my Inspiron 6000 w/ Pentium M 730.
 
I am using two 512 sticks and one is rated at DDR2-400 and one is a corsair module at DDR2-533. It is using the DDR2-400 speed and at the lower latency that comes with it. So it basically works off of the slower of the two in terms of speed and latency. (or so I think, someone correct me if I am wrong)
 
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