Win7 64 bit: Installing more memory than manufacturer specs

[iflyjetzzz]

Prior to upgrading my laptop from 32 bit Vista to 64 bit Win7, I looked for some additional RAM at Newegg and read interesting comments from a few customers. While their computers were rated for 4GB, they installed 8GB of RAM and noticed speed increases.

I am using a Sony VGN-FZ140E with the Intel GM965 Chipset. According to specs, the maximum memory is 4GB. However, I installed 2x4GB sticks and noticed a definite speed increase compared to 2x2GB. It may have been a placebo effect, but here are the numbers from Memory Manager:
Total: 8182
Cached: 5318
Available: 6084
Free: 799
Cached/Available/Free fluctuates but those numbers are close.

Under Resource Monitor, Physical Memory, it gives me:
Hardware Reserved 10MB
In Use 2049
Modified 33
Standby 5302
Free 798

... I'll be happy to try any other memory configurations (1,2,3,4,5,6GB) and run tests if anyone's interested in pursuing this further. Just let me know which tests to run.
I'm also in the process of upgrading my daughter's Sony VGN-CR490 which also has the Intel GM965 Express Chipset. I can compare them side by side, but her computer has a faster CPU.

 

[taltamir]

is there a question there somewhere?
yes, more memory is better. if you aren't using enough of it to matter, you will be in the future.

 

[iflyjetzzz]

taltamir, no question, just a post that might help others who thought that they'd be limited to 4GB when running 64 bit Win7.
I haven't been around Anandtech in more than five years; I consider this to be as important as when news that the 300MHz celerons could be overclocked to 450MHz.

 

[Nothinman]

That probably means that the manufacturer didn't do any testing with >4G so while it works, it's not a configuration supported by them. And it won't work for everyone because there is still hardware out there that really may not support >4G of memory or the BIOS may not support the memory remapping required to use all of it.

 

[exar333]

taltamir, no question, just a post that might help others who thought that they'd be limited to 4GB when running 64 bit Win7.
I haven't been around Anandtech in more than five years; I consider this to be as important as when news that the 300MHz celerons could be overclocked to 450MHz.

That comment might be reaching a little bit, but regardless, an interesting find. I don't think I ever tried to exceed a laptop's stated memory capacity, but I may find myself in a situation to try it out.

 

[Blain]

Newegg "reviews" should be taken with a shaker full of salt, not just the normal grain.
Many are simply idiots.

 

[iflyjetzzz]

I also posted this on Tom's Hardware. One of the posters wrote this:
"It might show that it has 8GB installed but I doubt it can use all of it. The fact You feel it is faster because of fresh install of Windows.

Open Paint and set image/atrributes to 20000x20000 pixels, now check task manager processes tab to see how much RAM is Paint using. Should be somewhere around 2.4GB. Now increse pixel count and check hoew the RAM usage goes. If You can get Paint to use more then 4GB then it is capable of using more then 4GB RAM if not then half of Your RAM is being unused. "

My response:
"Ainarssems, where I noticed the speed increase is when I swapped from 4GB to 8GB with Win7 already installed and having used it with 4GB for a few days.

I ran home for lunch today and pulled down some quick data for you. I opened paint and used the Koala Bear picture from the Win7 preloaded pictures.
At 20K x 20K, Paint was using 3.153GB, total memory use was 5.79GB.

I tried several times to increase the picture from 20x20K to something larger but the computer kept crashing. Finally, I tried changing the picture from 1024x768 to 23Kx23K. Paint was using 5.462GB and the total memory used was 7.00GB.

I had to leave so I didn't have a chance to test it further. How many pixels can a 64bit Win7 computer with 8GB go to in pixel count? How about 4GB?
When I get home, I'll test this with 4GB of RAM and see how many pixels I can get. I'll also see how many pixels I can get with 8GB RAM.

Bottom line - is 23Kx23K possible with 4GB RAM?"


I'll play with this some more tonight.
ExarKun333, I built a half dozen or so overclocked 300 Celeron systems and sold ~100 pretested overclockable Celerons. I think that the performance increase with 8GB vice 4GB is as noticable as a 300 Celeron running at 450.
I don't know what the performance sweet spot is for memory on 64 bit Win7, but I'm going to guess that it's something greater than 8GB. I'm not as much into computers as I was a decade ago so I don't know how Win7 utilizes available memory.

 

[Nothinman]

I think that the performance increase with 8GB vice 4GB is as noticable as a 300 Celeron running at 450.

That depends heavily on the usage patterns of the machine. If you never do anything that uses anywhere close to 4G then you're not going to notice much going to 8G. CPU usage is different because you're always using the full clock speed of the process and going from 300Mhz to 450Mhz is a huge jump.

 

[iflyjetzzz]

Nothinman, that's the thing. Win7 seems to throw all available memory at any task, from my experience watching the task manager. Can anyone out there explain how Win7 utilizes memory?
And with CPUs running at >2GHz, I don't think that a faster chip is going to make that much of a difference. I think that onboard cache would be a bigger consideration; I'd rather have a CPU with an extra 1MB of onboard cache than 100MHz faster CPU.

 

[Nothinman]

Win7 seems to throw all available memory at any task, from my experience watching the task manager.

In general Win7 has SuperFetch like Vista which will try to preload things into memory that it thinks you might want/need soon. But it never allocates more memory to a process than the process requests.

And with CPUs running at >2GHz, I don't think that a faster chip is going to make that much of a difference. I think that onboard cache would be a bigger consideration; I'd rather have a CPU with an extra 1MB of onboard cache than 100MHz faster CPU.

But your reference was to Celerons running at 300Mhz. Back then adding 150Mhz was a 50% boost and was huge. Now, yea, 100Mhz means virtually nothing.

 

[iflyjetzzz]

OK, I messed with my laptop a bit more. Here's my post on Tom's Hardware:
"
OK, I pulled out the 8GB and reinstalled the 4GB.
I tried MS paint at 20kx20k. It basically locked up the computer for ~10 minutes (with 8GB, 20kx20k popped up quickly).

Paint is currently using 1.572GB of RAM and the total memory used is 3.69GB.

Obviously, there will be a lot of skeptics (witness area51reopened's post) until there are more people who put in more RAM than system specs.

I haven't hung out in computer forums for a very long time; close to 10 years. Back then, Tom, Anand (freshly graduated from high school), and OCP were cutting edge with overclocking tips, etc. I assume it's still that way.
While this is currently being met with skepticism, I think that a lot of people are going to find that their systems can handle more RAM than the system specs state.

I also think that the sweet spot for RAM on a 64bit Win7 system is greater than 8GB."



Nothinman, in your last post, you said that a 50% CPU boost was huge. What I've done is get a 100% memory boost. And I gotta tell ya, the performance difference has been profound. I'd increase my memory some more just to screw around with this, but 8GB memory sticks are more expensive than a lot of laptops.

 

[Nothinman]

I also think that the sweet spot for RAM on a 64bit Win7 system is greater than 8GB."

My notebook only has 2G and it runs better than XP. I would say the sweet spot is between 2G and 4G with anything above that should only be considered if you've got a workload that warrants it but memory is so cheap it's really not a big deal.

Nothinman, in your last post, you said that a 50% CPU boost was huge. What I've done is get a 100% memory boost. And I gotta tell ya, the performance difference has been profound. I'd increase my memory some more just to screw around with this, but 8GB memory sticks are more expensive than a lot of laptops.

Memory and CPU aren't utilized in the same fashion so it's not comparable at all. That's like saying that you made yourself smarter by getting a larger whiteboard.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Newegg "reviews" should be taken with a shaker full of salt, not just the normal grain.
Many are simply idiots.

From a person that has read 1000s of them, I agree 100%. I buy salt by the ton now.

 

[taltamir]

Bottom line - is 23Kx23K possible with 4GB RAM?

No it would not be possible with 4GB of ram, the reason it was crashing was because you increased it to the point it was taking more ram than you actually HAD in the computer (aka, more than 8GB).

 

[iflyjetzzz]

taltamir, yeah, I figured it was something like that. I took a couple of screenshots. You can match the first screenshot with my computer's specs to confirm. http://www.docs.sony.com/release/specs/VGNFZ140EB_mksp.pdf

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.php?2e161c2c4e.jpg

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.php?4ad8ccfff2.jpg

For the second one, some guy on tomshardware wanted to see the management console. That was the only page I could find that showed RAM.

 

[whizboy]

I have something to share (just the info guys) and ask something too. I have Sony VGN-SR290 custom order. The laptop uses PM45 Chipset, Intel specs says that it can support upto 8Gb and I assume that would be on a 64bit OS. Now I contacted Mushking guys the other day and they went to check the specs on the sony website and told me the same old story Sony's website has that "Your system supports upto 4GB Max". Now most of the major memory manufacturers still show 4GB Max for my system, but there was this one memory website (www.oempcworld.com) which gave me explicitly an option of using 8GB (2X4GB) for my laptop's model.

Please comment and any links would be appreciated.

 

[Mwing]

i think manufacturers dont like to officially support higher spec to save cost or they want to market 8gb ram laptop to lure avg customers or they shipped 32bit os with the laptop so they automatically state that 4gb is max?

 

[Emulex]

alot of laptops did not wire in the physical for > 4gb so if you don't have 8gb of address lines you are not going to get 8gb.

these are much older laptops like a year or two. the problem may also lie in the fact some of the other components did not have 64 bit addressing. sony does some whacky isht like disable intel-VT when it is fine in the chipset/cpu sometimes too. odd.