Dual Channel Mode

kinggeorge1987kinggeorge1987 Member Posts: 62 ■■□□□□□□□□
in Off-Topic
Hey everyone

I've consulted an online manual on my Dell Inspiron 1501 to try and find out if it is capable of dual channel mode, I've ordered Crucial 2GB Set(2x1GB) 200-Pin PC2 5300 667Mhz SODIMM DDR2 RAM
to max out my ram. Right now Im mismatching 1GB and 512mb. Can anyone tell me from experience if this pc can run dual channel ? Or if there is a way I can check. According to CPU-Z im running in single right now, but couldn't that be due to the mismatched pair ?
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  • alan2308alan2308 Member Posts: 1,854 ■■■■■■■■□□
    According to this, your notebook does support dual channel memory. But as you suspect, you need to have matched memory to utilize dual channel.
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  • DevilsbaneDevilsbane Member Posts: 4,214 ■■■■■■■■□□
    Same speed, brand, and if I remember right, even the size needs to be the same.
    Decide what to be and go be it.
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  • tierstentiersten Member Posts: 4,505
    Devilsbane wrote: »
    Same speed, brand, and if I remember right, even the size needs to be the same.
    If the SPD EEPROM contains compatible parameters then the brand doesn't matter but generally people recommend you do keep the same brand to ensure this.

    Depending on the board, you may be able to have multiple pairs of memory so all the memory doesn't need to be the same.

    The things that matter are the capacity of the pairs and the configuration of the memory itself. Generally if the speed is mismatched, it will just operate at whatever the lowest is out of the pair. The configuration matters as the wiring of the individual RAM chips needs to be the same. As always, there are exceptions to this because of quirks with certain brands/models of memory and motherboards.

    New systems like Core i7 allow you to operate the memory in triple channel mode.
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  • ajmatsonajmatson Member Posts: 289
    Tiersten is correct as long as the specs are the same it should work however, identical matched pairs are usually preferred to work the best. Same as like RAID setups you can use a WD and A Seagate 320GB drive but having two identical drive is preferred :)
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  • kinggeorge1987kinggeorge1987 Member Posts: 62 ■■□□□□□□□□
    Great, thanks guys. Hopefully this matched pair will boost my system performance. Kind of sluggish even since I added that 512mb. Id like to say it ran better with the single 1GB but ..
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  • DevilsbaneDevilsbane Member Posts: 4,214 ■■■■■■■■□□
    kinggeorge1987 wrote: »
    Great, thanks guys. Hopefully this matched pair will boost my system performance. Kind of sluggish even since I added that 512mb. Id like to say it ran better with the single 1GB but ..

    What OS are you running on this?
    Decide what to be and go be it.
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  • tierstentiersten Member Posts: 4,505
    Devilsbane wrote: »
    What OS are you running on this?
    What Devilsbane said. The benefit you get from going single channel to dual channel generally isn't noticeable unless you're running benchmarking software or have processes that are very memory IO bound which for most processes aren't.

    I'd look elsewhere for the problem.
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  • kinggeorge1987kinggeorge1987 Member Posts: 62 ■■□□□□□□□□
    Im running Windows 7 Ultimate. I bought this notebook second hand. Originally it had Vista Home, and right before I bought it from him he installed 7. Not sure why he chose ultimate. Anyway, the most memory pulling program I probably run is Photoshop and all of my Office programs for school. It seems to stall while opening Photoshop while I'm running anything else. So I figured a maxed out matched pair of ram would do the trick. Do you disagree ?
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  • DevilsbaneDevilsbane Member Posts: 4,214 ■■■■■■■■□□
    1.5 GB on windows 7 should do ok. It is a little surprising that your laptop only maxes out at 2GB. 2GB would usually come standard with a Vista laptop.

    HDD can slow a pc down far more than RAM will (after all it is about 1,000 times slower). Make sure that you have a decent amount of free space and that it isn't heavily fragmented.
    Decide what to be and go be it.
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  • kinggeorge1987kinggeorge1987 Member Posts: 62 ■■□□□□□□□□
    I was equally surprised by 2 GB max. And dont get me wrong, the laptop does do fine for everything I need most of the time. I would just like to max it out to ensure the best performance. When I bought the laptop it had matching pairs of 512 MB, so I figured that was factory.

    And now that you mention the HD, which I should have thought about, it does have a partition with Ubuntu on it that I need to get rid of. And a good defrag wouldn't hurt. Thanks for the gentle reminder.
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  • tierstentiersten Member Posts: 4,505
    kinggeorge1987 wrote: »
    So I figured a maxed out matched pair of ram would do the trick
    More RAM will help. Matched pairs won't make much of a difference.
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