NotebookForums.com › Forums › Notebook Manufacturers › Dell Forums › Dell Notebooks - General › Inspiron 9400 with 4GB of Ram?
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Inspiron 9400 with 4GB of Ram?

post #1 of 24
1/24/07 at 3:51am
Thread Starter 
Hey All,

Let me start by saying that I am dealing with a customer that has more money than sense. He has an Inspiron 9400 with 1GB of Ram that I sold him a few months ago. He wants to upgrade his memory. I did some checking and as far as the "Official" records go, the Inspiron 9400 only supports 2GB. But I also know that often dell notebooks support more than the Official record. Kinda like back in the day with the Inspiron 8200 that said it only supported 1GB, but it would accept 2GB.

I know that 2x2GB would be extremely costly. And I even looked up what the chips would cost if they would work (over $1000) but that is what the customer wants if it will work. My question is, will it?

Any help on this would be appreciated.

Doug

p.s. I am guessing if it did work that this would be the memory that I need... (Sure am glad I have a 10% discount code)

http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartsp...7E34EDA5CA7304
Reply
Reply
post #2 of 24
1/24/07 at 4:29am
The Dell BIOS is a limiter in this situation. I think it will only read up to 3.2GB or something around that, from memory.

XP can read up to 4GB.
Vista can read a whole lot more, but again, the Dell BIOS is thew limiting factor.
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 24
1/24/07 at 6:45am
The MB theoretically accepts 4Gb, but Dell might think that 2Gb is the limit b/c of heat, maybe (?) or something else. Maybe just marketing....

However, only 3.2 Gb or so will be usable.

From what I've read, this *is* an XP restriction. Using 64-bit Vista should theoretically help, BUT not for this laptop! The reason is that some of the PCI components are still 32-bit, and will require the allocation of a "hole" between 3.2Gb and 4Gb.

To get past that limit, a fully 64bit platform is needed. I think Santa Rosa (coming this year) will be, but I don't really know.

In short, 4Gb will probably work, but you will only get to use 3.2Gb, even in Vista.
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 24
1/24/07 at 11:41am
Scotsman i think you have it backwards, unless you can proove me wrong

Im pretty sure XP only recognizes something close to 3-3.5 while the motherboard/BIOS will accept 4 and read as four gig, however as m94 said the OS can only recognize 3.2 apparently.
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 24
1/24/07 at 11:46am
The key here is that the system BIOS has a 3.25gb limit. No matter what OS is installed you will be limited to 3.25gb.
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 24
1/24/07 at 11:48am
Do you have documentation prooving that?
Reply
Reply
post #7 of 24
1/24/07 at 12:10pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by nissanztt90
Do you have documentation prooving that?

No documentation just the fact that the BIOS has 2 fields.

1. Memory installed = 4096
2. Memory Available = 3327
I have also installed XP, XP64 and Vistas 64 and they all show 3250 available memory.

Edit: One other note from the BIOS states:

NOTE: Due to an amount of memory being assigned for system use, Memory Available is less than Memory Installed.
Reply
Reply
post #8 of 24
1/24/07 at 12:17pm
Good enough for me, thanks.
Reply
Reply
post #9 of 24
1/24/07 at 12:19pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by nissanztt90
Good enough for me, thanks.

It does kinda stink to have a 64bit processor and OS and still be limited to 3.25gb.
Reply
Reply
post #10 of 24
1/24/07 at 12:20pm
Interesting topic. I have a 9400 and thought it was limited to 2gb, but this thread makes me curious. Can the Inspiron 9400/1705 have one stick of 1gb and the other at 2gb? Would that be okay? If the system will only recognize 3.25gb, then why get 4gb and just go with 3gb?

Thanks
Reply
Reply
post #11 of 24
1/24/07 at 12:34pm
Because for the DDR2 to work as it was designed you need two sticks of ram the same size and speed, basically two sticks of the same ram. Two 1gb sticks of 533 working in DDR2 would be way faster than One 2 gb stick alone. 2x2gb sticks, or 4 gig is pretty much a waste for most people at this point.
Reply
Reply
post #12 of 24
1/24/07 at 12:38pm
Excellent....Thanks for the input!
Reply
Reply
post #13 of 24
1/24/07 at 12:38pm
2 + 1 Gb will work (a collegue has an intel macbook pro with this config), although only 2Gb will be Dual channel. From what I've heard, you would then lose about 10% memory performance on the extra 1Gb.
Reply
Reply
post #14 of 24
1/24/07 at 8:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by nissanztt90
Scotsman i think you have it backwards, unless you can proove me wrong Im pretty sure XP only recognizes something close to 3-3.5 while the motherboard/BIOS will accept 4 and read as four gig, however as m94 said the OS can only recognize 3.2 apparently.
I can prove you wrong Taken from HERE:
Quote:
Originally Posted by www.microsoft.com
Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 Memory Support. The maximum amount of memory that can be supported on Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 is also 4 GB. However, Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition supports 32 GB of physical RAM and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition supports 64 GB of physical RAM using the PAE feature.
Reply
Reply
post #15 of 24
1/25/07 at 5:05pm
Do you know why the BIOS limits it?
Reply
Reply
post #16 of 24
1/25/07 at 5:27pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by nissanztt90
Do you know why the BIOS limits it?
Perhaps so that Dell can justify a reason that you need to buy a better notebook? Doug
Reply
Reply
post #17 of 24
1/25/07 at 5:40pm
Thats a pretty bad reason considering most people cant even fully utilize two gig.
Reply
Reply
post #18 of 24
3/12/07 at 9:20pm
There are really no performance gains between 2gb and 4gb, just get him a set of paired chips for 2gb, get him a Kingston SD Card, install Vista Ultimate, enable ready boost on the SD card and tell him have fun.

The Kingston SD Card with ready boost enabled did as much for performance if not more that an extra 2gig would have done.
Reply
Reply
post #19 of 24
7/20/09 at 2:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by the_scotsman View Post
I can prove you wrong Taken from HERE:
Fail. The problem IS due to XP, or rather any 32-bit OS. 32-bit OS'es map devices (such as video card RAM, NIC and port I/O buffer memory and so on) into the same 4GiB address space as your RAM. If you have dual 512MiB graphics cards (like some Alienware laptops and my gaming rig), you lose 1GiB right there. So getting 3.25GiB out of 4GiB means that .75GiB is mapped to devices. A 64-bit OS should free up the full 4GiB (or in my rig 8GiB) for use by the OS and programs. The only reason that using a 64-bit OS would not work in this case would be due to a flaw in the hardware/BOIS, which may possibly be fixed in a BIOS update but I wouldn't *expect* it, because hardware manufacturers make more money whenever they can sell you a new computer.
Reply
Reply
post #20 of 24
7/20/09 at 3:38pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by GlassDeviant View Post
The only reason that using a 64-bit OS would not work in this case would be due to a flaw in the hardware/BOIS, which may possibly be fixed in a BIOS update but I wouldn't *expect* it, because hardware manufacturers make more money whenever they can sell you a new computer.
This isn't really a hardware "bug" - the whole motherboard is designed around 32bit PCI components which "eat" part of memory address space (without necessarily using the physical RAM space at all). The only way to get around it is a motherboard with 64bit PCI components, as in more recent laptops. But why discuss this in 2009?
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Dell Notebooks - General
NotebookForums.com › Forums › Notebook Manufacturers › Dell Forums › Dell Notebooks - General › Inspiron 9400 with 4GB of Ram?