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Inspiron 6000: THERE IS NO DUAL CHANNEL!!WARNING!!

post #1 of 12
7/22/05 at 12:53am
Thread Starter 
After much scrutiny, I have concluded the Dual Channel memory support is none-existant for the Dell 6000 i have. Here is my evidence:

1. In the BIOS, it says DUAL for memory channel despite only having one module. This option is not changable even with two sticks inside the belly of his beast.

2. For one memory module (ddr 400), I get about 2800MB effective memory bandwidth, for two modules (ddr 400), I get about 2700MB effective memory bandwidth, with DDR 533 single, I get 3200MB, for Dual, I get 3100. This is nowhere close to the 6400MB i'm suppose to have.

If you have evidence on the contrary, please show me. From the physical evidence I have gathered from my ordeal with my Dell Inspiron 6000, I conclude that dell has physically disabled or not implemented Dual Channel Memory Controller on the Intel 915M chipset.

Just in case my notebook is a rarebird, please post some sandra pictures of dual channel in action.
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post #2 of 12
7/22/05 at 1:08am
http://www.rickmktg.com/i6000_memory.htm

The screenshots are from Everest. I can upload some Sandra pics tomorrow or something.
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post #3 of 12
7/22/05 at 7:09pm
That proves the point of the initial poster. That performance compares to single channel machines.
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post #4 of 12
7/22/05 at 8:49pm
The bottleneck is the Front Side Bus, not the memory.
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post #5 of 12
7/22/05 at 8:53pm
memory clock on the i6000 is only 400mhz, which doesnt allow for much improvement in dual channel. now if FSB was raised to 800mhz, then we can talk. The limitations of the i915 chipset is really exposed. cant say i bought an i6000 for any sort of performance tho
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post #6 of 12
7/22/05 at 9:14pm
But the link wonka provided does show the 533mhz bus in effect.
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post #7 of 12
7/22/05 at 10:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by r_kt
memory clock on the i6000 is only 400mhz, which doesnt allow for much improvement in dual channel. now if FSB was raised to 800mhz, then we can talk. The limitations of the i915 chipset is really exposed. cant say i bought an i6000 for any sort of performance tho
The memory installed by Dell from the factory IS 400MHz PC-3200, but you can buy 533MHz PC-4200 RAM, and the Intel chip supports it. The performance boost is not that great though....but it still works.
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post #8 of 12
8/8/05 at 3:18am
see toms hardware guide for more information on this, dual channel doesnt really offer anything to centrino platforms
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post #9 of 12
8/8/05 at 3:33am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cutters
see toms hardware guide for more information on this, dual channel doesnt really offer anything to centrino platforms
There is a difference, but it's very slight compared to the dual channel that you get with desktop systems with different chipsets. The memory controller in the 6000 is the same exact memory controller that's in the 9300 and the XPS2, since these models all have the same chipset, and the memory controller is part of the chipset.

Is it possible that with DDR2 memory, that you don't need two matching pairs to run in dual channel mode? DDR2 is new to me -- is it possible that the "2" in DDR2 makes one memory module act like a pair?
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post #10 of 12
8/8/05 at 3:42am
Yes, Virginia, there is dual channel on 6000D, and this dual channel can be run for 3200 400fsb chips and for 4200 533FSB chips.

And dual 533fsb 4200 are faster than dual 400fsb 3200.

And dual 533fsb 4200 is faster than single 533fsb 4200. Not by much though.

And dual 400fsb 3200 is faster than single 400fsb
3200.

I tested all four conigurations on the same machine and ran Everest each time...
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post #11 of 12
8/8/05 at 3:50am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Maine_Coon
Yes, Virginia, there is dual channel on 6000D, and this dual channel can be run for 3200 400fsb chips and for 4200 533FSB chips.

And dual 533fsb 4200 are faster than dual 400fsb 3200.

And dual 533fsb 4200 is faster than single 533fsb 4200. Not by much though.

And dual 400fsb 3200 is faster than single 400fsb
3200.

I tested all four conigurations on the same machine and ran Everest each time...
Nice -- so I guess my DDR"2" theory is for the birds, but for the better anyway.

Any chance you took some screenies?
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post #12 of 12
8/8/05 at 12:06pm
bnice7,

I have screenies, but they are similar to what wonka187 already posted.

Partial Results:
Kingston 6000A 512MB 533FSB 4200 chips were used.

single-channel ( 1 533 4200 512MB chip):
Memory read: 3292
Memory Write: 746
Latency: 109.2

dual channel (2 533 4200 512MB chips):
Memory read: 3313
Memory Write: 818
Latency: 103.7

Everest correctly reports no dual channel when there is one chip only, and correctly reports dual channel when both chips are present.

Now, tests vs. real-life performance:
My top desktop system has 3.42Ghz P4 ( 2.4 overclocked of course) and 2 dual channel Geil Golden Dragon 800FSB 512MB RAM. Dual channel is very much in action on that machine, HT is on so there are two logical CPU's which software that aware of multi-cpu machines can use. Hard drive is Seagate 160GB 7200 RPM.

.. and as I've mentioned in my other post, MainConcepts MPEG2 encoding of the 19 min 54 sec AVI clip to MPEG2 took 38 min 03 sec on the desktop PC and just 32 min on my 6000D.

6000D is an excellent laptop, at least for my purposes.

Cheers.
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