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Memory - 1GB enough for great performance?

post #1 of 12
8/4/05 at 2:16pm
Thread Starter 
I'm buying a 17" (WXGA+) DTR-style notebook (Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo M3438G with PM750, nVIDIA 6800GO 256MB, 2x80GB S-ATA). I was wondering whether the 1 GB of RAM that comes with this notebook is enough for great performance. I'm not a professional notebook user and I'd mainly use it for playing Half-Life 2 and light editing (music and photos).

My local computerstore adviced me that since this notebook has 2x512MB memory and no free memory slots they would have to take those two 512MB memories out and replace them with two Kingston 1 GB memories in order for me to get 2GB of RAM (total). This would cost around 300 dollars (bare in mind I live in Finland).

Do you think I should upgrade to 2GB or would 1 GB of RAM suffice?

Here's the link to the specs: M3438G specs

BTW: I know there are better models available elsewhere but in my country of Finland, the best model of this notebook has PM750, 1 GB of RAM and 2x80 Gb hard drive
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post #2 of 12
8/4/05 at 4:34pm
well u can try it out for now and if it doesnt meet up to your expectations, you can ALWAYS upgrade later.
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post #3 of 12
8/4/05 at 4:42pm
Why don't you upgrade to 1 stick of 1gb, instead of staying with the 512mb x 2? Is that not an option too?

This way, should you decide to upgrade to 2 gb you're not stuck with trying to sell 2 -512 sticks on Ebay for didly squat.....
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post #4 of 12
8/4/05 at 4:46pm
Of course if he went with 1 stick of 1GB he would not benefit from the albeit modest performance gains of dual channel.
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post #5 of 12
8/4/05 at 4:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Unleaded
Of course if he went with 1 stick of 1GB he would not benefit from the albeit modest performance gains of dual channel.
Well, yeah, but dual channel is overrated. The security of having an extra slot for 1 more gb is a good tradeoff imho, besides, once he gets the extra 1gb stick in, he can look forward to some excellent speed improvements thanks to the extra gb coupled with the dual channel improvement.
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post #6 of 12
8/4/05 at 5:18pm
Well, if he's buying this from his local computer store, chances are its not customizable, right? Either way, 1gb is more than enough to run anything you'll throw at it. I have 512mb on this desktop, and I've never had a problem running anything. So yes, 1gb will be more than enough, even if you go on to do more intensive games...
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post #7 of 12
8/4/05 at 5:39pm
get a 1 gb stick, if you dont like it get another 1 gb stick, if you go with 2 512's and its not good enough, your stuck with 1 gb, unless you take a 512 out for a 1gb, then your stuck wiht that 512 dual channel stick.
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post #8 of 12
8/4/05 at 5:49pm
If you're a typical user (several browser windows open, a word document, media player, and stuff like that), then 512 MB is enough. Add on editing and playing games, and 1 GB sounds like a good amount. Remember, you can always check the peak commit charge in the task manager to see if it goes above 1 GB in normal use.
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post #9 of 12
8/5/05 at 3:20pm
Thread Starter 
Okey but listen... The main reason I'm thinking of updating the amount of RAM is to compensate the cpu, which is PM750 (1,86GHz). I originally wanted at least the PM760-version of this notebook but then I found out that that version would be released until next year. So as I'm looking for a solid notebook with some longetivity, I thought that the extra 1GB would compensate a little 0,14GHz performance loss in terms of gaming performance.

But if you say that 2 gigs wouldn't speed things up that much (if you don't count Battlefield 2) then I guess I should just stick with the 2x512MB memory.
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post #10 of 12
8/5/05 at 3:39pm
I have 2x512mb and BF2 runs fine with medium settings at 1024x768... and I have a cruddy video card :-)
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post #11 of 12
8/5/05 at 3:53pm
Dell doesn't do international?
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post #12 of 12
8/5/05 at 7:08pm
Thread Starter 
Dell does sell notebooks to Finland but not the XPS Gen2. Anyway I want the Fujitsu-Siemens model so I'm not looking for other options anymore.

Someone pointed out to me just now that M3438G (the notebook model) has 2x512MB which operate at 400MHz. But if I have them taken out and have them repleaced by two 1GB memories, the 1GB memories will operate at 533MHz. Wouldn't this be a big thing performance wise: 2x512MB at 400MHz vs. 2x1GB at 533MHz?
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