Laptop RAM in pairs?

womble12345

I have now tested all the RAM sticks and only one of the 2GB sticks is faulty.

According to Memtest I have the following working sticks

4096 MB DDR3-1333 - Micron 16KTF51264HZ-1G4M1
2048 MB DDR3-1066 - Nanya NT2GC64B8HC0NS-BE

With both sticks installed it tells me that the RAM is 532 MHz (DDR3-1064).

With only the 4GB stick installed it says 665 Mhz (DDR3-1330).

Do the 1333 and 1066 numbers denote speed? If so am I better just not bothering with the 2GB stick?

Thanks,

emptybox

womble12345 wrote: »

I have now tested all the RAM sticks and only one of the 2GB sticks is faulty.

According to Memtest I have the following working sticks

4096 MB DDR3-1333 - Micron 16KTF51264HZ-1G4M1
2048 MB DDR3-1066 - Nanya NT2GC64B8HC0NS-BE

With both sticks installed it tells me that the RAM is 532 MHz (DDR3-1064).

With only the 4GB stick installed it says 665 Mhz (DDR3-1330).

Do the 1333 and 1066 numbers denote speed? If so am I better just not bothering with the 2GB stick?

Thanks,

Yes, those are the speed indicators, and RAM always runs at the speed of the slowest unit, so the 4 GB unit on it's own should be faster then the 4+2 GB in this instance.

Shouldn't be any slower than when you were running 2+2 GB DDR3-1066 though.

So in your case you'd be better sticking to just the 4 GB stick, unless you find excess RAM usage slowing the PC down while web browsing or video encoding etc.

The PC I'm on just now has 4 GB RAM, and with just 5 tabs open on Google Chrome and playing some music on a media player app I'm up to over 70% RAM usage, and can feel things slowing down a little. So I'm kinda wishing for a bit more RAM myself.

toshi

I would be amazed if you actually feel the difference of memory speed in general computing. Unless you run the benchmark test, you don't see the difference ? that's why you ask a question here ?

But I would notice the advantage of extra 2GB, especially you use a hard disk; Extra memory will be used for application caching, and also will let you run more application without slowing down your computer.

Reference: (Actually the benchmark show no difference! see the below)

High Speed RAM - Is it Worth it? DDR3 1333MHz vs 2400MHz Test

Happy computing

ptrichardson

womble12345 wrote: »

I have now tested all the RAM sticks and only one of the 2GB sticks is faulty.

According to Memtest I have the following working sticks

4096 MB DDR3-1333 - Micron 16KTF51264HZ-1G4M1
2048 MB DDR3-1066 - Nanya NT2GC64B8HC0NS-BE

With both sticks installed it tells me that the RAM is 532 MHz (DDR3-1064).

With only the 4GB stick installed it says 665 Mhz (DDR3-1330).

Do the 1333 and 1066 numbers denote speed? If so am I better just not bothering with the 2GB stick?

Thanks,

Running both sticks will make ALL of the RAM run at the lower speed.
If you use just one stick, it runs in single channel mode anyway, so that's not really a consideration, unless you can buy a second hand matching (PERFECTLY) 4Gb stick to complement the one you have (£20 on ebay by the looks of it)

The question is really:
6Gb RAM at 1066
or
4Gb of RAM at 1333

Gut feeling is that more RAM will win this battle in most situations. Some processing where only 4Gb is needed, and is being accessed a large amount may cause a performance hit - but unless you're doing some kind of rendering, or compiling of small files, I don't imagine it will hurt you.