4 Gb of RAM in Vista

I've ordered a Dell e1505 with a 1.86 processor and the ATI 1400 video card. My question is.. it says the machine will use up to 2 Gb of RAM which I have. Does installing Vista allow you to use a pair of 2 Gb SODIMMs to allow a total of 4 Gb of RAM or is this a hardware limitation that can't be overcome?

 

I don't think its necessary. 4 GB is overkill. 2 GB of RAM is perfect, for even RAM intensive tasks like Photoshop and stuff. 1 GB runs without hiccups, 2 GB is fantastic.

 

No, I'm quite sure that the capacity of RAM is a limitation of the motherboard, so Vista won't be able to use more than 2GB of RAM if the MOBO can't.

 

If the e1505 maxes out at 2GB, then there is no point of putting 4GB in, since no OS will be able to use it - Vista or not.

If your limit is 4GB, then it will work.

For most things - in fact, all things - 2GB is more than sufficient.

 

I do believe that Dell only supports 2GB of memory on the e1505...it is a hardware limitation built into the chipset of the PC.

In any event, I really cannot imagine needing more than 2GB anyway...at least for a few years.

 

2 gb of ram is enough for now, but in future we will need more than 5gb as the world of technology is developing day by day. but for now 2gb of ram is plenty enough

 

No you can't. Max is 2gb for that mobo. If you wanted 4gb you should have gotten an xps. Those max out at 4gb.

 

Its one of those things that might work, then again it might not, The m1210 uses the same chipset, and has official support for 4 gb, where the e1505 "officially" only supports 2, My guess would be that it probably would boot, but there could be random stability issues, right now its way too expensive of an experiment for my tastes, 2 gig will serve you just fine for now, as will the 32 bit version of vista. The only reason why anyaverage user should consider vista 64 right now would be if a core app that you have to use is only available in 64 bit, otherwise you wont get any real benefit aside from bragging rights and a slight to moderate drop in your overall performance.

 

Yes - if the chipsets on the XPS and e-Series are indeed the same, I would imagine a BIOS upgrade would do what you are talking about.

 

Possibly, the board design itself is a major factor, bottom line is, you wont get any support if you go over 2 GB, and right now it would be a complete waste of money, down the road when prices are lower, and 4GB actually becomes useful it would be worth looking into.

 

Like everyone else said 2gb of ram is good for vista no need for 4

 

I don’t know about the 1505 but I have a 1705 which dell says uses only 2 gig of ram and I dropped 2 2gig sticks in it and it works great. I loaded it with vista 64 and I love it. I will never go back to less then 2 gig of ram but im not the average user I run a full dev environment in vpcs and I use as much ram as I can throw at it.

just my $0.02

 

So you can confirm that the e1705 will indeed accept and function with 4gb installed?

 

it has worked flawlessly for me. I also know someone else with one and they also have had no issues.

 

This is great news, as I have been torn on which laptop to get.. the 17" e1705 is rather lucious.. if only it had a fingerprinter reader.. not that bigadeal though. This probably implies the e1505 will work too.

I am another user who, at least for my main workstation, cant imagine not having 3gb of ram (on work machine).. as I'm a developer/networker, so I have tons of apps open at once.. Running Vista x64 (which I do) requires more memory than XP (i think my calculations on a bare system was something like 400mb more), at home I run 2gb and frequently start paging (booo).

Maybe everyone in this threads knows this but..there is another thread in here that discuses the intel 945(x) chipset and the ram limitations.

Santa Rosa from intel (supports 8gb) is due out in a few months.

Hopefully I have an accurate summary here: Basically in XP you may max out around 3.5gb (when using 4gb), more typically 2.8gb, depends on the overhead, IE: ram in the video card etc, as around 1gb is reserved for video and pci. PAE can allow apps to use more than 2gb of memory if they support it, while x64 will allow systems with more than 4gb of memory work.. Of course the /PAE methods to get more memory but this can cause driver and other issues.

Santa rosa will allow for more "wiggle room" on the underside of 8gb, giving you full access to all 4gb.

Side question on e1705.. is it that much heavier than the e1505 (or toshiba)? (7.8lbs vs 6.7lbs?) The 17" is attractive size wise, for the same price I can get this 17" 2.0ghz 667mhz fsb with 7900gs.. though I can get a toshiba a205 for the same price but only 1.7ghz, 533fsb, but dual Hard Drives, but only a 7300 card (doing video editing and rendering of videos on the laptop mainly).



Cheers

 

What speed was the ram you used?

 

A guy over on Notebookforums strapped a 2gb and a 1gb into an e1505 with BIOS rev 13. Ran on Vista 32 just fine apparently! So who knows?!? So if 3gb works..... and someone has money burning a hole in their pocket.... Let us know!

 

3 gigs should be seen by Windows in 32 and 64 bit
If you install 4 gigs your BIOS may say you have 4gigs but windows (depending on ur motherboards chipset) may tell you you have less like maybe around 3gig to 3.5gigs etc.