Another RAM question!

I've seen the posts about whether to get two 512s or one 1gb stick of ram, and it seems that people never take into account whether or not a person with, say....1 512 stick or 1 256 stick could get rid of that stick and replace it with a 1gb stick, leaving the other spot for another 1gb stick. Is there some computer upgrade rule that I don't know, or could someone with 2 512 sticks just replace both if they really wanted to? I have been trying to decide whether to get a 1gb stick or the two, but a future upgrade to 2gb is an important option for me to leave open.

 

If I understand your question it is easier to get a 1gb stick if you are going to upgrade as all you need to do is buy/add another.

With 2 512mbs, you would have to sell them/ take them out, then buy the memory you wanted probably resulting in a higher cost.

So no, there is no computer upgrade rule that stops you taking out, selling, and mixing and matching. (although remember your laptop will have a maximum)

Hope that helps, sorry if I didn't answer your question.

 

Sam's got it. If you get 2x512 you basically get a couple of keychains out of an upgrade. (you take out at least one of the sticks if not both) So if you plan on upgrading your laptop befor you get a new one get one big stick instead of two smaller ones. However, if you don't do much intensive work or gaming on your lappy you may want to considder the 2xsmaller sticks as you will get a bit more performance out of them than 1xbig stick. Also apprently most newer laptops support flexible dual channel memory. This means you can swap out one of your smaller sticks and stick in a larger stick while still running them in dual channel. So you have a few options going on here.

 

Thanks for the info guys....doesn't one stick use slightly less energy/result in slightly higher battery life? I thought I saw that somewhere

and btw sick, did you notice that it looks like the language filter really doesn't like some of your specs...lol

 

Hah, and there seems to be one too few asterisks to fill the voids - Mat****a...

 

Well there are some systems that will take advantage of "Dual Channel" acceleration, but the increase isn't that much. If you want to future-proof your system so you can upgrade in the future, I'd say go with the single stick. As for power consumption, I wouldn't know, but I highly doubt it. I think it'll save you more time to open up applications and multitask, thus saving time and battery.
Just my opinion.