Inspiron 1720 Memory

Hi all, I'm new to the forum and am just about to upgrade my Inspiron 1720 to a T9500 (currently a T7250)

At the same time, I'm going to swap out the 2Gb of RAM for 4GB.

I've searched the net and this forum for the answer to this question, but haven't had any luck: Is there any point in buying DDR2-800 memory, or is the Inspiron 1720 stuck at 667MHz no matter what processor is in there?

Thanks in advance for your help, guys...

 

Shouldn't matter what CPU you have, the memory speed is independent and specific to the northbridge chipset.

If the cost of the DDR2-800 is anywhere close to the cost of DDR2-667 for you, I would get the '800 speed just to ensure, first; stability and secondly; a little more future proofing of your purchase. It will clock down to 667 speed anyways on your 1720, but if you finally sell/replace this notebook, you have a greater chance of use for the higher speed RAM (if just to sell it at a little higher price, or to more potential buyers - remember they too can use DDR2-800 in their DDR2-667 notebooks) than the DDR2-667 modules.

Basically, it is a matter of future-proofing your purchase, if you decide to go for the '800 speed modules, but you can't change the speed of what your MB supports. Sorry.

Good luck.

 

Your 1720 uses a GM965 and will be able to support up to 6GB DDR2-667MHz effective RAM with BIOS A09. Yes, getting a DDR2-800 will have your RAM being clocked down to just 667Mhz effective due to the chipset support.

At the moment the 800/667 modules are priced the same (as of my area). Well you can buy a 2x2GB DDR2-800 setup to work effectively with your next notebook armed with a GM/PM45 chipset but the chances are, generally most notebooks with be equipped with 4GB RAM standard, (Again, as of my area) and the modules you purchased have will probably end up used only in the 1720.

Personally, an i5/i7 setup will be the way coupled along with DDR3 memory modules. Just my point of view.

 

Thanks for the speedy replies, guys - Yup, the modules do seem to be similarly priced so I'll go with the 800's.

An i5/i7 set up would be lovely, but I'm trying to avoid buying a new laptop. Hopefully this way should unleash a good bit more power for a relatively small investment.

Cheers again,

Fordy

 

Depends on the programs (and how many you want to run consecutively) if the RAM will help.

Also consider a HD upgrade and also an upgrade to Win 7 too. Both relatively inexpensive compared to a new system, but depending on what HD and O/S you're running now, you could see up to a 30% improvement or more.

Check out the student prices for Win 7 upgrades and for a HD I recommend the new Hitachi 7K500 500GB 7200 RPM model.

Cheers!

 

Oops - Sorry, should have said - I'm already running W7 Pro, and I've replaced the standard dual hard drives with two SSDs - For the O/S I use an ASAX Leopard Hunt 32GB, and for my audio work, I use a 64Gb Samsung PB22-J

The upgrade to W7 was very smooth, and the SSD's are blindingly fast (boot from cold to desktop in 23s)

Cheers again!

 

Ah! Nice.

But, is the Win 7 a x64 bit variant? That might increase your performance even more - depending on the software you use, of course.

Otherwise, this should be the last upgrade you'll need to do to this machine.

Enjoy!

 

Interesting! I just went with a 32bit version of Windows. I was advised that there may be hardware and software compatibility issues with the 64bit version (like a lack of 64bit drivers for my soundcard, printer etc)

Is there much of a speed difference running a 64bit O/S?

 

In Win 7, there shouldn't be - unless the apps you run are native 64bit apps. Then, you should see a speed difference (but probably small enough to not worry about with only 4GB of RAM total).

I 'went' to x64 bit around 3 yrs ago with Vista x64 and have never looked back. I did have to change my printer and getting a couple of scanners working was a little trouble, but overall the x64 bit variants of both Vista and Win 7 seem very stable and trouble free for me.

Btw, been using Win 7 x64 for almost 7 months now - much improved over Vista, imo.

Cheers!

 

You should have no problems running Win 7 x64 on it. To be frank, all I did was to use Windows Update, and the entire system gets updated with all the components detected and the selected drivers for download. GPU drivers I would recommend getting them from Nvidia or LaptopVideo2Go. Your machine is all ready and set. As for external peripherals... well as far as concerned majority should work now; heck its 2010, x64 is getting common these days and I'm sure hardware companies should be aware of that and update their drivers.

So far I have yet to encounter any compatibility problems with my external peripherals and even old software.

Depends on what you do on your system that can take advantage of the x64 architecture. i.e, I use Photoshop CS4 x64 all the time on both of my machines, and it was significantly faster (especially photomerging) and more importantly able to use more RAM off the system.