1 vs. 2gb ram

I just bought my first Thinkpad (T60) about 7 days ago... est shipping date is 8/31, I think it has something to do with me getting the 6-cell battery
*sigh*

Right now I've only configured it with 1gb of ram, but after reading some forums it seems like the ThinkVantage suite really takes up most of that already.

So I was wondering if anyone has experience with a 1gb to 2gb upgrade. Does it make a big difference? Of course I'm talking about multitasking ie. iTunes, Internet Explorer, Word, Trillian or AIM, maybe a webcam program of some sort. I may also do some very basic audio editing and movie watching, seperately, and probably with most of the programs mentioned before closed.

My current Dell desktop handles these OK, with periods of minor lag, especially with Trillian for some reason, but it's only HT 2.8 GH, not Dual Core. But Dell doesn't have ThinkVantage so I can't really compare.

Thanks for the input.

 

I recently went from 1GB to 1.5GB, and did not feel much of a difference at all. I remember with my old notebook, the jump from 512MB to 1GB was huge, in all ways.

Lots of times extra RAM will help in wats you don't know. Especially I would think with the movie editing you are doing, the more RAM the better. Same with high-end games.

 

It will also greatly extend the lifespan of the notebook, I built my current desktop almost 7 years ago with a gig when most people were building with 256-512MB. I don't game or anything, but if I didn't have 1GB now the computer would be pretty much useless with all but the lightest window managers. Besides dual vs single core, memory is probably the biggest thing that will extend a computer's lifespan these days. Following behind that would be the storage subsystem (scsi more than rotational velocity, obviously not available for notebooks) and discrete video.

I've been strongly considering getting a Q2010, but I'm having serious doubts because it's sickeningly expensive just to get 1GB, and 2GB isn't even an option. It's soldered on to the motherboard, so non-upgradable. I'm leaning back towards an X60 now, but I'll see what the merom refreshes look like.

 

jediknight, what you do doesn't sound very memory intensive. Having more than 1 GB RAM is more important if you edit huge image or video files, or perhaps if you play certain games.

Does your ThinkPad come with two 512 MB modules or one 1 GB module? If you can afford extra RAM, it certainly doesn't do any harm, but I consider 1 GB enough.

By the way, what makes you think that the ThinkVantage software takes up most of the RAM? I doubt that this is true.

 

I play Civilization 4 quite often on my T60 and while the jump from 1GB to 1.5GB RAM improved performance alot, 1.5GB to 2GB was even more.

Even just for basic office work, I would suggest 1.5GB RAM at least cuz there's a big improvement especially since notebooks run alot of programs in the background.

 

i am no longer a power user and i found no noticeable improvement beyond 1 gb.

Office work used to run great on 256mb a couple of years ago, when 1-gig was practically unheard of.

You may wait a bit... within 6 months the extra RAM will cost you half as much as it does now.

 

Fred, my 1gb is on a single module, does that make a difference? no dual-channeling perhaps? though I don't really know what that is for sure. And if you read the threads in T60s and such, people are always complaining about how much resources the ThinkVantage uses and how there are around 80 processes when the computer turns on, granted some are probably useless trial-ware to be deleted.

Jagged, I'm hoping to eek out as much battery life as I can from the computer, so having an extra ram module would probably use more energy and thus decrease battery life right? I was thinking about trying the computer with just 1gb and upgrading it later if I feel there's a need for it, but the new computer design seems to make that difficult.

Anyway, thanks for the info.

 

Actually adding more RAM can help battery life - if your machine is currently thrashing or swapping. The HD draws a lot of power so reducing its use will improve battery performance (and system performance). For basic office work and emailing and browsing, that's unlikely the case however.

 

hrm, thanks skibunny, that's something to think about now.

 

If you wanted to go from two 512 MB modules to two 1 GB modules you would have to get rid of the old RAM somehow and you would have to buy two 1 GB modules instead of one. That's the only reason I asked. You don't have that problem because you still have 1 memory slot available. Like I wrote earlier, if you can afford it, go ahead and buy another 1 GB of RAM, but you may not notice a difference in performance.