Upgrading RAM to 4GB

Today I just wanted to share my experience of upgrading the RAM of my gaming laptop, the XPS M1710 from DELL.
I’ve been wondering if it would be worth changing my 2×1GB of RAM for 2×2GB. Would I run applications faster? Do I really need those extra 2GB of RAM? I searched the web for some signs of wisdom which could lead me to the right path. Well, it was very insightful and I got the idea that yes, it is worth it.

First things first. I own one of DELL’s 2006 power gaming machine. It is still a good laptop with a DUAL CORE 2 DUO CPU (2.16GHz), 2GB of RAM (the one we’re going to be talking about), GeForce 7950GTX 512MB, 160GB hard drive, 17″ wide screen, etc. You can check the details on some website (it is a very popular laptop), I can run most of the games currently available out there with some nice resolutions. I’m not a gamer, but I like playing a bit sometimes and sometimes more than a bit :p . Or simply try a game to have the feeling of what kind of gameplay certain games have.

I am running Microsoft Vista Home Premium (32bit) which everyone says needs at least 2GB RAM to run properly. Does it? Well, I’ve been running this PC with only 2GB of RAM and I have to say it’s been alright. It is mostly a multimedia laptop which I use to listen to music, to put some photos and work with Photoshop, to navigate the web and play some games when I have a bit of spare time. This was OK until I installed Age of Conan and after that Warhammer Online. Age of Conan, I have to say as a side note, was a disappointment (graphic issues ruined a good game for me), so I will skip that one.

Warhammer Online plays quite nicely in my 2 year old machine. I can run it almost perfectly under the 1920×1200 resolution with everything on high (don’t throw rocks at me, I said “almost”). If I lower down to 1440×900 I can play really well with everything at maximum settings. The game looks good.

I’m playing and I’m quite happy but with some annoying hard disk activity that sometimes freezes the game for a small instant. If I need to check something on the internet; …ALT+TAB …wait …wait …arghhh …wait. It takes around one minute before the Desktop becomes available so that I can run any application. Damn, that’s a lot. Imagine if you do this a lot while playing? You would probably throw the laptop out of the window. Not to mention that when going back to the game you need to wait the same time or even longer. I used a workaround which, to be honest, it partially worked. I set the game to run on 1920×1200 in windows mode (disabled full screen and the frame and set the window mode to run at 1920×1200). Note that you need to run the game with the same resolution that you have in Windows, so that you can play in a full screen window. While this worked (pressing ALT+TAB took around that 3-4 seconds to happen) it is not optimal, since the game does not perform that well in window mode. I need to lower down some settings to be able to play the way I like. Playing at 1440×900 seems quite good but since my laptop’s native resolution is 1920×1200 I would like to stick to that.

Ok, that’s enough, I went to the store and bought 2×2GB of RAM (DDR2 667Mhz PC5300 Kingston CL5). I spent 63 euros (around £50 or $100) which is not bad at all. Arrived at home, took the old memory out and put the new one. Restarted the PC, went to Windows and it recognised my 4GB of RAM (mind that I have Windows Vista 32bit with SP1 - read note below). First thing I did after restarting Windows was to open the Task Manager in my second monitor (to check the physical memory load while playing the game) and start the game Warhammer Online in full screen (1920×1200).

To be honest it loaded a bit faster. Checking the Task Manager, after loading the game and start playing, the memory load is around 62%. Compared with the 85% I had with 2GB of RAM it’s quite a big difference. Ok, so far so good. I notice that the hard drive is not as active as previously (it caches more stuff into the physical memory instead of being constantly reading and writing to the hard drive). Let’s go to the Desktop; …3 …2 …1 ALT+TAB and puff, in about 1 second I’m in the Desktop. That was great. Let me do it again ALT+TAB, and there you go, 2-3 seconds later I’m back in the game. The game is running at full maximum settings and at 1920×1200. I have to say that it was really worth it.

If you have your physical memory going above 70% constantly then you should probably consider getting some more.

NOTE: 32bit operating systems can’t use the full 4GB of RAM. Windows with Service Pack 1 already reports the full 4GB of RAM. Before SP1 it reported the physical amount of RAM available. Because of the way 32bit systems work, they can only have space reserved to other stuff (for example graphics) in those 4GB, meaning that it will reserve part of the area which would be used by the RAM itself. This will cause some part of your RAM to be inaccessible. I have currently 3.3GB of allocated RAM in my 32bit operating system. Some people may have a bit more or less depending on the system. Of course this means that you can buy RAM to have 3GB instead of the 2GB. I bought 2×2GB and replaced my 2×1GB simply because I wanted to have identical memory in both slots to take advantage of the dual DDR system. With 1×2GB and 1×1GB you can also take advantage of it, but it means some of the memory accesses would be asymetrical, that could lead to a minor decrease in performance (only very minor from what I know, barely noticeable).
Of course you can always have Windows Vista 64bit installed and get your full 4GB or even more with no problems. But be aware that you could face some issues related to available 64bit drivers. Do your research before upgrading.

Ok… this was my big adventure on getting my Warhammer Online running very well on Windows Vista by upgrading the laptop’s RAM. Don’t forget, you can’t have too much RAM. Buy as much as you can afford. And the prices are quite low, for DDR2 at least. It’s well worth it. In this example I talked about a gaming experience, but it is also valid for heavy photo/image/3D editing as for other kind of work in your computer.

If it eats too much RAM then you need to get some more to keep feeding the beast.