Quick question about T61 RAM upgrade

homerdog

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The laptop has two 512MB stick in it currently. If I replace one with a 2GB stick I assume it will no longer operate in dual channel mode. Is this correct?

Thanks.
 
Poopy.

The good news is that it was actually a single 1GB stick, so I just ordered another one for $11.99 + $0.99 shipping. Lol RAM is cheaper than food.
 

Actually, no.

The PM965 chipset supports something that Intel calls Flex Memory configurations, so that unmatched-size memory modules are still able to run interleaved. The effect is lessened to a degree, depending on size of the ram, but is still available to a certain extent.
Section 5.2.1.1 said:
The (G)MCH supports interleaved addressing in dual-channel memory configurations even when the two channels have unequal amounts of memory populated. This is called Intel(R) Flex Memory Technology.

Intel Flex Memory provides higher performance with different sized channel populations than Asymmetric mode (where no interleaving is used) by allowing some interleaving.

The memory channel addresses up to twice the size of the smaller SO-DIMM are interleaved on a 64-B boundary using address bit 6 (including any XOR-ing already using in interleaved mode). Above this, the rest of the address space is assigned to the remaining memory in the larger channel.
Click on this link for more information; search for the keyword "flex": http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/316273.pdf
 
cost, no doubt the review units got 2x 512mb but the retail units got 1x 1gb

@Albuquerque, Er I stand corrected ;)
 
The memory came in and the laptop is like brand new. Vista can't really run on 1GB, but it's fine with 2.
 
Why's this dependent on the chipset used? The memory controller is in the CPU these days.

I'm assuming the memory controller isn't actually doing round trips to the northbridge just to do RAM accesses, and that this is BS purely intended for artificial market segmentation...
 
Why's this dependent on the chipset used? The memory controller is in the CPU these days.

I'm assuming the memory controller isn't actually doing round trips to the northbridge just to do RAM accesses, and that this is BS purely intended for artificial market segmentation...

THe T61 is from the original Core days, before any of the "i" series that had IMC's. To more directly answer your question: memory controller on that era of hardware was contained the northbridge, and data accesses were transferred from the FSB to the northbridge, out the memory bus to the DIMMs, back to the northbridge, and back over the FSB to the processor.

It's not artificial so much as simply generational differences.
 
Why's this dependent on the chipset used? The memory controller is in the CPU these days.

I'm assuming the memory controller isn't actually doing round trips to the northbridge just to do RAM accesses, and that this is BS purely intended for artificial market segmentation...

Yeah this is a Core2 Duo so no IMC. Don't think I've ever heard of a 2nd gen Core (Core i?) series computer coming with 1GB of RAM. But I bet somewhere somebody has been sold such a thing.
 
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