Question on memory upgrade

M

Martygi

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 14, 2003
Messages
82
I posted this in the memory section, but thought it would also apply here as well:

I read through the FAQ and while it was very informative, I didn't see the answer to my problem.

I just bought a new laptop and it has one 512mb chip in it. I did a Google search and found this site has the chip that I need:

http://www.pbtech.co.nz/index.php?item=MEMHYN4512

I would like to buy another 512mb chip but I don't want to pay the $145 their asking. I found some chips on Newegg for $50 or so and thought I was in the clear until I saw something about timing. My chip has this on it: 512mb 2RX16 PC2-4200S-444-12.

I'm very new at this, but I'm guessing the 444-12 is a timing reference, right? My questions are:

1. Can I use a chip with different timing (4-4-4-10 for example)?

2. Someone also mentioned that this is DDR2 and works in pairs and the chips need to be the same. So I'm guessing that if I want to take advantage of whatever the dual memory thing is I can't buy a 1gb chip as my second chip, right?

I know this is pretty basic stuff, but I've never really understood the memory thing. I'm not an overclocker and all my settings in the bios are factory settings.

Thanks in advance for ANY help offered.

Marty

Here's a like to the laptop specs in case it helps:

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/...kceghdgngdgnn.0
 
Try this, go to http://www.crucial.com/ and use their memory advisor. It should give you all the memory that will work with your notebook. Also their prices are pretty good and memory comes with lifetime warranty I believe.
 
As long as you buy a name brand like Kingston, Crucial, Corsair, etc you should be fine.

The Toshiba site is down but from the other link it is DDR2 ram.

This should run just fine in your machine:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145554

Timing should not matter. It will adjust to whatever stick is running slowest.

You could get a 1gb stick if you wanted. But yes it would not run in Dual Channel mode.
Dual Channel in a Pentium-M notebook does not give much of a performance boost anyways supposedly.
 
DDR2 like DDR 1 doesn't have to be installed in pairs, in fact, when you do install in pairs for dual channel the modules don't have to be exactly the same. You do need the same bus speed, but that's about it....even then you may not even need the same bus speed. The whole dual pack thing is just a marketing gimmick to get you to pay slightly more money for two modules in the same package.
 
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