8GB RAM in my laptop!

Laurence wrote on 6/1/2010, 1:49 PM
2 4GB RAM chips for my laptop came in today and I now have 8GB of RAM in my laptop! I ordered the memory from [link=kahlon.com and it was so much less expensive there than it was anywhere else that I was worried that there might be problems. Anyway, it came today: 8GB for $275. The chip were in OEM packaging but new and sealed. I installed them and they seem to test at the same speed as the chips that they replaced. I am just so tickled to have so much memory at such a reasonable price!

Comments

richard-amirault wrote on 6/1/2010, 3:26 PM
Yes, but .. can you use all that 8 gig?
Laurence wrote on 6/1/2010, 7:18 PM
It was my music software that made me want the extra memory the most. It isn't uncommon for a sampled piano to take up 12 GB of memory. Most of this is streamed from disk, but the more memory you have for buffering and disk caching the better it runs and the less you hear glitching in your mixes. Disk caching is especially effective with large instrument samples as in pop music a lot of notes are repeated and can read out of cached memory instead of going to the hard drive each time.

As far as video editing goes, I should be able to set up a nice sized preview buffer with the Vegas 64 bit now. I expect that really large graphics files with lots of layers will never lock up a render anymore.

When I got the computer, 8GB was an option but it was something like a thousand dollars extra. No way for that kind of money, but for $275 I think it is worthwhile.
richard-amirault wrote on 6/1/2010, 8:41 PM
I should be able to set up a nice sized preview buffer with the Vegas 64 bit now.

Ok, it's a 64 bit operating system at least. You didn't say *what* operating system you had in the first (or the second) message. That's why I asked.
rmack350 wrote on 6/1/2010, 9:47 PM
That's great Laurence. Congrats.

Yeah, 4GB SO-DIMMs were something like 8 times the price of 2GB SO-DIMMs. Some companies would just not spec their laptops for it since it was too expensive to ever plan to use it in manufacturing. And without that plan they wouldn't test it for compatibility.

It pretty much happens with any new DIMM size. It's too expensive and no one tests for compatibility for a year or so. Even chipsets get specified this way. A few of intel's chipsets that say they support 8 GB will actually support 16 GB if the board's BIOS will recognize it.

Rob