Adding RAM to laptop -- Does it kill the battery life ??

[Jet A1]

Currently run a P4 2.66 512 RAM and 128mb Graphics -- Just about to expand to 1024mb RAM but heard that doing affects the battery life -- Truth or Fiction ?????

Best Regards and Greetings of the Season to All !

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Jet A1,

Believe it or not, yes it does. A good rule of thump is:

A stick of PC 66/100 uses 7 Watts
Two sticks of PC 66/100 use 14 Watts
A stick of PC 133 uses 12 Watts
Two sticks of PC 133 use 24 Watts
A stick of DDR uses 10 Watts
Two sticks of DDR use 20 Watts
A Pair of RAMBUS uses 10 Watts
Two Pairs of RAMBUS use 20 Watts

I do not think it would use that much to make it not wise to up your RAM. If you are running WinXP, 512Mb of RAM is optimal, what are you planning on running on your notebook that needs 1Gb of RAM?

Take Care,

Richard

[goates]

Everything in the computer will require some power, so adding more memory will shorten the battery life as Naples has pointed out. Something else to consider though is that if you have more RAM, the computer can load more data into memory and will use the hard drive less. As the hard drive is mechanical, it can easily use more power than RAM. More RAM also means that the OS wil not need to use virtual memory as much, which again means less use of the hard drive.

goates

[Mac the Knife]

XP with 512mb hardly ever uses the paging file so you won't cut down on hard disk accesses. I s'pose if you're doing video editing it might help - but not many people do that on a laptop...

IMHO unless you have some really specific reason for needing scads of memory (apart from the gee-whiz factor) suggest you stick with 512mb 'cos increasing it WILL increase your power consumption (and make everything run warmer).

Linux Registered User 302442

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

TCS

The only way he is going to come close to the performance of his desktop is if his notebook has Radeon Mobility 9600 vid card and a 7200rpm hard drive (most have 4200rpm drives).

A Centrino Notebook with Pentium M, Radeon 9600, a 7200 RPM Drive, and 512Mb of DDR would be an excellent start. (But it will put a dent in the wallet.)

Take Care,

Richard

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

TCS,

I was just being hypothetical about what a notebook would need to come close to a desktop with the same basic specs.

Celery, with 128Mb of RAM, a Trident CyberBlade or Intel 852GME integrated, a 4200rpm drive, and WinXP is just not going to feel like any desktop, performance wise.

Richard

[Jet A1]

Thanks for replies folks -- My laptop runs the ATI 9600 and had 64mb memory as standard but have upgraded to allow the video memory expand to 128mb and still kepp the 512mb to run Windows XP at a decent pace....Runs FS2002/4 very well and seen benefits with Medal of Honour and alike also !

Impressed with it so far ! Not seen much excess Battery drain - YET !

Space is a factor for me so need a laptop rather than a desktop !