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Mixed RAM? And other questions.
Ok so I recently bought a new laptop that I will use while Im at college.
Here are the specs:
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
AMD A6-3420M
6GB DDR3
AMD Radeon HD 6650M 1GB (dedicated) + AMD Radeon HD 6520G (integrated)
500GB HDD @ 5400 rpm
Okay so I have 3 questions.
The first one is about the RAM. Its 2 sticks one is 4gb and the other is 2gb. After reading some posts on various forums it seems that having 2 different sized sticks of RAM is bad. Is this true? And can you please explain why?
My other question is about the HDD. If I upgrade to a 500gb HDD @7200 rpm will i see a significant differnce in load speeds? Or would it be better to just grab some SSD?
My final question is about the CPU. How bad is it?
Any help would be appreciated!
Comments
Do you put all of the cars in the same lane? Half in each lane? 2/3 in one lane and 1/3 in the other? This isn't a trick question: the optimal solution is half in each lane.
Now suppose that you're designing a processor and have two identical memory channels. Every time something has to be sent over the memory bus, you get to decide which memory channel it will use. How do you divvy up the memory accesses?
Ideally, you want to put half of them in each channel. And if you have identical (or at least equivalent specs) memory modules in each channel, that's exactly what they do.
But what if you have a 4 GB module in one channel and 2 GB in the other? Now 2/3 of the data has to go in one channel and only 1/3 in the other. This is bad for the same reason that putting 2/3 of the cars in one lane and 1/3 in the other was bad.
But the question is how bad it is. If there's only one car going by every 10 seconds, then you could put them all in the same lane and it wouldn't matter. But if you've got a lot of traffic, trying to cram 2/3 of the cars in one lane is a big problem.
Likewise, if you're strongly restricted by memory bandwidth, mismatching the memory channels is a big problem. If you've got more memory bandwidth than you can realistically put to good use, then mismatched memory channels don't particularly matter.
With your laptop, the question is whether you need a lot of memory bandwidth. That's basically a question of whether you're using the integrated graphics.
If you're trying to play games on integrated graphics, then system memory has to feed the GPU as well as the CPU, and that means you're going to be starved for memory bandwidth. Hurting your memory bandwidth by mismatching the memory channels is quite a problem.
On the other hand, if you're using the discrete video card, or doing something that doesn't push the GPU much (e.g., e-mail), then you don't need that much system memory bandwidth, and it doesn't matter that the channels are mismatched.
It's pretty easy to fix mismatched memory channels, though. Just buy your own 4 GB memory module for $20, take out the 2 GB module that came with the computer, and plug in the 4 GB module. Leave the 4 GB module that came in the computer alone, and only pull out the 2 GB one. Then both channels will have 4 GB of memory.
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In other news, the forum seems to be having problems at the moment. Paragraphs won't appear on the page unless I insert the HTML tags myself, which is very strange.
1.
The simple answer is yes, 2 4GB would be better, possibly even 2 2GB would even be better. This way you can take advantage of Dual channel.
Not sure why companies sell systems with miss matched RAM. 6GB would be fine if you have triple channel, which to my knowledge still does not exist for any AMD board.
edit: missed second question.
2.
Not sure I would upgrade the harddrive unless I was going to stick an SSD to install my main system on and keep the other one for storage.
yes the 7200 is faster but you probably wont notice the 1 or 2 seconds difference that will only occur during loading screens.
The 7200RPM drive will load roughly 50% faster then the 5000RPM drive. Yes a significant increase to around 100 MB/s transfer rate from around a 66 MB/s transfer rate. With an SSD you are looking at around 350MB/s transfer rate average for a reasonably priced one. Some go up to near 500MB/s.
Chances are you will not see over 300 MB/s transfer rates because some systems do not have SATA 6.0 Gb/s. Also you will only notice the difference in loading times. Your system will boot faster. Your levels will load faster. Your large files will load faster. Once information is in memory it goes to your memories transfer rate which is usually incredibly high.
Your CPU is not that bad, but it seems you got the Llano part instead of the Trinity part. Hopefully you did not pay over $500 for the system. If you did you got ripped off as trinity A6 APUs come in that price range.
On your crossfire question, it completely depends on the memory inside. The most important aspect is you have 2 similar dimms in each slot. This means same clock speed and size. This allows the computer to more effeciently access memory which is incredibly important for a system with an APU. The other important thing for an APU system like this is the clock speed. Chances are the memory is not clocked at a very good speed due to it being on a laptop. 1600mhz+ would be good. If you have a high clocked memory, then crossfiring the 2 together would be possible. If you don't then I would recommend strictly using the dedicated video card for playing games. It will run faster then if it was crossfired because the dedicated card will not have to slow down for the integrated card.
I am not sure if your laptop supports switching graphics for more energy effeciency, or powering off the dedicated card. If it does then thats great. The Radeon Mobility HD6600 should be sufficient for playing games. I would say its the minimum you would want for playing 1080p movies and games from 2~4 years ago on near max settings.