Dell Laptop Memory upgrade question

Hello there,

I have plans to upgrade memory of my Inspiron 5100 Laptop (3+ years
old, purchased in Belgium). Currently I have 512 MB RAM, and I WISH to
upgrade to as much as possible.

I posted the same question to Dell community forum as well, nothing
much has come out yet and therefore I am posting the question here.
Pls dont consider this as abuse, I just want to reach out to maximum
Dell users and people in general, who might have views/experiences/
knowledge about this topic.

I contacted crucial (www.crucial.com) and another vendor here in
Switzerland. Both of them say that Inspiron 5100 will support max 1 GB
RAM.

I have a feeling that they are mentioning that number based on Dell
specifications about the model. And that the actual supported might be
more than what Dell said 3 years back.

I again want to refer to other fellow forum-members who have more
knowledge and experience with this.

Technically, I think that a 32 bit system can support upto 4 GB of
RAM. Or is that understanding incorrect ?

What other factors can be responsible for the upper limit of RAM
supported on a given PC ?

Looking for knowledge and advice.

regards
raghav..

On Apr 11, 3:12 pm, "Raghav" <sharma.raghven...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello there,
>
> I have plans to upgrade memory of my Inspiron 5100 Laptop (3+ years
> old, purchased in Belgium). Currently I have 512 MB RAM, and I WISH to
> upgrade to as much as possible.
>
> I posted the same question to Dell community forum as well, nothing
> much has come out yet and therefore I am posting the question here.
> Pls dont consider this as abuse, I just want to reach out to maximum
> Dell users and people in general, who might have views/experiences/
> knowledge about this topic.
>
> I contacted crucial (www.crucial.com) and another vendor here in
> Switzerland. Both of them say that Inspiron 5100 will support max 1 GB
> RAM.
>
> I have a feeling that they are mentioning that number based on Dell
> specifications about the model. And that the actual supported might be
> more than what Dell said 3 years back.
>
> I again want to refer to other fellow forum-members who have more
> knowledge and experience with this.
>
> Technically, I think that a 32 bit system can support upto 4 GB of
> RAM. Or is that understanding incorrect ?
>
> What other factors can be responsible for the upper limit of RAM
> supported on a given PC ?
>
> Looking for knowledge and advice.
>
> regards
> raghav..

May be I should add, Its a P4 2.4GHz, running Windows XP Home SP2

"Raghav" <> wrote in message
news: oups.com...
> Hello there,
>
> I have plans to upgrade memory of my Inspiron 5100 Laptop (3+ years
> old, purchased in Belgium). Currently I have 512 MB RAM, and I WISH to
> upgrade to as much as possible.
>
> I posted the same question to Dell community forum as well, nothing
> much has come out yet and therefore I am posting the question here.
> Pls dont consider this as abuse, I just want to reach out to maximum
> Dell users and people in general, who might have views/experiences/
> knowledge about this topic.
>
> I contacted crucial (www.crucial.com) and another vendor here in
> Switzerland. Both of them say that Inspiron 5100 will support max 1 GB
> RAM.
>
> I have a feeling that they are mentioning that number based on Dell
> specifications about the model. And that the actual supported might be
> more than what Dell said 3 years back.
>
> I again want to refer to other fellow forum-members who have more
> knowledge and experience with this.
>
> Technically, I think that a 32 bit system can support upto 4 GB of
> RAM. Or is that understanding incorrect ?
>
> What other factors can be responsible for the upper limit of RAM
> supported on a given PC ?
>
> Looking for knowledge and advice.
>
> regards
> raghav..
>

The problem isn't age, it is the chipset. Many chipsets of that time period
were limited in their available memory support. Crucial is generally right
and doesn't limit themselves to the manufactureres limits. I've seen
several machines where Dell listed a lower limit than Crucial.

2GB would be quite expensive, though, as you only have two slots.
Personally, given its age, I wouldn't go about 1GB.

Raghav wrote:
>
> May be I should add, Its a P4 2.4GHz, running Windows XP Home SP2

Then it's almost certainly limited to 2GB MAX by the (Intel?) chipset it's
built on, which has a limitation of 1GB of RAM per memory _slot_.

The confusion in MAX RAM supported on P4 laptops usually arises from the
fact that 1GB SODIMM memory sticks weren't available at the time these
laptops were produced.

There are numerous Thinkpad P4 based laptops (e.g. T30, A31, etc.) which
have published manufacturer's specifications which state that they only
support 1GB (2 x 512MB) of RAM. In fact, all of these models support 2GB (2
x 1GB) of RAM.
--
James

Visit the Thinkpad Forums
http://forum.thinkpads.com

Yes, the Inspiron 5100 series notebooks all have an Intel mobile chipset. They
can accept 2x1GB DDR SODIMMs... Ben Myers

On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 22:17:45 GMT, "JHEM" <>
wrote:

>Raghav wrote:
>>
>> May be I should add, Its a P4 2.4GHz, running Windows XP Home SP2
>
>Then it's almost certainly limited to 2GB MAX by the (Intel?) chipset it's
>built on, which has a limitation of 1GB of RAM per memory _slot_.
>
>The confusion in MAX RAM supported on P4 laptops usually arises from the
>fact that 1GB SODIMM memory sticks weren't available at the time these
>laptops were produced.
>
>There are numerous Thinkpad P4 based laptops (e.g. T30, A31, etc.) which
>have published manufacturer's specifications which state that they only
>support 1GB (2 x 512MB) of RAM. In fact, all of these models support 2GB (2
>x 1GB) of RAM.