Latitude C840 Ram Upgrade.

Question

I recently upgraded my Dell Latitude C840 notebook with a stick of 200-pin SODIMM DDR PC2100.  After upgraded and getting the ram installed I was expecting an increase in speed but noticed NO difference.  I compared my 1.8ghz(1 gig of ram) laptop to my friends 1.3ghz (1 gig of ram) laptop and his machine blows my machine out of the water.  His machine acts way faster then mine.  I plan on doing another reformat with the new stick of ram installed, but I was wondering if I need to upgrade the BIOS or if there is something that I am missing.  Thanks for the help.

Rx7raven · Answer

I was just using his computer as a reference.  My main question was 'Do I need to upgrade the bios when I install the new ram?'  I noticed no difference in the machine from when I was running 512 then to when I was running 1 gig.  Anything I can do to see if the ram is working?

funtoupgrade · Answer

Lot's of factors affect laptop speeds. What version of the BIOS are you using? Are the hard drives identical speeds? Do they have similar blank space left? Same video cards? Both machines have all the lastest Windows updates? Wiping your drive clean and installing a fresh copy of Win XP frequently makes a big difference when things start to bog down.

funtoupgrade · Answer

Not normally.  Look at the setup screen when you start the laptop (F2). It will tell you how much ram the BIOS is seeing.

Rx7raven · Answer

It read the 1 gig of ram.  but the computer doesn't act like it has a gig.

ejn63 · Answer

Are you comparing a 1.8 GHz P4 to a 1.3 GHz Pentium-M?

Rx7raven · Answer

I shouldn't have put that comparision in this post.  So lets ignore the comparision and see if we can figure out if my ram is working or not....I don't think it is cause things don't run faster.  I ran some photoshop filters that seemed to run faster but that is the only time that i have noticed a difference.

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Latitude C840 Ram Upgrade.

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