Readyboost and adding more RAM through usb.

[The Arbiter2267]

So, I was doing research on my potato laptop, core i3 2330m, 4gb ram, windows 7 32bit and i discovered Readyboost and adding more ram via usb flash drive. I found some sandisk drives on Amazon (2x32) for a total of 64gb of storage. I’m wondering, will it add 64gb of ram to my system? Or is there some division that goes on and changes up the number. I plan to use one or both sticks through readyboost. Thanks for the tech tips.

[tkitch]

Readyboost is...  only useful in stupidly specific circumstances.

 

It does NOT add RAM.  Never has, never will.

 

If you're looking to speed up the laptop:  Replace the HDD with an SSD.  If you're running on an SSD Already, Readyboost will NOT speed up anything.

[Hairless Monkey]

Is the 4GB soldered? Are you not able to add more actual RAM?

[Eigenvektor]

ReadyBoost is/was intended as a sort of disk cache for slow HDDs. Which means it requires a fairly large and fast USB stick to be remotely useful (in combination with a slow HDD). Even the fastest USB stick on the market is nowhere near the speed of a modern SSD, let alone RAM. USB sticks also are not the best in term of longevity with lots of writes.

 

If you could use ReadyBoost as "RAM" it would be identical to a permanent use of swap instead of physical RAM: Unbearably slow.

[The Arbiter2267]

31 minutes ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Is the 4GB soldered? Are you not able to add more actual RAM?

I haven’t opened it up yet, it’s a 2009 dell latitude e5440 I think.

[The Arbiter2267]

34 minutes ago, tkitch said:

Readyboost is...  only useful in stupidly specific circumstances.

 

It does NOT add RAM.  Never has, never will.

 

If you're looking to speed up the laptop:  Replace the HDD with an SSD.  If you're running on an SSD Already, Readyboost will NOT speed up anything.

So, is the only way to actually “add more ram” by directly snapping it in to the motherboard? Or could I get some kind of outboard ram

[tkitch]

1 minute ago, The Arbiter2267 said:

So, is the only way to actually “add more ram” by directly snapping it in to the motherboard? Or could I get some kind of outboard ram

the only way to add more, is to add it to the board directly, yes.

That system should have 2 RAM slots, so you can easily upgrade to 8 or 16GB RAM, and it shouldn't be terribly expensive.  

 

No, you cannot "outboard" ram, since no other interface on a computer and pretend to compete with the bandwidth needed for RAM.

[The Arbiter2267]

Is there a way I can pinpoint the model of the motherboard to know what size of ram stick to get, or is there such thing as laptop exclusive ram, like ITX form size stuff

 

[Hairless Monkey]

1 hour ago, The Arbiter2267 said:

Is there a way I can pinpoint the model of the motherboard to know what size of ram stick to get, or is there such thing as laptop exclusive ram, like ITX form size stuff

 

With an i3 2330m, you'll be looking for DDR3 SO-DIMM RAM, probably 1066Mhz or 1333 Mhz. Get CPU-Z and check the SPD tab. Get RAM that matches the speed and timings of your existing RAM as closely as possible. If you post a screenshot of that tab, I can help you pick something out.

 

Also, remember to quote as I did above, or @The Arbiter2267so that we get a notification when you respond. You are lucky that I decided to check back in ono this thread.

[Selle]

2 hours ago, The Arbiter2267 said:

 windows 7 32bit

32bit windows cant use more than 4gb of ram, if you add more ram you have to reinstall windows with 64 bit version

[The Arbiter2267]

22 hours ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

With an i3 2330m, you'll be looking for DDR3 SO-DIMM RAM, probably 1066Mhz or 1333 Mhz. Get CPU-Z and check the SPD tab. Get RAM that matches the speed and timings of your existing RAM as closely as possible. If you post a screenshot of that tab, I can help you pick something out.

 

Also, remember to quote as I did above, or @The Arbiter2267so that we get a notification when you respond. You are lucky that I decided to check back in ono this thread.

Ok, thank you for the advice. I will do that this weekend and post the picture

[The Arbiter2267]

22 hours ago, Selle said:

32bit windows cant use more than 4gb of ram, if you add more ram you have to reinstall windows with 64 bit version

wait like, even if I plug it directly into ram slots on the motherboard?

[Hairless Monkey]

Just now, The Arbiter2267 said:

wait like, even if I plug it directly into ram slots on the motherboard?

Yes. You would have to upgrade to a 64bit operating system in order to use more than 4GB of RAM.