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Added More Ram and Vista Experience Index dropped from 3.1 to 2.6

I'm puzzled, I expected to see an mprovement when I upgarded the RAM. I have an Acer Notebook Core Duo 1.66 running Vista Home Premium and replaced one of the two 1gb dimms with a 2gb dimm for 3gb total. The memory is recognized correctly and shows as 3056mb But I ran a new experience index and it plummeted to 2.6 from 3.1. and shows memory operations per second as being the culprit.
Since then I've done the following:
1) tested the memory (OK)
2) enabled large address support using BDEdit sucessfully (no difference)
3) checked voltage requirements and latency of both dimms (same)
4) confirmed that the memorys being accessed in dual channel mode (I think) Does anyone know how to confirm this?
Any ideas on what may be causing this or any tricks to properly utilze 3GB of memory in Vista. I've heard that when you enable large address space you may have problems with your kernel running out of space or drivers misbehaving. Is that so? How to avoid it?

Help Please

BurtAnderson

Memory chips need to match. Either run 2 1GB DIMM, or 2 2GB DIMMs. You can't mix and match and have everything run peachy.

Unless they changed something with Vista I haven't heard about - I've managed to avoid it so far.

LeeTutor

See if reading this page gives you any insight into what happened:

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2006/09/22/windows-experience-index-an-in-depth-look.aspx

John

My IBM T61p has a 1Gb card and a 2Gb card for a total of 3Gb and the performance scores are fair - 5.3 for CPU, 5.0 for RAM, 5.3 for Hard drive, and 5.2 for gaming. Graphics suck on this box, so the overall score is poor. However (1) I don't think you need to run memory cards in pairs, and (2) since this is a business machine only, the poor graphics scrore doesn't fuss me. ... T

Inveigler

ASKER

I agree, I think I've done enough research to be fairly certain that the size of the memory should not effect performance. They likely have to be the same mhz and latency/voltage though. Crucial even sells laptop upgrade kits of 3GB (2GB and 1GB)
It encourages me to know that thinkpads_user has a similar config and is getting a 5.0 experience index. I also have integrated graphics so I don't expect blazing performance but this sucks.
Something else is up

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

McKnife

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Inveigler

ASKER

Your answer provided the most information which might have been useful,
Thanks