Inspiron 1720 with 6GB RAM Tested

[The_Snowman]

Found this stick via a link in another 6GB or 8GB thread from below, and it is great for anyone overseas so I will share it here, the site is very easy to navigate, search and provide all details of products listed -

MEMORY C . COM (Ireland )

They also have the latest Vertex 120GB SSD at reasonable price so looks like I'm set do this

[SomeFormOFhuman]

@ SomeFormOFhuman,

So, is this laptop still going OK? I hope so, great write up, much appreciated, I am considering this at present, depends if I can get the RAM locally or have to have it shipped in.

A more pressing upgrade for me is to install a larger HDD and Windows 7 at the same time; not even sure if that would work OK?

Would the Drive D still be recognozed by Windows 7?

I have asked about this on other threads, but if anyone reading this has any tips, please let me know.

Thanks, John

It's still alive and kicking. Still fast and in pristine condition from the day it arrived to my home 3 years ago. I use it as my backup machine. Yes I've Windows 7 x64 installed and a 1TB HDD setup with dual Hitachi 7K500 7200rpm harddrives installed. (Would be nice if there were RAID options in the BIOS though...) Now only armed with a T9300; the X9000 is now in my M1730.

[The_Snowman]

It's still alive and kicking. Still fast and in pristine condition from the day it arrived to my home 3 years ago. I use it as my backup machine. Yes I've Windows 7 x64 installed and a 1TB HDD setup with dual Hitachi 7K500 7200rpm harddrives installed. (Would be nice if there were RAID options in the BIOS though...) Now only armed with a T9300; the X9000 is now in my M1730.

Thanks for the reply, now changed my mind to going with the 1 x SSD and 1 x HDD (probably the Hitachi 7K500 7200rpm)

Once I do that, I will see how it is running and get the 4GB RAM later this year if I think it is worthwhile. I can get the best price and shipping to KSA from the store mentioned before, so that works good for me.

I have checked out the processor upgrades, but will just do 1 thing at a time and make sure all is working as I go along. And they are a lot of $$$$ for maybe not to much gain from T7500 to T9500

And now all this talk of SSD, WIN 7, and so on has me thinking of opening up my Acer Aspire One and putting new stuff in there

[The_Snowman]

Yippee, I won a brand new 4GB stick of RAM on eBay for only $66.87, even with shipping it is about 60% of the best online price I can find, just have to wait for it now

G.Skill DDR2 667 PC2-5300 Laptop Memory 5-5-5-15 1x4GB

[Jed_Myre]

Inspiring *cough*

I'm just now starting to look at upgrading my currently unmodified 1720.

I'm planning on throwing in a Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB Solid State Hybrid Drive into my first bay and shuffling over the existing HDD to bay 2. SSD would be faster I know but the hybrid seems a good compromise.

I have a T7700 CPU and upgrading that would be wonderful do you have any tips on that?

Had no idea I could bump the RAM past the 4GB limit... I really wanna do that as well. Anye word on whether you can get the 1720 to support a full 8GB?

Now that last thing is the NVidia 8600M GT I wish I could bump that up to at least a 512MB or 1024MB card. Did you tweak settings on the 8600?

Again thank for posting this it's great to know what is possible!

[Tsunade_Hime]

Inspiring *cough*

I'm just now starting to look at upgrading my currently unmodified 1720.

I'm planning on throwing in a Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB Solid State Hybrid Drive into my first bay and shuffling over the existing HDD to bay 2. SSD would be faster I know but the hybrid seems a good compromise.

I have a T7700 CPU and upgrading that would be wonderful do you have any tips on that?

Had no idea I could bump the RAM past the 4GB limit... I really wanna do that as well. Anye word on whether you can get the 1720 to support a full 8GB?

Now that last thing is the NVidia 8600M GT I wish I could bump that up to at least a 512MB or 1024MB card. Did you tweak settings on the 8600?

Again thank for posting this it's great to know what is possible!

T7700 is already a high end processor. Only thing would be jumping to a T9300 but you really won't see a performance gain.

GM965/PM965 will support 8 GB RAM. Intel wrote the specs before 4 GB modules were available on the market.

The 8600M GT has 256 MB discreet and with Turbo Cache can leech another 256 MB from your RAM, no way of getting it to 1 GB but kind of pointless as it's a 128 bit card with GDDR2 RAM. OC can be done.

[Jed_Myre]

GM965/PM965 will support 8 GB RAM. Intel wrote the specs before 4 GB modules were available on the market.

The 8600M GT has 256 MB discreet and with Turbo Cache can leech another 256 MB from your RAM..

8GB = music to my ears!

Just downloaded Nvidia system tools to start tweakin hope I don't blow anything up

[SomeFormOFhuman]

GM965/PM965 supports 8GB.

But the 1720, 1520 does NOT, due to BIOS limitation in this case. Therefore, it's up to 6GB maximum.

[Jed_Myre]

GM965/PM965 supports 8GB.

But the 1720, 1520 does NOT, due to BIOS limitation in this case. Therefore, it's up to 6GB maximum.

Thanks for the clarify on that. So I take it with the mixed 2GB+4GB stick combo you lose some performance dropping out of dual channel mode?

PS: I do see in the BIOS screenshots it shows DUAL CHANNEL but I thought that was only active for matched stick configurations...

[Tsunade_Hime]

An update;

I got a 4 GB stick of Corsair DDR2 800. Does not POST with Vostro 1500 A06 BIOS. =( Had high hopes, guess not.