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Atom N2600 RAM limits - 2 GB or more?

idata
Employee
9,980 Views

The technical specs document for the Atom N2600 lists maximum RAM as 2 GB.

Yet I have an Acer netbook, an Aspire One D270, in which I've upgraded from 1 GB to 4 GB with a 4 GB DDR3 PC3-10600 Crucial SODIMM I had around. I put the new SODIMM into the netbook's sole RAM slot and installed Win 7 Home Premium 32 bit.

It performs flawlessly, BIOS showing 4 GB, and with the expected 3 GB available to 32-bit Win 7, the rest "hardware reserved."

The issue is - what are the reasons for the 2 GB limit claim for the N2600? Is there some issue with the memory controller's electrical characteristics or other engineering issue? Can I expect possible memory errors, hangs, etc. from this arrangement?

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idata
Employee
7,158 Views

Hello scotsilv,

The memory compatibility is determined by the processor's design; this does not mean that because of an issue during the manufacturing process, the processor is limited to a specific maximum memory amount value; the main reason of why the limitation, is merely marketing decisions in order to cover the different market segments.

Furthermore, processors that come installed on mobile systems, such as laptops, notebooks, etc… are tray units. These processors are sold to the different system builders, for them to be able to customize the processor as they wish for them to be able to integrate it on the system they have designed. Due to this, the specifications of the processor might vary from vendor to vendor.

From our side, the specifications publicly available correspond to the manufacturing design. If the processor from your system was not customized to support 4GB in total, the system might be able to work; in the mid time, the processor will be forced to run at higher specifications for it to keep up with the memory settings. This can provoke an unstable environment (system hangs, blue screens, restarts, etc) or even a processor failure in the future.

You can always check and confirm the manufacturing specifications at the processor data sheets, page 10: http://www.intel.my/content/www/my/en/processors/atom/atom-d2000-n2000-vol-1-datasheet.html# iid=5819 http://www.intel.my/content/www/my/en/processors/atom/atom-d2000-n2000-vol-1-datasheet.html# iid=5819

Our best recommendation at this point, would be confirming memory compatibility with your system builder.

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idata
Employee
7,159 Views

Hello scotsilv,

The memory compatibility is determined by the processor's design; this does not mean that because of an issue during the manufacturing process, the processor is limited to a specific maximum memory amount value; the main reason of why the limitation, is merely marketing decisions in order to cover the different market segments.

Furthermore, processors that come installed on mobile systems, such as laptops, notebooks, etc… are tray units. These processors are sold to the different system builders, for them to be able to customize the processor as they wish for them to be able to integrate it on the system they have designed. Due to this, the specifications of the processor might vary from vendor to vendor.

From our side, the specifications publicly available correspond to the manufacturing design. If the processor from your system was not customized to support 4GB in total, the system might be able to work; in the mid time, the processor will be forced to run at higher specifications for it to keep up with the memory settings. This can provoke an unstable environment (system hangs, blue screens, restarts, etc) or even a processor failure in the future.

You can always check and confirm the manufacturing specifications at the processor data sheets, page 10: http://www.intel.my/content/www/my/en/processors/atom/atom-d2000-n2000-vol-1-datasheet.html# iid=5819 http://www.intel.my/content/www/my/en/processors/atom/atom-d2000-n2000-vol-1-datasheet.html# iid=5819

Our best recommendation at this point, would be confirming memory compatibility with your system builder.

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