Notebook Memory Options

Final Thoughts & Discussion

Nathan Kirsch’s Thoughts:

This article was one of, it not the most, enjoyable memory article that Legit Reviews has written in some time. This is because we got results that were totally unexpected. On the desktop side it is common knowledge of the enthusiast community that running low latency memory will provide throughput advantages. Thus leading to better benchmark scores and better frame rates in games. Now that we have tested a number of different SO-DIMM memory modules it shows that memory timings play little, if any, factory in improving benchmark scores or game play frames per second (FPS).

Let us quote something we found in a Corsair news letter from May 2004:

“Want more performance out of your laptop or notebook? Want the convenience of mobile gaming without sacrificing performance? A lot of our customers do. So we’ve brought our legendary XMS memory technology to the world of mobile computing. It’s the only performance memory packaged as a 200-pin SO-DIMM. To develop these modules, we worked closely with ASUS and other laptop manufacturers to develop a performance memory specifically suited to the unique demands of laptop computing.”

The Corsair XMS SO-DIMM’s worked great in our notebook, passed stability testing, and ran at extremely tight timings of 2-3-2-6 with ease. Sadly, we didn’t note any performance increase that their news letter talks about and we also used an ASUS notebook. We talked to Corsair about our benchmarking results and they said that notebooks with integrated graphics would see better results than our notebook with discrete graphics. My only concern with that is that any high end notebook where XMS SO-DIMM’s would be used is more than likely going to have discrete graphics onboard.

On the other hand, we were very impressed with the Kingston ValueRam part and its performance. Better yet the Kingston ValueRam is priced roughly $30-$35 under the Corsair XMS LL SO-DIMM! Which again proves that paying more money for a product doesn’t always mean you are getting better performance. If it did then we wouldn’t be here!

Legit Bottom Line:

Low Latency memory does not have a significant impact on notebook performance. Save your hard earned money and spend it on more memory capacity or another part of your DIY (Do-It-Yourself) notebook project.