Amilo Xi1546 - upgrading RAM & hard disk

[sjbrown]

Hi,
I'm hoping someone could give me some advice about upgrading my Amilo Xi1546.
I want to improve the performance for image editing - I use photoshop loads and have noticed I've started running out of RAM when editing large images. I've also nearly filled both my C: & D: drives! Just opening folders and files seems to have got sluggiush too.

Two questions:
1.) I'm thinking of doubling my RAM to 4GB, but have read a few posts elsewhere suggesting the BIOS might not support this - does anyone know for sure, and will this actually help me?

2.) I'm wondering if I can swap one of my hard disks for a larger, faster one. Is this something I can do without un-installing everything and will it actually help matters? If not can I alter the RAID configuration to help speed things up or get me more space?

I'm a novice when it comes to computer hardware so replies in simple English would be appreciated

My spec (as per the box!) is:

Core2 duo T7200 2.00GHz
RAM 2x1024MB
2 x 80GB SATA
ATI Mobility Radeon x1800
VRAM 256MB GDDR3

The OS was Windows XP Home when I bought the machine in 2006, I've since upgraded to Vista Premium 32Bit

Thanks for your help!

[facey]

You have several options :-

Use external hard drives

You can upgrade your hard drives to whatever available, I haven't heard of any size limit

You can upgrade to 4 gig ram but you need to install alienware bios either 1.19w or 2.07

Also you can upgrade your graphics card to 8600GT nvidia card or ati 3650 (ati 3650 with heatsink mod). Possible further upgrade but untested check out http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/ind ... owforum=67 & http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/Fujitsu.html

If upgrading the graphics to 8600gt 512mb you can only use 2gig memory and need to use either amilo bios or alienware 2.06
With 3650 256mb you can use the alienware 1.19w or 2.07 and 4 gig memory although the bios only registers 33**mb due to bios restriction

[Smith]

Hi everyone,

I hope that someone will help me. I changed the bios of my Amilo Xi1546 by the Alianware models AREA-51 m5790 version 1.19W. It work. Unfortunatelly, I am unable to find the bios version 2.07 or higher. Please could you send me this one the following address (webmp3pro[at]hotmail.com -> please change [at] by @). Thank you for considering my request. I appreciate a lot. My goal is to upgrade my Laptop with 4 Gb and a powerful graphic card with the best compatibility.

Another question, can I upgrade my ATI mobility Radeon X1800 (it should be MXM III with DDR3) by MXM II Carte graphique AMD ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 (I think this card has 512MB DDR). Is it a good deal? Because I have the choice between (http://cgi.ebay.fr/MXM-II-Carte-graphiq ... .m20.l1116) and (http://cgi.ebay.fr/ATI-AMD-Radeon-HD365 ... .m63.l1177).
In addition, will I have any issue with the MXM slot and the thermal compatibility?

Thanks a for considering my request.

Have a good day.

Smith

[gsebs]

computers always seems to get slower, after adding lots of different things

with your puter you want to

Increase the cache size available, finity soft memory manager is a good program

use external hard drives they are getting cheaper every month for storage of your large files

install 64bit to allow for more ram to be used. also 64 bit uses twice the amount of ram by default

Win7 when it comes out, not a big a resource hog as vista.

work through in that order and you should be fine, your specs are top for a laptop so there is not to much more you can do to improve it.

Do system maintenance such as cleanup and defrag often