i7... 3gb or 6gb

rflcptr said:
Get as much RAM as your budget allows.


Not sure what this means.
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last night i was looking at some game benches where 6gb was giving better results than 3gb by quite a bit, but i didnt even think we needed more than 2gb for games yet lol.

edit: ah cool that corsair link looks kinda similar to what i was reading, looks like i'll be getting 6gb then

thanks !!
 
nightwalker said:
last night i was looking at some game benches where 6gb was giving better results than 3gb by quite a bit, but i didnt even think we needed more than 2gb for games yet lol.

edit: ah cool that corsair link looks kinda similar to what i was reading, looks like i'll be getting 6gb then

thanks !!
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Can you link the benches you were looking at please? I'd like to read them.
 
6GB + 64 Vista = Win. Don't cripple a nice i7 rig with 3GB of RAM.
 
Upgraded from 3gb to 6gb using i7, boost was noticable when playing CoH.
I use cheap ass ram ;)
 
Definitely 6GB or more. As long as you have a 64-bit OS, 6GB should be the lowest you should be considering. I have been on 4GB of DDR2 for my past two builds, and it has been my standard until the i7s. When I take the plunge, I will be looking at 12GB.
 
Definitely go with the 6gb. You don't want to be stuck with 3gb and then realize that you don't have enough memory and then have to spend more money upgrading.
 
Wow, so I completely misread that ad...nevermind what i said.
 
All kidding aside go with the 6 Gb and get the best memory you can afford within reason. (I am assuming you are using a 64 bit OS) Also, if you have more than one drive, move your virtual memory off of your boot drive.
 
rbennett5 said:
Shouldn't the question really be 6gb or 12gb?
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This. With 6GB kits $120 and under for good quality (I got mine off of a possible price error at newegg for $67 shipped for DDR3-1600 6GB Wintec CL8), and the RAM really benefiting modern games/apps, there's no reason to go for just 3GB if you can help it. Heck, I wish I had gone 12...
 
6gb of course, as others have said should be 6gb or 12gb, you shouldnt even be thinking of 3gb's with an i7 system
 
GoldenTiger said:
This. With 6GB kits $120 and under for good quality (I got mine off of a possible price error at newegg for $67 shipped for DDR3-1600 6GB Wintec CL8), and the RAM really benefiting modern games/apps, there's no reason to go for just 3GB if you can help it. Heck, I wish I had gone 12...
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thats what i got, i was the one who found and posted the deal :D

and the more i look at it out of stock the price goes down, now its at 99 bux so im convinced it wasn't a price mistake, was just a special at the time.

so most likely we'll see that kit again for around 75-99 bux when it's back in stock.
 
I think 6 is definitely a choice for an i7 build. I'm just not sold on 12GB for normal gamers. If you need the ram though ... ;)
 
bigdogchris said:
I think 6 is definitely a choice for an i7 build. I'm just not sold on 12GB for normal gamers. If you need the ram though ... ;)
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I agree and did test repeat my testing with 12GB:

http://www.corsairmemory.com/appnotes/default.aspx

The most memory usage I saw in any game tested so far is about 3.5GB in Warhammer Online. Even at that amoun of usage, with 6GB of system memory , there was little if any page file activity and none related to the game. With 12GB, there was no gaming improvement at all over 6GB. 3GB is certainly not inadequate or bad but, 6GB is definitely the sweet spot.

I heat GTA IV is pretty greedy. I'm thinking of testing it next.
 
Mike Clements said:
I agree and did test repeat my testing with 12GB:

http://www.corsairmemory.com/appnotes/default.aspx

The most memory usage I saw in any game tested so far is about 3.5GB in Warhammer Online. Even at that amoun of usage, with 6GB of system memory , there was little if any page file activity and none related to the game. With 12GB, there was no gaming improvement at all over 6GB. 3GB is certainly not inadequate or bad but, 6GB is definitely the sweet spot.

I heat GTA IV is pretty greedy. I'm thinking of testing it next.
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I dual log WAR sometimes :D... I've easily ramped up to 4.8-5.0gb used doing that, though I currently have 8GB until... tomorrow when my X58 board comes in and I go to 6GB DDR3 ;). Still, I've seen my RAM usage go over 3GB many times with other games, let alone normal apps... GTA4 is supposed to be very memory-hogging indeed, but I don't own it so I can't confirm that personally. By the way, the article was pretty interesting to look for, good job on it :D.

nightwalker: The RAM we got apparrently has some really nice chips... check your deal thread for my post about that ;). :D
 
I would get the 6gb, because it has shown to really improve benchmarks in certain games.
Now if you are only going to stick with a 32bit os, 6gb will be a waste.
It ultimately comes down to your curent and future OS
 
AMD T-type said:
I'm sorry, but was this a serious statement?
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Yeah, the new benchmarks show quite a huge difference in performance from 3gb to 6gb.
Google 3gb vs 6gb benchmarks. Of course it depends on the game, but it's certainly warrants paying $20-40 more for extra performance
 
Mike Clements said:
I'm sure it was, why do you ask?
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Because double anything is obviously going to be faster. It seems like a case of common sense over the technical aspect of it.

It's like saying; "So I saw some quarter mile run times where a car with 600 horsepower was significantly faster than a car with only 300 horsepower."

OMG you dont say!!??



Is my sarcasm meter broken or something?
 
You should read a real review instead of one put on by a memory company. Read the one serpretetsky posted


That being said, anyone going for i7 should get 6GB imo as 3GB is plenty but not a sweetspot like 4GB is and you could have gotten a Phenom 940 cheaper and would have suited.
 
AMD T-type said:
Because double anything is obviously going to be faster. It seems like a case of common sense over the technical aspect of it.
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Except Mike also just stated that doubling 6GB of RAM to 12GB does not yield the same results.
 
Get as much as you can afford. If I couldn't quite afford 6 GB of ram, I can't see how I'd be overly stressed with a Core i7 system with only 3 GB of ram. Then again, I'm still running an Athlon XP in my main system so don't listen to me. :(
 
AMD T-type said:
Because double anything is obviously going to be faster. It seems like a case of common sense over the technical aspect of it.

It's like saying; "So I saw some quarter mile run times where a car with 600 horsepower was significantly faster than a car with only 300 horsepower."
?
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My common sense is telling me that in in the grand scheme of things, i know jack diddley squat about computers. And my common sense definitely does not tell me that double anything means faster. Therefor i'm waiting for benchmarks to confirm information that i have no way of deducing from absolutely nothing.

As for buying 6gbs for i7, if the price is right, i'd definitely recommend it.
 
the benchmarks showing improvement using 6gb over 3gb was this on a 32 or 64 bit os?
 
4 gigs minimum man, go 6 for sure. I have tested 2 gigs, 3 gigs, and 4 gigs.
 
all you children need to look at your commit charge peak after using your computer for a couple days. add it to the amount of ram you have, and that is the amount of ram you need to minimize reading from the hard disk. under those usage patterns, more memory will just help things start up faster thanks to having more system cache
 
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