4GB to 8GB performance increase?

J

joecuddles

[H]ard|Gawd
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Aug 16, 2004
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Just wondering if there would be any given specs in sig. My gut says not at all, as I think I only use 2.5GB or so while playing a game like Crysis, but it's pretty cheap so I was wondering if I should pick some up now or just not bother.
 
don't pick up anymore ram till you get a new build. your build should last you a while.
 
take it to 8GB because you can! You know you want to look and see all the slots filled.

I did it recently cuz ram was cheap and I had the money, I have noticed no diff in my games. Only bene I've seen is wit my vmware workstation snapshots it is nice to assign more ram to when running one.
 
Went to 8GB because it was dirt cheap. While it isn't really helpful to gaming, it does come in handy with VM's and never having to close programs. I play GTA IV and can alt-tab out with no delay. And you never know if you might start using programs that can benefit. I just got into Photoshop, and I'm glad i went this route.
 
ram is used for background apps and so forth. games only take up like 50% and the rest probably goes into your browser, spyware, etc.

i'd worry about using it for photoshop and any autocadd proggy's :[
 
I would upgrade, I've just started to get low memory errors on my computer (4 Gigs), windows trying to close down my TF2.

I also had on photoshop, flash games on facebook, im's and a bunch of websites.. alt-tabbing away, now I'm looking in to upgrading 8gig.. or 16gig? :):)
 
did he just say 16gbs. wow. now is there such a thing with a mobo with 4 slots on each side. to run quad channel. i think max is 12gb buddie.
 
killab33 said:
did he just say 16gbs. wow. now is there such a thing with a mobo with 4 slots on each side. to run quad channel. i think max is 12gb buddie.
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thats a server mobo so we all know that it can hold up to more than 32gbs of ram.

yeah they do now but you gonna pay 800 dollars for it? yeah didn't think so were talkin low numbers here people for an am3 mobo. so think 4-8gbs.

go with 4gbs it'll do any computer good
 
I went to 8GB 'cuz it was only $46 to do so. Can't say I notice much of a difference. At least my original pair of 2GB chips have more friends to play with now.
 
I picked up 8gb vs. 4gb as it was only a $35 price difference.
The only time I notice a difference is when I am messing with huge hubble pics, and it uses up 90%+ of my ram.

I am reading about ramdisks now :p
 
Speaking of RAM discs, I remember way back in the day walking into a local mall-based software store (yea, that long ago) to check out the latest titles. They were showing off some ungodly expensive system that could load some wing commander in Africa game (can't remember the name) on 512mb of ram. Level loads were smoking fast. I think my system at the time had 16 or 32MB.

It's been awhile, but when they opened up the box there was this crazy DIMM adapter that took the 4 dimm slots and converted it into 8. I'll try to find a picture, but yea, RAM discs rule!
 
So other than ivan, did anyone else notice a difference between the 4 and 8gb?

and does anyone try more than that?(assuming incredible riches of course)
 
Well, smart kernels are going to cache page requests into the extra memory space. Linux accomplishes this via the SHM module. Vista and Win7 do this somehow, it's also how the TurboBoost was done.

For instance: I had loaded a remote directory (at home, upload speed of 1720kbps), and was browsing a directory of about 300mb of photos. Nautilus was loading the thumbnails, which took forever. Finally, after it was about halfway done, I said screw it and did a Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, opened up a local directory and hit Ctrl+V.
Imagine my surprise when it wrote the first half of the files out in 2 seconds! Well, it turns out that Linux cached that syscall in SHM and simply called from the cached pages when I did that syscall (ie, the paste into the directory) once more.

Gobs of ram is fun.
 
MrGuvernment said:
Even if it is "only "$10" it is wasted $10 if your not using it.
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If you're running Vista or Windows 7, then the extra ram won't be a complete waste. You'll get more programs preloaded by Superfetch. It might not be worth the extra cost, but it is an advantage.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
If you're running Vista or Windows 7, then the extra ram won't be a complete waste. You'll get more programs preloaded by Superfetch. It might not be worth the extra cost, but it is an advantage.
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No, it doesnt really, at least not that much, again, if he isnt coming close to using 4G, 8G will be a waste i went from 4G to 8G, mainly for VM's, windows used about 200mb more on superfetch and even now after having my rig running for 2 months, right now i am using 1.6G total, with IE with 8 tabs open, MSN, steam, daemon tools, avast, realvnc server running, even when i start playing TF2 i dont hit 3G with more programs open, winamp, vent, teamspeak.
 
Don't know why your windows install doesn't utilize superfetch. At idle with firefox and media player classic open, my superfetch size is constantly over 5.5GBs. All of my ram gets utilized for something or another.
 
I went from 4 to 8 since I plan on keeping this machine for a long time and ddr2 1066 was on sale for $45 shipped. I did notice that the computer operates a little bit faster sometimes after adding the ram.
 
i went from 4 to 8 and did not notice any big differences at all. 4 should be fine unless you want to brag about having 8gb of memory installed :)
 
I'm running 8G in my box with XP(x64). I'll have Weblogic, Oracle, an IDE, and a few other work things open all the time. I can pop in and out of games without having to shut down apps in the background. To be fair, I do a good bit of work with apps running in a local VM too. The extra 4G of RAM is only around $50... a lot of extra pucker room for very little money.
 
games don't benefit from increased memory over 4gb. all this is going to do is strain you're chip or the mobo more.
 
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