16GB of RAM?

H

HardForumer

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 1, 2011
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173
MemoryExpress has G.Skill RipJaws 8GB (2x4GB) 1600MHz for $45. I already bought a pair and was wondering if its worth it getting another for a total of 16GB?

Also for the same price, which is better between the G.Skill and the Corsair Vengeance low profile ones?
 
I love having 16GB. Between that an my Intel 310 SSD, everything is instant.
 
8gb is more than enough for everyone. I run 3 virtual machines in the background 24/7 so I'm constantly at around 9-10gb during idle. I probably give the VMs too much RAM, but the 6gb I have left over is more than enough for everything I else I do.

If you're not sure... $40 is worth it for the piece of mind. Just buy it, and forget about it for the remainder of your computer's life.
 
More ram is always better, but consider the limitations of current games.

At this point, all games are pretty much still 32-bit.

A 32-bit game is limited to a maximum of 2GB of memory.

There is only one exception to this, and that is if the 32-bit game is Large Address Aware. Very very few games are Large Address Aware, but for the ones that are, the game will be able to use up to 3GB on a 32-bit system or up to 4GB on a 64-bit system.

So even with that one rare exception, we're still talking about the game only being able to address up to 4GB of memory under an absolute best case scenario (more likely, the program isn't large address aware and you'll be limited to 2GB).

So going from having double what any game could ever use under a best-case scenario to having 4-times what any game could ever use is going to give you no benefit whatsoever. At best, maybe Superfetch will cache some part of the game and it will load faster but that's it.

This might change once 64-bit gaming catches on, but for now, anything above 4GB is basically useless for gaming.
 
I have 8GB and have never seen my task manager report over 2.5 GB used @108-p graphics. If you are a gamer then it's not necessary. If you use RAMDISK or VM's then it would be necessary.
 
8GB is more than enough. Having 16GB is only beneficial if you run memory intensive apps. 16GB > is geared towards those who make photo, audio, video, vm-ing stuff as their living/hobby.

If you "seldom" do what was laid out above, 8GB is still more than enough for you.

I have 16GB in my brother's rig and with his "considerable" bunch of other sh*t going the most he used was 4.4GB.

I got 8GB (with 2600K stock) on mine and I multibox (5) Cataclysm all on high + Firefox with 19 tabs + Movie + Music + background apps + 2VMs for all my internet facing needs except games, and the most I got is 7.2GB.

Sure 16GB is cheap nowadays, but once you have enough memory for your needs, having more will NEVER increase your PC's performance EVER unless you belong the the "few" of those who really need more memory.

If you are wiser, your money is better spent on an SSD, a better CPU, or a better Video Card.

Question yourself this, If you're currently near to maximizing all the memory you have then, by all means buy more. If not then consider the other better purchases!
 
I have 12 gigabytes in my system, and have to say its definetly too much, but when i got the whole 3x4gig pack for 80 bucks i couldnt say no :)

I had corsair ram ive had since i built my system...Finally figured out that one stick was dead and i hadnt had all the memory bandwidth i could've had for 2+ years.

The computer seems a bit faster now, but i attribute that to the fact i have triple channel mode on now, not the extra 6 gigs of ram
 
Windows always finds a way to use all my ram. I have 16 gig and task manager currently reports this with a 4 gig VM open and half a dozen browser windows iwth 100 or so tabs loaded.

total 16382
cached 10099
available 2660
free 151

so basically roughly 14 gig of my ram is utilised.

my commit is also over 8 gig so I would be saturated with 8 gig of ram, windows would likely have had to remove 2 gig of data from cache.

Even if the person is only a gamer playing a 32bit game and nothing else, the excess ram can be used to reduce hdd activity by caching data.
 
I have a 2600K, 64GB SSD, GTX580, 8GB RAM.
When I run photoshop I always have Firefox open with at least 5 tabs on it and sometimes music.
Programs that I also run: Maya, 3dsMax, and rarely some web-mastering.
Also games of course.
I'll probably just stick with 8GB then. My computer is brand new and I haven't assembled it yet, so I don't know if I'll be maxing out 8GBs.

Can anyone tell me which is better between the corsair and the g.skill I posted in the OP plz?
 
Last edited:
chrcoluk said:
Windows always finds a way to use all my ram. I have 16 gig and task manager currently reports this with a 4 gig VM open and half a dozen browser windows iwth 100 or so tabs loaded.

total 16382
cached 10099
available 2660
free 151

so basically roughly 14 gig of my ram is utilised.

my commit is also over 8 gig so I would be saturated with 8 gig of ram, windows would likely have had to remove 2 gig of data from cache.

Even if the person is only a gamer playing a 32bit game and nothing else, the excess ram can be used to reduce hdd activity by caching data.
Click to expand...

Same here, the longer you use your PC, the more stuff ends up being cached. Programs open instantly as they are already in RAM.

And it's $40.... not like we are talking about wasting $300 on a high end GPU to play flash games.
 
$40 here, $40 there ... before you know it, you have enough to step up to the next performance GPU level or pick up an SSD, both which can be a big increase.
 
I have ordered elder scrolls 5, so will see how well my 8800GT handles it, my general view is ram is an upgrade that always helps whilst GPU expenditure is way more expensive for less relevant gains.
 
most here watch porn. Some of us like to open multiple tabs for the longer sessions for variety, I can't be the only one. I have easily eaten up 8GB in multiple tabs of streaming vids. now, after this happens the computer grows slow and unresponsive and I am left with a bad experience. Now I don't do it every day but when I do, I would like a fluid experience. Let's say my next rig is getting 16GB. Now am I joking or serious? All I know is, 16GB for $72 from newegg using a code cannot be beat.
 
I just picked up 16G ddr3-1333 for $70 shipped & it came with free 4GB sdhc cards :)


I mean, why not?
 
even if it is overkill, having all your DIMM slots full looks awesome

tLbzN.jpg
 
I been using 16gb in my recent build. When photo editing everything is pretty much instant. It's awesome compared to my old PC
 
I'd go for it, if you don't have a better use for $40. Not because you need it, or will noticeably benefit from it (over 8GB), but because I don't think RAM is going to be any cheaper than it is right now for quite some time.
 
Procyon12 said:
what if i use firefox?
Click to expand...

Being a 32-bit program, Firefox won't be using more than 2GB of memory.

If it is Large Address Aware (which it almost certainly is not), it would be able to use up to 4GB on a 64-bit system or up to 3GB on a 32-bit system.

So no, Firefox is not something that would benefit from 16GB of memory.
 
well, what about firefox, photoshop, and other stuff opened at the same time?
anyway, I'll keep looking at the RAM usage, if I ever see it full or close, I'm grabbing 8 more GBs.
 
Mugenx said:
Sure 16GB is cheap nowadays, but once you have enough memory for your needs, having more will NEVER increase your PC's performance EVER unless you belong the the "few" of those who really need more memory.
Click to expand...
graph-photoshop-diglloydMedium.gif



Never say never. ;)
 
HardForumer said:
well, what about firefox, photoshop, and other stuff opened at the same time?
anyway, I'll keep looking at the RAM usage, if I ever see it full or close, I'm grabbing 8 more GBs.
Click to expand...

the commit size in task manager is like the raw demand of apps open (with no file/system cache) so basically if that goes higher than your ram it means disk swapping time.

However the total ram usage will over time go higher then that the longer you go without a reboot as windows will cache everything thats loaded or written to hdd.

Currnetly for me with 1hr 21mins uptime windows is caching 11gig of data :D

I dont regret upgrading my ram for sure, as also I can run decent sized VMs as well.
 
chrcoluk said:
I have ordered elder scrolls 5, so will see how well my 8800GT handles it, my general view is ram is an upgrade that always helps whilst GPU expenditure is way more expensive for less relevant gains.
Click to expand...

What? Are you serious? So you believe that you would see more of a performance increase, in elder scrolls 5, by buying more ram rather than upgrading that old 8800gt?
 
Hell my wife chews up the 24 gig in her machine but heck she does some heavy photoshopping. Heck she bogs down the two hex core xeon's.
 
chrcoluk said:
I have ordered elder scrolls 5, so will see how well my 8800GT handles it, my general view is ram is an upgrade that always helps whilst GPU expenditure is way more expensive for less relevant gains.
Click to expand...

Wow, that is way backwards.. The best thing you can do for a computer using an almost 5 generation old video card is replace the video card... Even if your own DDR2 ram you will see much bigger gains.
 
KarsusTG said:
Wow, that is way backwards.. The best thing you can do for a computer using an almost 5 generation old video card is replace the video card... Even if your own DDR2 ram you will see much bigger gains.
Click to expand...

Depends what you do with the system.

For the past 2-3 years (since I brought the 8800GT really) I havent played any modern games on the system, its mainly been work and egenral entertainment, eg. movies and maybe some legacy games. So the usage of the machine has been primarily cpu and ram focused.

Incidently the up to date news is I have ordered a GTX 460 due today :) so the 8800Gt wont be in here much longer, as I plan to play the new oblivion sequel as well as some other new games on here. The 8800GT is a good card and it could well be I didnt need the upgrade, but since it crashed on me I decided to upgrade.
 
16GB of ram is alot, but if its cheap why not buy it? besides you can never have enough ram :D
 
If you got the slots fill it up :)
Ram prices are incredible right now, an 8 GB stick of ECC RAM is only $80. Costs less than $650 to double the ram on one of our servers from 64GB to 128GB
 
Ram is so cheap right now I would get it just incase prices go up. I got 16gb of 1866mhz for $100 back in july, that was a sick deal then and still a pretty good deal now.
 
munkle said:
Ram is so cheap right now I would get it just incase prices go up. I got 16gb of 1866mhz for $100 back in july, that was a sick deal then and still a pretty good deal now.
Click to expand...
Same. I couldn't be happier with 16GB of 1866. Lets me play games and run VMs with mucho room to spare.
 
You are probably fine with 8GB of RAM.
That being said:
WANT MOAR RAMZ!
 
chrcoluk said:
I have ordered elder scrolls 5, so will see how well my 8800GT handles it, my general view is ram is an upgrade that always helps whilst GPU expenditure is way more expensive for less relevant gains.
Click to expand...
I can assure you that you are wrong here. My gaming PC has 4gig of ram and at one point had 8gig and I never saw a difference in games. However when my 8800gt died and I replaced it with a GTX460, I was finally able to play Crysis 1 max everything.
 
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