8GB Feasibility (Gaming)

V

vexion

Weaksauce
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Sep 20, 2008
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Hi guys,

I'm contemplating a new computer that would be used predominantly for gaming, and I can't decide between 4GB of DDR2-1066 or 8GB of DDR2-800.

I know that the 4GB kit would give me more overclocking ability, both because of the higher FSB and because not using up every memory slot means lower voltages, and more headroom to work with.

Would 8GB give me any sort of gain in current games? From everything people say, I get the impression that there's a sort of diminishing returns you hit, where most of that RAM doesn't even get accessed.

Any help would be appreciated!
 
8GB will not gain you anything really for games right now.
But you could have fun running some VMs!;)

 
well it depends if you build for the future or not. in my case i do. my build cycle is every 4 years with very minimal upgrades if any.

 
8GB is nice with super fetch.
Vista says it is currently using 7.6/8 GB of ram o_O
 
I run eight gigs myself.

Ehem, the cold hard facts. Windows 32 bit apps can't address more then 2 gigs of ram. Since I believe all games these days are 32 bit they can't take more then that due to the limitations of memory addressing space. So having more ram then 2 gigs theoretically will not improve your performance.

But it does. And here is why, while the game is not using more then 2 gigs of ram, the OS is and all those little dozens of background apps and web browsers and chat programs and that live webcam you have of your girlfriend doing god-knows-what on your second monitor all take up memory. So more then 4 gigs will help gaming because it gives those apps more room to stretch out without impacting your game.

More ram does not usually mean faster, it usually means more with less loss of speed. :) To most people that means faster.
 
Funny. I had 4gb of that exact stuff, and I got a kit back from warranty, that was 1gb x 2 (hence my sig) so even at 6gb, I went ahead and bought another 4gb kit of matching ram so that I can run my cpu back at 3400mhz and have the ram at spec still. The other 2gb I take out will find a nice home in my son's rig, bringing him up to 6gb and forcing me to format and install Vista64 on his, replacing his Vista32 install.

The damn stuff was so cheap to get another 4gb it was a no brainer. ;)
 
If you play the best RPG released in years = WAR...it can easily max out my 4gb memory, and I have read several players say the same thing, that their 4gb gets 100% maxed out while playing WAR...so 8gb I would guess would help that game
 
If you want to use that PC for 2+ years without big upgrades you should IMO buy 8GB RAM.

 
Zorachus said:
If you play the best RPG released in years = WAR...it can easily max out my 4gb memory, and I have read several players say the same thing, that their 4gb gets 100% maxed out while playing WAR...so 8gb I would guess would help that game
Click to expand...

The game is 32bit so I don't see how. Maybe they have superfetch on and don't know any better. Personally my game uses 1.2-1.9gb at most. May even be a memory leak somewhere in that since it crashes every now and then.
 
haha, the motherboard i just bought came with 2x 2x2gb kits of ddr800 ram in it, so i dont have a choice in the matter ;)

but it is all recognized in windows vista 32.

i swapped it out in my friends computer who has vista, and all of it is there.

but i doubt you'll see much performance increase, maybe a bigger page file on your HDD and somewhat faster loading times on applications, especially when heavily multitasking.

Zorachus said:
If you play the best RPG released in years = WAR...it can easily max out my 4gb memory, and I have read several players say the same thing, that their 4gb gets 100% maxed out while playing WAR...so 8gb I would guess would help that game
Click to expand...

and wow, i never noticed my memory usage, but isnt that typical in most new games?

though my gfx card sucks for the game, i still get a decent 25-33 FPS on average on best quality mode on 1680x1050 :)

though it dips down into the low un-playable 5-10FPS's in the war camps and a few other populated areas with alot of detail, like the chaos starting point.
 
mikeblas said:
Windows applications can access 3 gigs of RAM directly.
Click to expand...

I don't think most games are large address space aware?

Unless you do an awful lot of multitasking in the background (not just running an IM program or something), 8GB RAM isn't going to help in games over 4GB RAM by any noticeable amount at the moment. Superfetch might be able to preload some more data and so the game might load faster, but that's all really.
 
Does software have to be written in a way to access more memory. I remember back in the day that more memory did not mean faster or better. I only have 4 gig in my machine now. I thought about 8 but didn't think any games would actually use it.
 
After jumping from 4 to 8GB, gaming has been super smooth with load times & gameplay all around. I think 8GB is the new 4 now. Later on 16/32GB will be standard when more apps take advantage of 64-bit addressing.
 
I've got 16gb in my system, yes it's ridiculous to have that much, and everything is buttery smooth. It's more of a workstation than a dedicated gaming pc though :)

Dual Opteron 2222's, 16gb, 137sas boot disk, 4 500gb for storage, 9800gtx- pretty much does what I want it to do.
 
Mithent said:
I don't think most games are large address space aware?
Click to expand...
I don't have a survey of all the games to know if none, some, most, or all are large-address aware. The statement I'm addressing is that Windows applications, games or not, address only two gigs of memory. That's false.

Mithent said:
Unless you do an awful lot of multitasking in the background (not just running an IM program or something), 8GB RAM isn't going to help in games over 4GB RAM by any noticeable amount at the moment.
Click to expand...
Like any other estimate of performance, this depends on the application and the usage pattern. If Windows has more memory available to it, it will use more memory for file cache. If you're loading the same level (or textures, or media, or ...) over and over again, you're likely realize a performance increase with more memory because the files are more likely to be cached. While the process might not necessarily make more use of more memory, the system as a whole just might--and "an awful lot of multitasking" isn't pre-requisite to that.
 
I've seen windows get upto 75-85% memory usage on Vista x64 in gaming. Certainly 4GB is being utilized by my system. But I built this computer... nearly 2 years ago. If I was building today, an enthusiast system, yes, definitely 8GB, or at least 2x2GB allowing easy expansion to 8GB down the road.
 
I just bought 8GB of Corsair's XMS2 DDR2 800 myself. I was wondering if I should even run a paging file with this much physical RAM..
As for the original post. I went from 4GB to 8GB of the same memory and Vista 64bit runs a hell of a lot better. The sidebar always gave me problems running games in windowed mode. I've got 2 22's running so I usually play my games in windowed mode so that I can still talk on AIM or surf the internet. Everything seems to be running nice.
 
Yes, you should run a paging file regardless of how much memory you have.
 
If you're a gamer, you'll ideally want no more than two sticks of RAM in your machine. I'd go with 2x2gb, and leave two slots open for an upgrade to 6 or 8gb in the future.
 
I run 4x2gb 1066mhz DDR2 in my 680i mobo... and that means when I've got flash, photoshop, dreamweaver, about 8 windows of IE/firefox/chrome/opera/safari, Ipswitch WS_FTP, a SSH shell, and a partridge in a pear tree... I can go play Cod4 if I so choose with it being the same speed as if I had none of those windows/programs open to begin with.

8GB gives you a LOT of freedom to multitask. As for performance increases, not much, just ability to multitask
 
Ive been looking at getting another 2 gigs but I wont lie my current 2gigs of ram has been enough for me.
 
It has been said, by many people, throughout the years:

"Buy as much RAM as you can afford"

and

"Buy as much HDD space as you can afford"

Nothing has changed. It's always a good idea to have more RAM. Like someone in this thread mentioned- it might not be the game that is utilizing all the extra ram- it's the background applications! (i.e. all your shit)

8GB is the sweet spot right now, of affordability. For $200 (or less, in many cases) you can fill all 4 slots on your board, each with 2GB sticks.

Overclocking might suffer, you say? Then, do what I did.

I bought 8GB of 4-4-4-12 DDR-800 ram, and a Q6600. I overclocked the Q6600 to 3.6, (400 * 9), thus keeping the RAM in spec at 800, using a relatively low OC'ed FSB (by today's standards) and having my CPU scream like a motherfucker (overclock of 1.2ghz FTW, people).

With the amount of different FSB variations, memory dividers, and all kinds of different overclocking options and motherboards at your disposal today, with a little bit of research, there's no reason not to fill all your banks with RAM goodness.

I would have bought 16GB, but it was kinda expensive. It's dropping. Soon, you will be able to use 16GB economically. Overclock wisely, and you'll be good to go.
 
I have 8GB RAM as well. Means I can leave 3ds max (300MB+), Rhino 3D (150MB+), Photoshop (100MB), Firefox 3 (200MB), F@H SMP (400MB, ~100MB for each process), VLC, iTunes, Hamachi, Trillian, F@H GPU, Xfire, Windows Sidebar, Excel, Word, OneNote and who-knows-what-else running. System doesn't care. I only break 50% RAM usage when I have my CAD apps open, otherwise I never even use half my RAM.

Still, I could start playing CoD4, Crysis Warhead or something else and it wouldn't be any different than if I had none of that stuff open.
 
I have 8GB and yes you generally won't use it all while running one game. However I put all mine to use by running four game clients simultaneously windowed sometimes (EVE-Online) or sometimes I hop into TF2 while running an EVE client in the background. It's still perfectly smooth. So the extra RAM gives you flexibility, just as it always has. More RAM has never made you faster, it's always just allowed you to be more efficient by not swapping to disk essentially.
 
Rebel44 said:
If you want to use that PC for 2+ years without big upgrades you should IMO buy 8GB RAM.
Click to expand...
If you wanted to not have to upgrade for 2 years, your not going to be smart. It's better to buy smaller amount of parts, with more efficient spending. In 2 or 3 years, your $800 video card is just as out of date as a $200 card bought at the time time.
 
bigdogchris said:
If you wanted to not have to upgrade for 2 years, your not going to be smart. It's better to buy smaller amount of parts, with more efficient spending. In 2 or 3 years, your $800 video card is just as out of date as a $200 card bought at the time time.
Click to expand...

QFT...

i usually upgrade my videocard twice or so before ever buying a new motherboard/cpu
 
mjz_5 said:
QFT...

i usually upgrade my videocard twice or so before ever buying a new motherboard/cpu
Click to expand...


Hell I have been on this gigabyte board since Feb. 2007, it has seen a couple cpu's, as well as at least 3 different video cards....8800GTS 640, 8800GT, now my 8800GTS 512. (gave my 8800GT to my son for his new rig).

With the high cpu speeds these days, a modern cpu and board can go easy 2 years especially when overclocked. Video card is far more important now than it ever was.....
 
I have 8gb of g.skill 800mhz atm, and honestly..I can't imagine myself ever going back to 4gb..8gb just allows you to multitask so much more.
 
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