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8GB RAM - The Final Thread.

"It's called a RAMdisk, and it can make your machine run circles around anything..."

8GB... yeah, that would be the bare minimum if I were building a "Godbox" anytime soon. 4GB is so passe anymore... 2GB, why bother. You can get 8GB for under $200 these days, sometimes under $150 if you catch the offers at the right time.

Why not...

Agreed! :cool:
 
Thanks for responding. Specs probably do help. I was thinking it was a more of a chipset problem. MSI P6N Diamond motherboard using 2 sets of Geil 2x2GB DDR800 5-4-4-12 Ram.

I'm not using Vista 64, rather this is for Linux and that install portion has gone pretty smoothly.

Also, if this is too much of threadjack I can just start another one.

As long as it's about 8GB of ram you should be ok. What voltages are you using? Also, I know many people are having to set looser timings to run all four sticks. That's just so much data throughput, and it's dependent on so many things to run smoothly, not the least of which is stable voltage from the motherboard to all four slots, so you might have to up the voltage a bit, too. Sometimes when running 4 sticks of that much ram a motherboard will slightly run under what you've set the voltage at. I've heard of this happening to people running 4x1GB setups, but I would imagine it's only worse in 4x2GB. Give looser timings a try and get back to me on what voltage you're running.

Also make sure all four sticks are good solo, and in pairs. Test one stick at a time, then test all four sticks in pairs, just to be safe, if you have time. Switch memory slots to to make sure all four of your slots are working perfectly. Just an idea, hope it helps.
 
For god sakes how many times has this been debated upon.

Get 8gb if you want
If you dont want dont get it
 
The max that makes any sense is 3 gb. Here's why.
In windows XP, and both 32/64 bit versions of windows, any 32 bit app (AKA just about everything out there) maxes out at an addressable 2 gb of memory. If it goes over that, it crashes. Now, some apps have the ability to scale their kernel space so that they can use more ram and not crash, but you usually get some performance hit as a result. Supreme COmmander is a good example. At the end of very large games with many units on the map, the game can crash because it tries to address more than 2gb of memory.
Therefore, I figure that 3 gigs is plenty. Why? How many times will you be running more than one program at a time that can use that much memory?
SO you have 2 gb for that main program, and one more for everything else.
There are some really great articles over at anandtech that explain this...
 
For god sakes how many times has this been debated upon.

Get 8gb if you want
If you dont want dont get it

I think the name of this forum is just "8GB RAM - The Final Thread." I think it would also be appropriate to help users who are having problems while using 8GB, wouldn't it? Some people need 8GB but are having trouble getting it to work right. I think this is as good a place as any for them to get help. And it can help those fence sitters who still don't know what to do find good insight into whether they really need it or not. People who have it and need it can post about the actual benefits they've received by having it. People who have bought it and seen no benefits should also post about their situations as well so readers can use the knowledge of people with first hand experience using 8GB of ram to help make the decision. As soon as I through in my second 4GB I will post my before and after experiences as well.
 
The max that makes any sense is 3 gb. Here's why.
In windows XP, and both 32/64 bit versions of windows, any 32 bit app (AKA just about everything out there) maxes out at an addressable 2 gb of memory. If it goes over that, it crashes. Now, some apps have the ability to scale their kernel space so that they can use more ram and not crash, but you usually get some performance hit as a result. Supreme COmmander is a good example. At the end of very large games with many units on the map, the game can crash because it tries to address more than 2gb of memory.
Therefore, I figure that 3 gigs is plenty. Why? How many times will you be running more than one program at a time that can use that much memory?
SO you have 2 gb for that main program, and one more for everything else.
There are some really great articles over at anandtech that explain this...

Of course NOBODY ever needs large amounts of RAM for math/FEM/FEA/CFD/etc. And none of those programs are EVER written to support this. Also there will NEVER be a move towards new programs being much more supportive of a 64bit OS. :rolleyes:
 
As long as it's about 8GB of ram you should be ok. What voltages are you using? Also, I know many people are having to set looser timings to run all four sticks. That's just so much data throughput, and it's dependent on so many things to run smoothly, not the least of which is stable voltage from the motherboard to all four slots, so you might have to up the voltage a bit, too. Sometimes when running 4 sticks of that much ram a motherboard will slightly run under what you've set the voltage at. I've heard of this happening to people running 4x1GB setups, but I would imagine it's only worse in 4x2GB. Give looser timings a try and get back to me on what voltage you're running.

Also make sure all four sticks are good solo, and in pairs. Test one stick at a time, then test all four sticks in pairs, just to be safe, if you have time. Switch memory slots to to make sure all four of your slots are working perfectly. Just an idea, hope it helps.

As far as voltage, it was at the motherboard default value (can't remember and at the moment a bunch of stuff is running). I'll try upping the voltage slightly. Also, I like your idea of mixing and matching pairs and solo as well.

When I initially was having the problem, I was primarily interesting in getting everything up and running in some fashion, and if I had to initially pass on some aspect that was ok. It was only after I starting googling around that I found the references to 680i and dual sided memory that I started to get nervous. There are not a ton of them, so it seemed to me that it was probably resolvable, but it might involve experimentation.

Thanks for your help, and I'll try your suggestions later today.
 
gotta say 2-4 gb u see a diff, the most ram i've ever had utilized is 3500mb, since all 32bit apps have a 2gb/process limit in windows i'm guessing thats why, switching from 4gb to 8gb made no diff to me yet, but then again i havn't run PS or Vegas yet since switching
 
Most I ever use is in the 3.3GB range, I had to RMA my ram since it fried so I bought a similar set. Once it comes back I'll play around with 8gb and some virtualization since I'm getting annoyed at having to reboot into XP just to load up my ipod.
 
gotta say 2-4 gb u see a diff, the most ram i've ever had utilized is 3500mb, since all 32bit apps have a 2gb/process limit in windows i'm guessing thats why, switching from 4gb to 8gb made no diff to me yet, but then again i havn't run PS or Vegas yet since switching

Most I ever use is in the 3.3GB range, I had to RMA my ram since it fried so I bought a similar set. Once it comes back I'll play around with 8gb and some virtualization since I'm getting annoyed at having to reboot into XP just to load up my ipod.

Just remember you have to have a 64-bit OS to utilize more than 3.5GB of ram, and that includes RAM in your video card. One of my friends had 4GB of Corsair and an 8800 Ultra. Because the 8800 Ultra had like 768MB ram, it showed him as having less than 3GB of system ram, because as a gamer he obviously gave priority to addressing the graphics card ram. Now that he's switched to 64-bit, no problem.
 
Just remember you have to have a 64-bit OS to utilize more than 3.5GB of ram, and that includes RAM in your video card. One of my friends had 4GB of Corsair and an 8800 Ultra. Because the 8800 Ultra had like 768MB ram, it showed him as having less than 3GB of system ram, because as a gamer he obviously gave priority to addressing the graphics card ram. Now that he's switched to 64-bit, no problem.

It is true that 32-bit Windows can not address more than four gigs of ram including the amount of RAM on your video card(s) etc. However, you can not choose to prioritize certain RAM over another. 32-bit Windows will use and only use four gigs MINUS the total amount of component memory installed in your system. Component memory is mapped first, as each component expects to have available its full amount of memory for correct operation (while system RAM is variable between setups.)

As mentioned earlier in this thread, 8 gigs will be best used today in a high end home / gaming system by setting some of it for use as a RAM disk, or for use with virtual machines. Vista will run fine with 2 gigs of RAM. As has been mentioned over and over again in this and other forums, Vista is not a RAM hog. It doesn't require 2 gigs for base line operation. It will, however, make use of all your available RAM to pre-fetch the programs you use most often. This indeed helps to speed up your system, and Vista will gladly give such RAM to programs immediately when they need it,
 
You shouldn't get it because of an extremely simple concept: Opportunity Cost.

Cost: $X over 4GB to have 8GB
Benefit: No tangible benefit to average or even enthusiast class. Workstation ( running VM perhaps) or server need not apply.

Cost: same $X
Benefit: cheap hooker, charity, a week's worth of lunch, one excellent dinner for two, paperclips, printer paper, water, 7up, month or two worth of internet, new mouse, new keyboard, a nice book, toilet paper, a couple of slippers, a year's worth of pens, notepads, jeans, shirt, bedsheets, go karting, movies, a couple of music CDs, porn, towels, gym bag. Any of these things has more value than that ram. Happy camping!
 
Just remember you have to have a 64-bit OS to utilize more than 3.5GB of ram, and that includes RAM in your video card. One of my friends had 4GB of Corsair and an 8800 Ultra. Because the 8800 Ultra had like 768MB ram, it showed him as having less than 3GB of system ram, because as a gamer he obviously gave priority to addressing the graphics card ram. Now that he's switched to 64-bit, no problem.

I have Vista Ultimate X64

How you running that with stock volts on a quad core?? What mobo/cooling you using?

I have a Maximus Formula, I got a intel retail edge cpu, I Guess latest batch, I have it set to auto in the bios which overvolts its a bit though, the stock VID though is 1.2v which is pretty low too. the voltage reading in everest is 1.4v too, but in the bios it reads closer to 1.3v not sure what to believe since I didn't change the voltage @ all in the bios, I'm going to try and lower the voltage to see how far down I can go :p I just haven't updated my sig yet :p 0.0 Im running an AC Freezer 7 pro, it's pretty cold in my room though :) <3 Canada

yea I set it to 1.2v wouldn't even boot into windows, 1.3 into windows, 1.32~v atm doing orthos on all 4 cores
 
But no program can use more than 4GB (Well, 2GB due to kernerl address space using the other 2GB). You can just have more programs running in an almost bank swapping type fashion.

True, though you can use the /3GB option in the boot.ini file to raise that limit to 3GB.
Ideally you'd have something like a quad-core processor and 8GB of RAM, with each core running a single-threaded program with 2GB allocated each.
 
I really don't know with this board, I set it to 1.32xxx in the bios and it reads @ 1.23v running stable so far with orthos on all 4 cores =p

but yea 8gb of mem is a waste imo :/ unless you intend on having 3-4 memory heavy apps loaded at once, and I believe the windows limit per process is 2gb

Everest.jpg
 
I really don't know with this board, I set it to 1.32xxx in the bios and it reads @ 1.23v running stable so far with orthos on all 4 cores =p

but yea 8gb of mem is a waste imo :/ unless you intend on having 3-4 memory heavy apps loaded at once, and I believe the windows limit per process is 2gb

Crazyness. My abit board does the undervolt thingy, too though. Perhaps it only limits the voltage, depending on what the CPU requires? I'm not sure how that works as this is my first time overclocking. What multiplier are you using?
 
You shouldn't get it because of an extremely simple concept: Opportunity Cost.

Cost: $X over 4GB to have 8GB
Benefit: No tangible benefit to average or even enthusiast class. Workstation ( running VM perhaps) or server need not apply.

Cost: same $X
Benefit: cheap hooker, charity, a week's worth of lunch, one excellent dinner for two, paperclips, printer paper, water, 7up, month or two worth of internet, new mouse, new keyboard, a nice book, toilet paper, a couple of slippers, a year's worth of pens, notepads, jeans, shirt, bedsheets, go karting, movies, a couple of music CDs, porn, towels, gym bag. Any of these things has more value than that ram. Happy camping!

Owned by economics! :D
 
well I changed it to 9x400 now and running the 8gb @ 961 5-5-5-15 2T :O not bad lets see how stable she is ^^ (@425 the speed is either 850 or over 1000) the Q is, whats better 800 4-4-4-12 or 961 5-5-5-15
cpu is running stable so far @ 1.3v ^^ set to 1.35 in vios, showing up @ 1.3 in bios and 1,25v everest now
 
well I changed it to 9x400 now and running the 8gb @ 961 5-5-5-15 2T :O not bad lets see how stable she is ^^ (@425 the speed is either 850 or over 1000) the Q is, whats better 800 4-4-4-12 or 961 5-5-5-15
cpu is running stable so far @ 1.3v ^^ set to 1.35 in vios, showing up @ 1.3 in bios and 1,25v everest now

Not too shabby. I have a buddy that insists that CAS four is faster unless you go over 1000MHz with your ram. I have yet to test it myself. Probably be so close that the difference would fall within margin of error when benchmarking. I'd go with whatever is more stable. My ram is more stable with CAS 5 at 962MHz than slower with CAS 4. Again, that's maxxing out at 1.9v. If I decide to up it to 2.0 or so perhaps I could do CAS 4 AND 960+ MHz?? :p

By the way, I love the arctic cooling freezer 7 pro. It's amazing. I snagged mine on the egg for $21 with free shipping. It keeps my CPU so cool. I ran it at 1.5 volts once and it still never went above 51c!! My scary PWM temps are what are halting my overclocking progress right now. Should I give the 9 multiplier a try? I've had decent results with x10 so far.
 
Not too shabby. I have a buddy that insists that CAS four is faster unless you go over 1000MHz with your ram. I have yet to test it myself. Probably be so close that the difference would fall within margin of error when benchmarking. I'd go with whatever is more stable. My ram is more stable with CAS 5 at 962MHz than slower with CAS 4. Again, that's maxxing out at 1.9v. If I decide to up it to 2.0 or so perhaps I could do CAS 4 AND 960+ MHz?? :p

By the way, I love the arctic cooling freezer 7 pro. It's amazing. I snagged mine on the egg for $21 with free shipping. It keeps my CPU so cool. I ran it at 1.5 volts once and it still never went above 51c!! My scary PWM temps are what are halting my overclocking progress right now. Should I give the 9 multiplier a try? I've had decent results with x10 so far.

nice :) I can try 4 -5-5 if this passes
yup i <3 the ac7pro best $20 spent


load.jpg


this is about the only thing 8gb has been good for so far ;) benchmarking, other then that Hellgate has a 64bit exe and it uses ALOT of ram, but the game runs like butter :) and loads are fast
 
nice :) I can try 4 -5-5 if this passes
yup i <3 the ac7pro best $20 spent


load.jpg


this is about the only thing 8gb has been good for so far ;) benchmarking, other then that Hellgate has a 64bit exe and it uses ALOT of ram, but the game runs like butter :) and loads are fast

Do you have any screens from CPU-Z that I could look at of your specs/MHz/etc.. Also, think I could climb a little higher with the 9x multiplier?
 
Do you have any screens from CPU-Z that I could look at of your specs/MHz/etc.. Also, think I could climb a little higher with the 9x multiplier?

Pretty sure you can go a bit higher, not sure how well your temps will do what V are you at now? is your Q6700 B3 or G0

cpuzcpu.jpg
cpuzmem1.jpg
cpuzmem2.jpg
 
Not too shabby. I have a buddy that insists that CAS four is faster unless you go over 1000MHz with your ram. I have yet to test it myself. Probably be so close that the difference would fall within margin of error when benchmarking. I'd go with whatever is more stable. My ram is more stable with CAS 5 at 962MHz than slower with CAS 4. Again, that's maxxing out at 1.9v. If I decide to up it to 2.0 or so perhaps I could do CAS 4 AND 960+ MHz?? :p

By the way, I love the arctic cooling freezer 7 pro. It's amazing. I snagged mine on the egg for $21 with free shipping. It keeps my CPU so cool. I ran it at 1.5 volts once and it still never went above 51c!! My scary PWM temps are what are halting my overclocking progress right now. Should I give the 9 multiplier a try? I've had decent results with x10 so far.

Code:
Cas Delay in Nanoseconds

MHz   |   400 |   425 |   450 |   475 |   500
------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------
Cas5  | 12.50 | 11.76 | 11.11 | 10.53 | 10.00
------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------
Cas4  | 10.00 |  9.41 |  8.00 |  8.42 |  8.00

As you can see DDR2-800 (400Mhz) has a CAS delay of 10ns, CAS5 doesn't match that until 500MHz (DDR2-1000), but even at 400Mhz it's only 2.5ns different. Also, not all memory accesses incur the CAS delay. So in the end the performance difference is almost neglible at those speeds.
 
Code:
Cas Delay in Nanoseconds

MHz   |   400 |   425 |   450 |   475 |   500
------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------
Cas5  | 12.50 | 11.76 | 11.11 | 10.53 | 10.00
------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------
Cas4  | 10.00 |  9.41 |  8.00 |  8.42 |  8.00

As you can see DDR2-800 (400Mhz) has a CAS delay of 10ns, CAS5 doesn't match that until 500MHz (DDR2-1000), but even at 400Mhz it's only 2.5ns different. Also, not all memory accesses incur the CAS delay. So in the end the performance difference is almost neglible at those speeds.

so there is no bonus to running 960mhz @ cas 5?
 
so there is no bonus to running 960mhz @ cas 5?

Yeah, there's about 160,000,000 more memory transfers per second. I was saying the difference between CAS4 and CAS5 was neglible at those speeds. Frequency has more of an effect than the CAS delay does.
 
Pretty sure you can go a bit higher, not sure how well your temps will do what V are you at now? is your Q6700 B3 or G0

cpuzcpu.jpg
cpuzmem1.jpg
cpuzmem2.jpg

Dang, dude. That's dope. Nice work. I plan to hit 3.5 once I get running with cooler PWMs. I know I haven't even scratched the surface of what my Q6700 could do. I haven't made it break a sweat yet.
 
Yeah, there's about 160,000,000 more memory transfers per second. I was saying the difference between CAS4 and CAS5 was neglible at those speeds. Frequency has more of an effect than the CAS delay does.

So it's better for us to stick with CAS 5 and try for higher MHz??
 
Yeah, there's about 160,000,000 more memory transfers per second. I was saying the difference between CAS4 and CAS5 was neglible at those speeds. Frequency has more of an effect than the CAS delay does.

alright everest showed lower latency 5-5-5-15 960

800 4-4-4-12 shows 63ns
960 5-5-5-15 shows 57ns

stressing 5-5-5-12 now seems to be stable so far :) 6gb used up in the test

I can't get past 860 with cas 4, I'm guessing it's partially due to the fact that I'm running 4dims, people have got this specific ram to 940-960 @ cas 4
 
Pretty much.

alright everest showed lower latency 5-5-5-15 960

800 4-4-4-12 shows 63ns
960 5-5-5-15 shows 57ns

stressing 5-5-5-12 now seems to be stable so far :) 6gb used up in the test

I can't get past 860 with cas 4, I'm guessing it's partially due to the fact that I'm running 4dims, people have got this specific ram to 940-960 @ cas 4

Looks like Ryan is right. And Viper, that's pretty common when you go to four sticks, especially when doing 8GB, from what I've heard.
 
Looks like Ryan is right. And Viper, that's pretty common when you go to four sticks, especially when doing 8GB, from what I've heard.

yea im still happy with 960mhz 5-5-5-12 with 4 sticks of 2gb :D

now about a ramdisk, what can i do with it :p?
 
:)

The beauty of 8 GB is that you can run as many apps as you want, & then load up a game on top of that effortlessly...not to mention anything extra is usually cached by Superfetch.

 
:)

The beauty of 8 GB is that you can run as many apps as you want, & then load up a game on top of that effortlessly...not to mention anything extra is usually cached by Superfetch.


I KNOW!!! I don't know of anything that stops Superfetch from using as much ram as possible to prefetch your favorite apps. Is there any way to set superfech memory usage? I would imagine the more ram you have, the better superfetch will perform.
 
I KNOW!!! I don't know of anything that stops Superfetch from using as much ram as possible to prefetch your favorite apps. Is there any way to set superfech memory usage? I would imagine the more ram you have, the better superfetch will perform.

Why worry about it? Superfetch dumps the ram damn near instantly when an app needs the space.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scotty_SFF View Post
More RAM means everything will run smoother, because it won't be starved, you can set applications like Photoshop to use more of the memory.

Overclocking could be harder with more RAM.

More to boast about

More apps open at a time...
lamest reasons ever sorry.


I don't think it's lame...he has a good point. I noticed that when I put my 4GB DDR800 (2X2GB) in my mobo I can set the timing to 4-4-4-12 and clock it at 900mhz at 1.8volts. When I put in my other 4GB (same ram) in, I have to set the voltage to 2.2 and timings to 5-5-5-15 in order to run it at 900mhz. Now I've tried ALL combinations with all 4 sticks and it is the same exact thing every time. So, there is some truth to overclocking limitations when maxing out your mobo in order to run with 8GB of RAM.
 
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