8gb to 16gb worth it?

When I do video encoding, I write it to a RAM disk. Like I said before, I also use it for browser and Win7 temp folders and what ever other program needs one.

Like people said, it depends on what you are going to be using it for and that is what decides it.
 
For gaming there isn't any reason to have more then 8GB right now. Wait until the next gen consoles come out to see if the memory size developers are targeting will go up enough to make them start doing 64bit PC releases. Hopefully Microsoft and Sony listen to developers and give them a minimum of 4GB of unified memory, if not more. That will raise the bar for what we can expect in PC ports.
 
I was just under the impression that it was for gaming. I personally think if you have to ask, you shouldn't really add more ram. If he needed more ram, he would have already done so without asking. =)
 
if your a user like me and have tons of windows open all the time... I would upgrade. My game (world of Warcraft) uses between 1.5 to 3 gb of ram. I also have Firefox, chrome, and outlook open. Im around 4-6gb used @ any time. It's because of that i always have >10gb in all my systems.

Bottom line is.. Watch your system process. It will tell if you get close to maxing out your ram or not.
 
You wouldnt notice it unless your video editing or doing something else that requires alot of ram.

But honestly ram is dirt cheap on amazon, i would go ahead and do it
 
Austin8868 said:
You wouldnt notice it unless your video editing or doing something else that requires alot of ram.

But honestly ram is dirt cheap on amazon, i would go ahead and do it
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VMs will eat far more than video editing.
 
8GB of ram seems to be a safe spot that can handle just about any normal usage. Since your applications are not ram amount dependent I would stick to what you have.



Right now ram is cheap so it is the time to buy if you need or want it. No guarantee how long these low ram prices will last.
 
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I bought 8GB back in 2008 to max out the machine I had at that time, back when everyone was saying 4GB would be sufficient. It was dirt cheap then at $100/8gig. 2012 has now come and 16GB can be had for $100.

I found that when I had 8GB of ram I found ways to make use of it. By 2010 I was averaging 5-6GB in daily use. I never have to worry about tweaking everything anymore for optimal performance, or closing programs to free up memory. I could leave 20+ tabs open in my browser, have music playing in the background and still be able to fire up a game. Hell, if I could afford to I would get a socket 2011 system and throw 64GB of RAM in it and play with a dedicated 32GB RAMDISK.

Its only $50 or less to upgrade to 16GB at the moment. For your average person, that money can be had by packing your lunch for 10 days instead of getting McD's or buying 1 less carton of cigarettes a week.
 
I upgraded from 8GB of Gskill ripjaw X ddr3-1333 to 16GB of Crucial hyper X ddr3-1600 and couldn't be happier. I have more memory to use for VMs/video editing and it's faster than my old ram. It was only $32 after shipping and tax so I couldn't pass it up. (I paid $42 for the 8GB of Gskill.)
 
hdgamer said:
For surfing the internet, watching movies, and playing games, there is no need to go over 8 gigs. Even for future proofing is bullshit. By the time you would actually need it the next gen ram will come out and be cheap.
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Haha, you could do that comfortably on 1Gb ram. You kids these days make me laugh, 2-4 GB is plenty for most everyday uses, even gaming.
 
nobody_here said:
Haha, you could do that comfortably on 1Gb ram. You kids these days make me laugh, 2-4 GB is plenty for most everyday uses, even gaming.
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You obviously haven't played BF3 then. Night and day difference between 4GB and anything larger.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
You obviously haven't played BF3 then. Night and day difference between 4GB and anything larger.
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no sorry, i don't play AAA title games on my computer anymore, most people don't, outside of [H], they are mostly played on a console, small simple games like angry birds and farmville is what most people consider playing a game on a pc
 
nobody_here said:
no sorry, i don't play AAA title games on my computer anymore, most people don't, outside of [H], they are mostly played on a console, small simple games like angry birds and farmville is what most people consider playing a game on a pc
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Every single AAA title that hits the PC, gets played on my PC. And there is a visible resurgence in PC gaming on the high end (as in, AAA titles. )

You want evidence of it? Look at best buy's expanding PC gaming section. Reasonably (Though not spectacularly) priced hardware, be it peripherals, or components. Hell, when I was building the rig in my sig, bestbuy.ca actually had the 2600k on sale for cheaper than NCIX.

To say AAA gaming is mostly done on consoles right now is accurate, but it's not a trend anymore. it's waning.
 
Check your task manager if you need it. As far as getting more memory than necessary, it yields no real world benefits.
 
I only expanded mine to 8 when I started regularly running OSX in a VMware VM, as I'm apparently the new resident Mac support. I rarely game or even run Windows and my normal usage (sans VM) is around 1GB. But the stuff was SO cheap.
 
0mega said:
Every single AAA title that hits the PC, gets played on my PC. And there is a visible resurgence in PC gaming on the high end (as in, AAA titles. )

You want evidence of it? Look at best buy's expanding PC gaming section. Reasonably (Though not spectacularly) priced hardware, be it peripherals, or components. Hell, when I was building the rig in my sig, bestbuy.ca actually had the 2600k on sale for cheaper than NCIX.

To say AAA gaming is mostly done on consoles right now is accurate, but it's not a trend anymore. it's waning.
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im just saying, that does not represent the majority of people, it's a niche group. there are far more copies of the AAA titles being played on consoles than on pc

the vast majority of people in society, if you talk about gaming, are thinking and familiar with a console, not a pc, that's just what it is, that's why i said for the majority of people and uses, 2-4Gb is more than enough

having 8+Gb of ram only provides tangible benefits for a very small specific group of people running highly specialized software with very specific use, and video gaming is not what I am thinking about
 
i used to be, used to have uber gaming rigs, water cooled and overclocked and voltmodded and blah blah blah.....but that was like 10 years ago....i grew up since then...lol
 
having 8+Gb of ram only provides tangible benefits for a very small specific group of people running highly specialized software with very specific use, and video gaming is not what I am thinking about
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Exactly, I agree.
 
nobody_here said:
i used to be, used to have uber gaming rigs, water cooled and overclocked and voltmodded and blah blah blah.....but that was like 10 years ago....i grew up since then...lol
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You grew up from PC gaming? Now you play on consoles and shitty browser games like Farmville? Oh, wow.:D
 
Get 8 GB of the fastest speed, with the fastest timings you like to spend when it comes to 2012 PC gaming ;) Anything less is uncivilized.
 
exenter said:
You grew up from PC gaming? Now you play on consoles and shitty browser games like Farmville? Oh, wow.:D
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no, i grew up and got a lot of responsibilities so I don't really have time for "video gaming" anymore. I do occasionally get to play a little Forza 4 with some of the crew I race with, but we are talking 2 hours a week tops, like late on a saturday night, on the couch, with a few beers, comfortable and having fun.....

i don't have time to sit at a desk playing video games for a couple hours each evening like i used to, thats what i mean by i grew up, no offense to anyone.....it is what it is....it happens when you get married and have kids and full time load at work and other activities in real life. video gaming is something I will always enjoy but will never have time for anymore, which is just part of growing up
 
nobody_here said:
no, i grew up and got a lot of responsibilities so I don't really have time for "video gaming" anymore. I do occasionally get to play a little Forza 4 with some of the crew I race with, but we are talking 2 hours a week tops, like late on a saturday night, on the couch, with a few beers, comfortable and having fun.....

i don't have time to sit at a desk playing video games for a couple hours each evening like i used to, thats what i mean by i grew up, no offense to anyone.....it is what it is....it happens when you get married and have kids and full time load at work and other activities in real life. video gaming is something I will always enjoy but will never have time for anymore, which is just part of growing up
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I hate to admit it but the same thing happened to me.
Now whenever I buy a new video card, it isn't how fast it will run a new game, it's how many FLOPS I can utilize for HPC and super-computing.

Good times though, brings back memories of the good ol' days. :)
 
open up task manager and goto performance tab. do everything you usually do and see what the max memory usage is. if it's 20% < 8GB you're fine. if it's reaching 8GB and you're swapping a lot, then you might want to upgrade.
 
RAM are cheap these days, I will just get it. if you keep your pc on 24/7, the more the better.
 
gigiba said:
if you keep your pc on 24/7, the more the better.
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It depends on the system and what is running.
I have OSes that run 24/7 for months that never eat past 1GB of system memory.
Others I have running (assuming no memory leaks) with constant use will use over 3GB of system memory.
 
Red Falcon said:
It depends on the system and what is running.
I have OSes that run 24/7 for months that never eat past 1GB of system memory.
Others I have running (assuming no memory leaks) with constant use will use over 3GB of system memory.
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agree. If you have Windows and running 24/7, the more the better.
 
I have had Windows running 24/7 for the past few days with Comsol models running. When Comsol is closed, I never go above ~4.5 gb.
 
Eisenblut said:
I have 16GB but I have 4GB of it in a RAM disk to put browser caches and Win7 temp folders and page files on.

Works for me.
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Same thing here. Nothing wrong with have 16 and even if you have two sticks go bad, you can pull them and still have enough ram for 99+% of the programs out there.
 
Rendering video to the RAM disk is very nice, also. It obviously way faster than doing it to a hard drive, and if you have all SSDs like me, it saves the wear on them.
 
If you're not running VM's or Creative Suite, no.
Hell even then you'll probably never use it. I have 16 in my workstation at home just because I "downgraded" from an SR-2 with 12GB, but only having 8 in my other systems hasn't stopped me from running 2 VM's simultaneously on them or using CS5 (and running Photoshop64, Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro all at the same time, switching back and forth between each).
I run a Server08 VM and a 7 VM on my laptop at school in lab at the same time, giving each VM 2GB and my host 7x64pro still has 1.5GB free.
It is nice giving a VM 4+GB on my 2600k workstation but it's not a requirement for me; more like a "it's available so I do it" sort of thing. ;)

If you have the cash, sure why not. You'll probably never need it, but then again if you ever do, you'll pay less now than you will later. Eventually DDR3 will go back up in price, just like DDR2 eventually went back up in price. I've debated upgrading everything to 16GB but I'm sure I can get by with only 1 system having it and the rest having 8. :)
 
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zero2dash said:
If you're not running VM's or Creative Suite, no.
Hell even then you'll probably never use it. I have 16 in my workstation at home just because I "downgraded" from an SR-2 with 12GB, but only having 8 in my other systems hasn't stopped me from running 2 VM's simultaneously on them or using CS5 (and running Photoshop64, Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro all at the same time, switching back and forth between each).
I run a Server08 VM and a 7 VM on my laptop at school in lab at the same time, giving each VM 2GB and my host 7x64pro still has 1.5GB free.
It is nice giving a VM 4+GB on my 2600k workstation but it's not a requirement for me; more like a "it's available so I do it" sort of thing. ;)

If you have the cash, sure why not. You'll probably never need it, but then again if you ever do, you'll pay less now than you will later. Eventually DDR3 will go back up in price, just like DDR2 eventually went back up in price. I've debated upgrading everything to 16GB but I'm sure I can get by with only 1 system having it and the rest having 8. :)
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DDR2 went back up in price first due to lack of demand (DDR3 became the default for new builds); even now, it's FAR cheaper to go DDR3 than DDR2 in terms of price as DDR2 continued going up, while DDR3 pricing has fallen or stayed flat.

I bought 8 GB of DDR3-1333 for BridgeWalker and paid $42 (including tax) for it - last year. Since then, even the post-tax price (same RAM) has gone down. 4 GB of DDR2 costs more than $42 anywhere - it's gotten to the point where Best Buy beats MicroCenter on DDR2 pricing (and how often is it that Best Buy beats MicroCenter in terms of pricing on anything?)

One area where 16GB comes in real handy is virtualization - especially server OS virtualization. If you do a lot of that *and* want to game while doing it, that's why 16 GB makes sense.
 
It's super cheap, and the next batch of CPUs will use DDR3 too.

I went for 16GB for peace of mind as I disable my swap file.
 
I just purchased more ram. I started out with 4gb, then added 8gb when ram got cheaper. Now I bought another 8gb to give me 16gb (max on my mobo) and I'll give my 4gb to my gf. It's always nice to have more ram.
 
Howie said:
I just purchased more ram. I started out with 4gb, then added 8gb when ram got cheaper. Now I bought another 8gb to give me 16gb (max on my mobo) and I'll give my 4gb to my gf. It's always nice to have more ram.
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That's what she said. :D
 
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