Have you gone from 4gb to 8gb?

I noticed a slight difference in the way Windows 7 operated, seems just a tad more responsive, but that is just my opinion since I didn't do any scientific tests.

Premiere CS5 benefited since it has more access to more memory.
I upgraded to 16GB since I got a real good deal, and Premiere would use all 8GB, so I figured I'd give Premiere more memory.

premiere-test.jpg
 
It all depends, photoshop, vmware, and heavy multitasking all benefit from the add'l ram. I personally saw a difference on my productivity system ( 3 x 24" monitors). I run at least 3 seperate web browsers w/ at least 10 tabs per browser, word, one note, itunes, and other miscellaneous app things at the same time. Even though I have a few gigs to spare, it's good to have peace of mind that you won't be bottlenecked. Besides, getting 2 x 4 GB (8 gig) kits are ridiculously cheap these days.
 
4 gig to 8 gig was like 40$ difference so i went for it. very rarely use more then 4 for the price why not.
 
With photo/video/music editing and of course VMs more than 4GB is useful, but not gaming.
 
Although we are running a 64bit operating system most of the applications we use are still 32bit
 
4->8 for a normal machine with gaming I didn't notice much of anything. Now if you throw in photoshop, video editing, rendering, VMs, etc; apps that really could make use of it then sure it'll make a difference. Otherwise you'd be hard pressed to notice.
 
flexcore said:
With photo/video/music editing and of course VMs more than 4GB is useful, but not gaming.
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Indeed, in my most recent system build, I was using the wife's PC a lot to help pull some drivers down (and catch a TF2 match one evening while the new rig was copying files).

Didn't even realize until I started looking around at the specs of it that it was still only running 2gb! For general Windows use, there is definitely no difference in 'feel' at all. Even with multitasking (browser, iTunes, games running), even 2gb seems quite alright. I imagine that depends on the game some, but, still...

Now, for MY PC, I definitely notice. Indeed, I'm hitting the wall at 8gb pretty often in Photoshop CS5...but I work on some HUGE images (doing a map for a boardgame at the moment - about 26 inches by 22 inches at 300dpi = 51 megapixels per layer!). So I'm looking at 16gb and trying to figure out if I could find a way to get 32gb in this box some day...

But it pretty much goes to the above point - if you are doing serious *WORK* on the PC...then, yeah, 8gb, 16gb, etc (whatever you can throw at it), you'll probably notice. For gaming and/or regular OS use? No.
 
I am surprised that gaming not to mention online gmaing uses less memory then dicken around on photoshop why is that?
 
I haven't. I mostly play games and I usually close everything else while I'm playing so I don't really have the need for 8GB.
 
Not yet, but I've went from .5 to 1 to 2 to 6 to 12gb on my home system. All were driven by my system hitting the swap file.

Work has promisied me a 4 to 8gb upgrade once they buy more 4GB dimms, this was 2.5mo ago...
 
SpongeBob said:
I am surprised that gaming not to mention online gmaing uses less memory then dicken around on photoshop why is that?
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The guys giving the photoshop example aren't "dicking around" with it. They are working with HUGE images with multiple layers. That will eat available memory like a fat kid in an ice cream shop.
 
Pingis said:
Would gaming benefit from going from 4gb to 8gb of ram?
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I upgraded from 4gb to 8gb on a 32bit OS to use the extra 4 gb as a ramdisk for games, which runs quite better for me, when having 4gb and running farcry2 from disk, it would occasionally load vegetations and some textures as you moved around, but now using ramdisk everything is smooth, dont see anything loading.

I'd really like 16gb or a x58 board with 24gb, for games that requires more than 4gb diskspace.
 
I never see more than 3-4gb used with winamp, steam, firefox, etc. I got 4gb instead of 8 because it was like $10 more for the upgrade or I would still have 4. I'm gonna build me a little LAN pc that I'll put in 8gb because its not really that much more for twice the ram.
 
SUPERGT said:
What about 4GB of 2133 vs. 8GB of 1600 (for gaming)?
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This is where you want to be.

Games benefit little (if ever) with great volumes of memory. But FAST ram...well, *everything* likes that...
 
I went to 8gb because it was only $30 to do so, I noticed before I was coming close to using all 4gb with firefox open, starcraft 2 (2gb by itself) and some other stuff. So for $30 it just keeps from not running into problems.
 
8gb was so very last year. 16gb now and would be more but my current board maxes out at 16gb, time for another upgrade! I have a dual monitor setup and normally have lightroom 3 and photoshop cs5 open, as well as outlook, work, itunes, and IE. Add to that I sometimes work with really large images (really large, as in 720MP uncompressed tiffs, 25mp DSLRs are for kids, heh)

Allan
 
Well I have 1 stick of 4GB so going to 8GB would give me the benefit of dual channel, I can't believe how much memory IE uses I have multiple tabs running and its amazing how much it uses up. Whats the deal with this? Under resource monitor (commit) can be 100k-353k+ (kb)
Not sure what PID stands for
 
SpongeBob said:
If so have you seen a real difference? If so where?
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I've been at 8GB for a couple years now.

Since I'm running SQL and a couple of other memory hungry apps from the same box, I'd say "yeah", I notice a difference between my machine and a similar one running only 4GB.

They start up their SQL apps, and the system begins to slow down almost immediately.

I start everything up and keep truckin'.
 
Made a difference in my zfs box(es). Also lets me virtualize a lot more.

With 8G on sale at $65 frequently, why would you do anything less?
 
For every day stuff like email, browsing and gaming, you'll not likely notice much of a difference, unless you multitask a lot and leave tons of windows open.

As has been mentioned before, I feel like there is a subtle increase in responsiveness to Win 7 - probably due to more caching - but this is small enough that it may just be placebo effect.

As has been mentioned before, if you do video editing, photo editing or run virtual machines you'll likely make significant use of it.

8GB for a desktop is just my standard build these days, as the extra ram is so cheap anyway, I figure its just nice to have the peace of mind that I'll have the needed RAM just in case. I was on 16GB on my desktop for some time, but went back to 12GB as I needed the stick elsewhere. There was no noticeable difference between 12 and 16 GB at all for what I do (memory hungry apps are primarily Photoshop CS5 and the occasional VMWare session if I don't feel like rebooting).

Personally, I'd just do it since its low cost, and the peace of mind effect is good to have, but if money is tight, and getting 4GB more is going to stop you from upgrading something else potentially more useful, then I wouldn't do it.
 
SUPERGT said:
What about 4GB of 2133 vs. 8GB of 1600 (for gaming)?
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Probably won't make any difference either way.

No game I know of really benefits noticeably from having more than 4GB ram, and pretty much any game I can think of is going to wind up being video card limited before it is system ram speed limited (unless you are performing comparison tests at low settings and pointlessly high fps... like "w00t, I get 350fps instead of 300fps in Quake III..." stupidity)
 
Spooony said:
show me a 32bit making use of 3.5gb show me
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Apparently you're not familiar with the concept of running more than one program at once. Even if a single 32-bit program can't take advantage of having 8GB of RAM, multiple 32-bit programs certainly can.
 
Zero82z said:
Apparently you're not familiar with the concept of running more than one program at once. Even if a single 32-bit program can't take advantage of having 8GB of RAM, multiple 32-bit programs certainly can.
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Not if you are on a 32bit os.
 
I am planning to get 8GB soon, I would love to get 16GB version but no point and waste unused ram this point.

I wonder if Battlefield 3 will take up much ram ? BF3 suppose be optimized for pc that mean more ram it get better loading maps plus 64 players pretty obvious.

I will just start with 8GB now till see what spec need for BF3 so I will upgrade 8GB more unless somebody write reviews about BF3 stuff like video card and ram usage.
 
phatbx133 said:
I am planning to get 8GB soon, I would love to get 16GB version but no point and waste unused ram this point.

I wonder if Battlefield 3 will take up much ram ? BF3 suppose be optimized for pc that mean more ram it get better loading maps plus 64 players pretty obvious.

I will just start with 8GB now till see what spec need for BF3 so I will upgrade 8GB more unless somebody write reviews about BF3 stuff like video card and ram usage.
Click to expand...

I havent see much use for 16gb yet, not even 8gb.... 8gb should be good enough.
 
Pingis said:
Would gaming benefit from going from 4gb to 8gb of ram?
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no, upping to 8Gb is a waste of money for gaming, my next system in 3 years or so will have 8Gb, by then it should be able to be utilized. all these people with 12 and 16 and 24Gb of ram in their "extweem gaming rig" are just putting it in there because they can, it's completely wasted and bragging rights only

Spooony said:
Although we are running a 64bit operating system most of the applications we use are still 32bit
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most of the games out have 64bit variants or a large percentage anyways
 
MindBuster said:
I upgraded from 4gb to 8gb on a 32bit OS to use the extra 4 gb as a ramdisk for games, which runs quite better for me, when having 4gb and running farcry2 from disk, it would occasionally load vegetations and some textures as you moved around, but now using ramdisk everything is smooth, dont see anything loading.

I'd really like 16gb or a x58 board with 24gb, for games that requires more than 4gb diskspace.
Click to expand...

Doesn't it take a while to copy the game to the ramdisk every time you boot?

If you had a 64bit OS, would the game cache all of this stuff on its own, without having to bother creating a ramdisk? (not farcry, as it does not have a 64bit executable, but other more modern games)

I have personally never had a texture loading problem while playing games. In my experience most developers try to fit all the needed textures in Vram before loading a level, so they don't have to go out to system ram (bad for performance) or to the disk (even worse for performance) while rendering.
 
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