How much RAM do we need?

For the $150 it costs now to get 8GB thats what i did. I was told if I was going to be using VMs to go atleast 8GB, and they are right. Games so far don't need more then 4GB.
 
So I've had an athlon II 630 and MSI 785 combo I got from Fry's for $100 on a whim sitting around for a few months because I refused to pay ~$100 for 4gb of DDR3 (I bought my DDR2 during the glory days of $40/4gb). I just bit on a 2x4gb set of DDR3 1333 Gskill ram for 130 shipped from Newegg. At that price, it is exactly double the 4gb price in the same number of sticks. With linear scaling like that, I always go for the larger amount because you will want the increased capacity down the road and ram compatibility can be a fickle thing.
 
heres my situation:
i had 4gb of gskill ddr3 2000 and added another 4gb of the same exact sticks (all bought from forsaken1), i did a windows experience and im still at 7.5. isnt it suppose to go up?

oh well not really too disappointed just glad that i'm running the computer i want to run. an i7 + gtx 480 + 8gb + ssd machine. but im still pretty new to this, even though i did everything myself when i built the rig.
 
chimera996 said:
heres my situation:
i had 4gb of gskill ddr3 2000 and added another 4gb of the same exact sticks (all bought from forsaken1), i did a windows experience and im still at 7.5. isnt it suppose to go up?
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I started with 4GB of DDR3 1333 and it was perfect. But then I added another 4Gb just like you and my score went up from 7.3 to 7.5.

Now 8 GB is perfect because I run Win XP (512 MB) and Ubuntu 10.10 (1.5 GB) as VMs and still wanted to play games at the same time. It did help in this aspect.
 
Ram is so cheap nowadays. I have 6GB from my last build 2 years ago. Next build I'll go with 10-12GB. Necessary? Probably not, but every build I've always upped my amount of RAM.. can't stop yet. :p
 
gurusan said:
3GB is the standard minimum IMO for a modern Win7 computer. 4GB recommended
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I don't agree. I notice very little material difference between by 2gb and 4gb laptops, both running Win7.

If you don't know of a specific reason why you would need a lot of ram, 4gb is more than enough.
 
I have 16 GB in my system. I haven't taken any stress tests to see how much I use for a certain task, but I mainly use the system for Photoshop, Games, Video Editing and other intensive things. I have noticed a HUGE difference over another system I have with 4GB in it.
 
harjon said:
I have 16 GB in my system. I haven't taken any stress tests to see how much I use for a certain task, but I mainly use the system for Photoshop, Games, Video Editing and other intensive things. I have noticed a HUGE difference over another system I have with 4GB in it.
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I could see you seeing a huge difference in Photoshop and Video editing, as they both definitely benefit from having more than 4gb. Gaming on the other hand, as long as you aren't running anything absurd in the background, not really (though I could name a couple games that are close to maxing out a 4gb system). But, that'll change soon.
 
I have 6gb of ram and the only time I've ever come close to using it was when I had Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects running. System didn't slow down at all but damn it was weird seeing 5.7gb of ram in use.
 
wra18th said:
I started with 4GB of DDR3 1333 and it was perfect. But then I added another 4Gb just like you and my score went up from 7.3 to 7.5.

Now 8 GB is perfect because I run Win XP (512 MB) and Ubuntu 10.10 (1.5 GB) as VMs and still wanted to play games at the same time. It did help in this aspect.
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i just did a reassessment and got a 7.6, but the weird part is my disk drive went down from a 7.7 to a 7.6:

2d1wjme.png
 
chimera996 said:
i just did a reassessment and got a 7.6, but the weird part is my disk drive went down from a 7.7 to a 7.6:
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Dude, it's Windows Experience. It means basically nothing, and rarely is there any rhyme or reason to it's scores. I can run it 5 times and get 5 different scores. I've seen it go down after and upgrade, and up after a downgrade. It's just a windows gimmick, nothing more. Best to use actual benchmarking software if you want to get an idea of your system performance.
 
All depends on what you do. I'm less than fond of "Error: Cannot allocate vector of size 16.3GB" in R, especially since I'd need to replace a stack of 2GB ECC FB-DIMM sticks in that computer to put more than 16GB in it. The fileserver is at 8GB now, which seems to be enough to make ZFS happy.

On the other hand, 8GB seems more than enough on my non-work computers for a while. Even 4GB in the laptop is unproblematic, including some gaming.
 
Depends... My sweet spots:

Win XP (32 bit):

768 MB for someone who does nothing more than word processing, e-mail, and casual internet surfing.

1.5 GB for someone who is your "average" user.

3.0 GB (actually 3.25 GB) for a gamer.

Win 7 (64 bit):

1.5 GB for the light user.

2.0-3.0 GB for your "average" user.

6.0+ GB for a gamer.
 
I don't see a need for any more than 4GB of ram (for a normal desktop/gaming system) at this point in time.
 
4gb's is enough for me. 2gb's is my personal minimum or any new systems I buy. However, my wifes IBM T40 runs Windows 7 Ultimate happily with only 1gb.

My workstation that I'm using at work has 4gb's and I have Windows XP running in VMWare Player with only 256mb allocated to it, and it's running fine.
 
I've been using 4GB of RAM with good results (some light VM work and very light gaming) on Windows 7. That being said if you can find good deals on more RAM the better.
 
4GB is enough for most people. If you have more money to spend, put in a piggy bank to be a little closer to your next major computer upgrade.
 
I currently have 4GB in my i5 750 system but just ordered another dual channel kit today of the same ram because it was on sale so am bumping it up to 8GB total. I've seen a few recent games recommend more than 4GB for really top performance so am going to see if I can detect a dif with 8GB compared to 4GB. I'm not expecting to see much benefit, if any, to be honest with you, except maybe in a game or two.

I have an issue with my Noctua cpu HS though. It uses dual fans and one covers one of the ram slots so am going to have to take that fan off if I want to use 8GB of ram.
 
DDigital said:
I could see you seeing a huge difference in Photoshop and Video editing, as they both definitely benefit from having more than 4gb. Gaming on the other hand, as long as you aren't running anything absurd in the background, not really (though I could name a couple games that are close to maxing out a 4gb system). But, that'll change soon.
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With Steam games you have no option but to have their crap running in the background. And I have a few Steam games that also load GFWL so that is even more unwanted crap, and those games are very graphics intensive and could do with max resources. I did create a .bat file that shuts down certain processes and services when I want to make sure I have close to max resources available.
 
Glad I found this thread. I'm looking to do a new build. I was going to do a 1366 build, but I've waited long enough that it make sense to wait for Sandy Bridge.

One thing I liked about the 1366/X58 platform was the triple channel memory. This wasn't so much for having three parallel channels, so much as it allow having 3x2GB DIMMs for 6GB.

However, it's now likely I'd go to the 1155/P67 platform. This means dual channel. Since none of the memory mfgrs saw fit to build 3GB DIMMs (don't know if the chipsets would even support them), I have a choice of 4 or 8 GB. I see 4 as adequate for now, but with no growth potential, and 8GB as overkill. Since overkill is still dead, I may spring for the extra $30-50 to go for the extra ram, but I have this niggling feeling that I'm wasting money. What does everyone think?
 
I had 8GB and downgraded to 4GB for a higher overclock. I'm not finding myself missing the other 4GB.
 
Some games, even older ones, can use a lot of ram. Try running a highly modified version of Stalker. It eats up ram. I'd imagine 4GB is a practical minimum.
 
Ive have computers with between 4 and 6gb of ram and honestly I don't notice any difference between the performance of 4gb and 6gb. I'd say if your a normal user and just game, etc 4gb is plenty at this time.
 
It's less than $499 to get 24GB of DDR3-1600 that runs at a cool 1.5v these days. Skip the over-priced "tri-packs", and get six individual sticks. Though 2/3 sticks of 4GB each would cover most people already.
 
This is an interesting question because it is almost completely situational. Do you surf the net, check email and that's it? Then you should not need more than 2 gigs. Do you do all of that stuff plus play a few games? Then 4 gigs should be okay. Do you a game, and multi-task? Then 6-8 gigs should do.

In my case, I multi-task on my host, play games, and run VM's. I have had one or two days where 12gigs almost wasn't enough. I am also the kind of person that given how cheap and easy it is to get more RAM why the hell not? It won't ever hurt.
 
maverick786us said:
Now putting 4 two GB modules in all the 4 slots is not a good option as using all the slots affects the OCing, so my question is when will 4GB memory chips become popular? So that I can use two 4GB memory modules to make it 8GB for my upcoming build ?
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4GB modules are already readily available at about the same cost per gigabyte as 2GB ones.
 
If I'm building a PC now, that I intend to use for the next 3-4 years, is 4GB going to be adequate? In may be now, but down the road?
 
Received my 4GB of G.Skill Ripjaws today so am running right now with 8GB. Haven't done any testing yet to see if I notice any dif but will be later on. I did notice that loading restore monitoring settings module was a lot faster than usual though and the mb has dropped down to 2T from 1T, which I think is normal with all slots filled.
 
12GB should be plenty for my needs.


Currently running 6GB but once I get a hot deal on SSD I want everything else to speed up.
I do video editing and photo editing all the time. RAM should help out there. 6GB does a good job but more can't hurt. Plus I have 3 available slots.
 
4GB in the indoor system, 43GB combined in the cluster... so far.

I have been so busy building the infrastructure of everything that I haven't been able to flog my main machine at all. 4GB will be gulped in a heartbeat when I do. Makes me want a trio of 4GB modules. That would keep me going, at least.
 
Lol, I had 12gb ddr3 ram and didn't use it for anything, 4gb of ram is enough for everyday use and gaming.
 
I've got a question. Does anyone use their PC as a HDTV? That is, with a blue-ray player that they use to watch movies. With my experience with DVDs, occasionally the movie will stop and I'll have to manually resume it. Not sure why this happened, if it was a memory issue or not. But, how much of an impact would playing a blu-ray movie through your computer (with Windows 7 of course) have? How much RAM would be utilized? Or is this strictly Video RAM?
 
JOSHSKORN said:
I've got a question. Does anyone use their PC as a HDTV? That is, with a blue-ray player that they use to watch movies. With my experience with DVDs, occasionally the movie will stop and I'll have to manually resume it. Not sure why this happened, if it was a memory issue or not. But, how much of an impact would playing a blu-ray movie through your computer (with Windows 7 of course) have? How much RAM would be utilized? Or is this strictly Video RAM?
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Not much at all, I've seen notebooks with 2gb pull it off flawlessly.
 
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