Is 2GB of RAM enough?

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Guido02

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 17, 2006
Messages
224
I have a 2x2GB set of DDR2 that I would like to split up and use one chip in 2 different computers. Both of these are HTPC's.

The first pc is:
Intel E6500 Wolfdale 2.93GHz Dual Core
MSI G41M4-L

The second is:
Intel E2140 1.6GHz Dual Core Proc
Intel D945GCCRG1 mobo

Now, one other option I have is that I also have 2x512MB DDR2 sitting aside that I can put into the weaker machine, which would let me keep four gigs in the E6500 and then it would become more useful for encrypting any videos.

What are your thoughts?
 
Is 1GB of RAM enough in the other pc? (If I wanted to keep 4GB for the "Main" HTPC)

Is it ok to seperate a set of ram like that?
 
Guido02 said:
Is 1GB of RAM enough in the other pc? (If I wanted to keep 4GB for the "Main" HTPC)

Is it ok to seperate a set of ram like that?
Click to expand...

Yes it's ok to seperate RAM like that. Try out the 1GB of RAM in the other PC for yourself to see if it's enough. For someone like me, 1GB wouldn't be enough. For others, 1GB will be fine.
 
It is hard to say as to if it would be "enough" without knowing what you will be doing with your machines. Also, what may be enough might not be acceptable. What I mean is that a certain level of Ram may functionally run your programs, but may not be fast enough. That is just me, though. I like to overkill on hardware so I don't run into "I wonder if my system will handle. . . .. " questions when adding to it.
 
2GB of RAM will probably be enough for doing all the things a regular HTPC does. But by splitting a 2x2GB set, you also do something quite significant to the bandwidth of the RAM. DDR---->SDR. Here's a link to Wikipedia that has the information regarding the difference between DDR and SDR memory configurations, along with links at the bottom to TH and other websites. They basically state that the difference is minimal, up to 5.4% difference in transcoding time was the largest difference, in DivX. So you can split the RAM with minimal performance losses. If you don't that means your other machine will only have 1GB of RAM total. The problems you would run into with that, I would bet would be greater for that machine than splitting the 2GB sticks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-channel_architecture#cite_note-2
 
I've been running my htpc on 2gb starting with vista and I haven't had any performance issues.
 
bore_u2_death said:
2GB of RAM will probably be enough for doing all the things a regular HTPC does. But by splitting a 2x2GB set, you also do something quite significant to the bandwidth of the RAM. DDR---->SDR. Here's a link to Wikipedia that has the information regarding the difference between DDR and SDR memory configurations, along with links at the bottom to TH and other websites. They basically state that the difference is minimal, up to 5.4% difference in transcoding time was the largest difference, in DivX. So you can split the RAM with minimal performance losses. If you don't that means your other machine will only have 1GB of RAM total. The problems you would run into with that, I would bet would be greater for that machine than splitting the 2GB sticks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-channel_architecture#cite_note-2
Click to expand...

You won't go from DDR to SDR. You'll go from dual channel to single channel. Two different things.
 
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