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Is 4GB worth it?

But when you can get another 2 gig for 140 bucks, would it hurt a 939 to have all 4 slots filled. This is a gaming rig, primarily for BF2. Bottom line for gaming, which is better 2 slots filled or 4?
 
Vista will be able to handle the full 4GB. WinXP 32-bit can't. (Only goes up to 3GB with /PAE or something...just not worth it).

I think 1GBx2 would be best for future upgrading purposes. I figure its a bit easier to run 2 sticks at tight timings then getting 4 sticks to run at tighter timings.
 
This what I tried, mixed some XP4000 and XP4000 Redline. Picture Here.

I also do play some Battlefield 2 and only improvement I could see is the map loading times. And improvement we're talking about here was from four to six seconds. In game performance went actually a little bit slower since memory bandwidth goes down if you're comparing 2GB against 4GB. You can't maintain same timings with 4GB than you can do with 2GB, so FPS will be slower overally.

IMO: not worth it
 
Homeboy needs some serious therapy. Wow, thats um, not tasteful.

-E
 
Anyways, back on topic: 32bit or 64bit Windows? If you are using the 32bit version of XP then I'd say no. There is a know OS limitation with addressing up to 4gb of memory and you might end up with something like 3.5Gb showing up for XP. If its 64bit XP, then sure, the more the merrier in terms of the amount you can address.

-E
 
I don't think a trade of decreased load times versus decreased game performance would be worth it, Some good input here.
 
If you want to run 64-Bit Vista without memory issues.... I would rather have 4GB of ram compared to just 2.

My next PC / Intel Powermac (Whatever I decide w/ a Conroe XE)
Will have at least, 4GB of ram...
 
MrE said:
Anyways, back on topic: 32bit or 64bit Windows? If you are using the 32bit version of XP then I'd say no. There is a know OS limitation with addressing up to 4gb of memory and you might end up with something like 3.5Gb showing up for XP. If its 64bit XP, then sure, the more the merrier in terms of the amount you can address.

-E
Click to expand...
Boot with /3GB it will address upto 4gb but only 2gb can be used for applications while the other 2 is used for system services or somthing. Preferably if your gonna run anything above 2g ram you better be using 80% of it as a ram drive, I ran a machine with 4gb once and used 3.5 as HD and 512 as regular ram and it still flew
 
also depends on the board...

not sure what you have, but from what ive read...my A8N-SLI vanilla doesnt like all the 4 slots filled up...
 
It depends on the combination of RAM and MB, I suppose, as my A8N SLI Premium runs just fine with all 4 slots filled up ...
 
^^ Interesting how you mention that, this may be OT, but I've heard of problems with that motherboard and running all 4 DIMMs. I previously owned 2 OCZ EL 1gb kits, and with all 4 DIMMs in use I was getting bluescreens all over the place. Went back to the store I bought the memory from, and doing some searching along with the salesman at the store, we found other cases where many other people were having the same problem. Actually, we only found one successful case where somebody ran 4 DIMMs in this board, I don't recall what the RAM was (I think it was Kingston, I'm not even sure the person that posted this info knew), but it wasn't OCZ... Interesting though, as I have seen one other person on here running all 4 DIMMs. Long story short, I replaced both kits with an OCZ EL Platinum 2gb kit and it works just great now.
 
Strange, it worked with the first RAMs I used, 2 Corsair sets a 2*1 GB that were laying around. I do not recall the exact version, but Everest reads the SPD as Corsair CMX1024-3200C2.

Blind luck, I suppose ;-)
 
Having 4GB of ram myself I'll chime in. I don't actually think it is worth it. Especially not for Windows XP 32-bit. You won't be able to use all 4GB of it anyway. Also, you will have to use a 2T timing rate for most motherboard memory combinations anyway, (Unless using Intel based systems) and with some A64's you'll have to run at DDR333 speeds anyway. Not worth the it for the increase in ram which will likely go unused anyway.

I occasionally tap into the area of 3GB of ram being used at a given time, but rarely does this ever occur. I've NEVER ever broken into the 4GB territory unless I just loaded the system down on purpose in order to see it loaded. I did this a few times just so I could say that I did it.
 
There was an article I read recently, I'm not sure where (THG I think), where they compared different memory configurations and how they compared with one another. The results were somewhat surprising, what we would normally regard as slower memory actually performed pretty well, and more expensive setups (like 4x1g sticks), performed lackluster. Just going from memory, I think 2x512mb yielded the best performance. However, have a look at your memory usage in task manager and you'll see that you should have a considerable amount of free space at any given time. My system at home has 2gb of memory, and it typically is using around 600mb or so at any given time, plenty of headroom for anything I would want to run. To run 4gb would be kind of pointless IMO, as you have to run 2T timings, resulting in slower performance, and I don't think you would be swapping any less.
 
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