Should I max out my MOBO to 4 GIGS or not????

S

StalkerZER0

[H]ard|Gawd
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Dec 2, 2005
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Hey all.

I have the a8n-sli deluxe with about 2 gigs of ram right now (4 x 512mb). Umm....Corsair value select I believe.
Anyways, I decided I'm not going to upgrade my system til mid 2007 (quad core or something). And I'm not going to immediately go to vista as soon as it launches. Question is can I upgrade my mobo to 4 gigs of ram? I mean if I'm still using XP I've heard that if you were to go to 4 gigs your system performance would actually decrease?
If this is true can I go to 3 gigs to get an improvement in performance?
Thanks for helping. :)
 
What do you really need that amount of ram for?

Unless you're playing a game, burning a dvd, encoding a movie, and rendering graphics all at the same time...It's kind of pointless to have that much.


I could see if it was any type of file/application server, but you're probably bottlenecked by your harddrives anyways. Spend that cash on a few Raptor harddrives and throw some Raid-0 in since it seems like you have money to burn through...
 
IntelOwnz said:
What do you really need that amount of ram for?

Unless you're playing a game, burning a dvd, encoding a movie, and rendering graphics all at the same time...It's kind of pointless to have that much.


I could see if it was any type of file/application server, but you're probably bottlenecked by your harddrives anyways. Spend that cash on a few Raptor harddrives and throw some Raid-0 in since it seems like you have money to burn through...
Click to expand...

Well, I like to multi task indeed. Plus there is the fact that I don't want to get a new mobo/cpu til mid 2007 but I'm getting a 30 inch lcd soon. I'm going to be running games and desktop at 2560x1600 and I'm getting a 8800gtx. So I was thinking til I upgrade my cpu/mobo maybe uping my system from 2 gigs to 3 or even 4 gigs might help.
 
unless youre actually at or near capacity on any sort of regular basis, more ram shant do you any good. 2 gigs is plenty for most things. Youre not serving an SQL database in the background are you? lol.

Save your cash, let memory prices go down, and purchase later if necessary.
 
Well ok. But I'm just afraid after the 8800gtx running stuff at 2560x1600 that my mobo will become a bottleneck. At least I hope not. :eek:
 
Ram won't be your bottleneck. Your HD and CPU would bottleneck before ram does if you already have 2 gigs.
 
You need 4 gigs of ram to play the biggest maps when SupCom comes in stores.
 
Depends you can buy great ram for $300 for 2gb DDR2 or you can get cheapo ram for $150 per 2gb. Honestly I don't see how 4gb would be a bad idea, With windows vista launching and multicore processors being used up better I think it would work unless you are in a tight budget. Pc's will eventually need more ram, the question is how fast would your pc be able to access all this ram? what I mean is will the ram slots be bottlenecked with so much ram. Unless your strapped for cash 4gb does not sound bad.
 
ellover009 said:
Depends you can buy great ram for $300 for 2gb DDR2 or you can get cheapo ram for $150 per 2gb. Honestly I don't see how 4gb would be a bad idea, With windows vista launching and multicore processors being used up better I think it would work unless you are in a tight budget. Pc's will eventually need more ram, the question is how fast would your pc be able to access all this ram? what I mean is will the ram slots be bottlenecked with so much ram. Unless your strapped for cash 4gb does not sound bad.
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Theres still good ram thats in the 230-260ish range. Not everyone pushes voltage through their ram :D Some people just need good ram to push the cpu and you can find that at just above value price. That $230 G.skill kit on newegg will let you OC a bit :D
 
Riddlinkidstoner said:
Theres still good ram thats in the 230-260ish range. Not everyone pushes voltage through their ram :D Some people just need good ram to push the cpu and you can find that at just above value price. That $230 G.skill kit on newegg will let you OC a bit :D
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Here's Affortable
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2797&p=17
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2797&p=18
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2797&p=19
and less affortable
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2797&p=15
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2797&p=16

Unless you plan to O/C to stupid speeds the affortable should do fine, you might even be able to get 4gb. The question is top speed, the less affortable might be able to push a little more, read this and decide whats best for you, tell me what you think.
 
Thing is the a8n-sli only supports regular pc3200 ram. And I plan to get vista maybe the same time when I get the new mobo/cpu in mid 2007. By then the 64bit version of vista should be out which will support a whole hell lot more of ram.
Maybe high end mobos by then will support up to 8 gigs and beyond.

That will be cool. :)
 
Sure it would be cool but if you aren't gonna use it why bother 2 gigs is plenty for any operateing system. XP 32 bit won't even recognize all 4 gigs, XP 64 bit will support all four gigs and I'm sure vista will but this fella ain't goin anywhere near vista till the bugs are all ironed out. When you NEED 4 gigs get 4 gigs but till then I wouldn't even give it a scond thought. Odds are by the time you NEED 4 gigs the memory you buy now could very well be obsolete. Good luck.
 
stick with what you have. when you do decide to upgrade your cpu/mobo, you'll wind up having to get all new ram again (ddr2). also, just to agree with what every one else is saying, 2gb is plenty more than enough.
 
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