Upgrading from 4 to 8 GB...

H

Hyper_Psycho

2[H]4U
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Mar 26, 2002
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Hey everyone ...

My pc has 4 gigs of ram (2 sticks of 2GB-- see sig).... Now If I get two more sticks and have 8GB of ram ... what kind of performance should I see?

I have vista ultimate and my processor running at 3.2GHZ (c2q). Everything is smooth as it can be. I play games, watch movies, and edit photos on with this baby.

Is upgrading a waste of money? Should I wait till there are 4GB sticks around? Would it be hard to keep my current overclock (ram is running at 1024 I think)?

Any thoughts would be grateful...
 
If everything is running great why bother upgrading?

Also your system prob will not support 4 gig sticks.
 
swatbat said:
If everything is running great why bother upgrading?

Also your system prob will not support 4 gig sticks.
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you're right ...
This motherboard supports up to 8 GB of RAM.

but still will it be noticeably faster if I make this upgrade?
 
I don't think the OS or any program can utilize 8GB of ram

of course unless your doing CAD? photoshop extensive stuff. 8GB is an overkill
 
Hyper_Psycho said:
Hey everyone ...

My pc has 4 gigs of ram (2 sticks of 2GB-- see sig).... Now If I get two more sticks and have 8GB of ram ... what kind of performance should I see?

I have vista ultimate and my processor running at 3.2GHZ (c2q). Everything is smooth as it can be. I play games, watch movies, and edit photos on with this baby.

Is upgrading a waste of money? Should I wait till there are 4GB sticks around? Would it be hard to keep my current overclock (ram is running at 1024 I think)?

Any thoughts would be grateful...
Click to expand...

cheap as ram is these days for ddr2-800 why not

people will say its a waste... but ask them how much RAM do they have...and if its not 8 GB then they have no personal experience ....so how would they really know
 
POPEGOLD said:
cheap as ram is these days for ddr2-800 why not

people will say its a waste... but ask them how much RAM do they have...and if its not 8 GB then they have no personal experience ....so how would they really know
Click to expand...

:confused: You can check your ram usage in the Task Manager...

tell me how much your using? lul Firefox 3 will fix teh memory leaks if you have a billion tabs running. I'm on the beta and it's silky smooth
 
Just upgraded to 8 GB, for no other reason than I believe DDR2 ram prices will never be cheaper. And yes Vista loves to use every bit of ram you can feed it. Absolutely no regrets, this 64bit system flies with 8gb, no matter how many programs are open. No slowdowns whatsoever.
 
oboyco said:
Just upgraded to 8 GB, for no other reason than I believe DDR2 ram prices will never be cheaper. And yes Vista loves to use every bit of ram you can feed it. Absolutely no regrets, this 64bit system flies with 8gb, no matter how many programs are open. No slowdowns whatsoever.
Click to expand...

Im using 2.02 GB right now.

Firefox, excel, winamp, word web, media player and adobe bridge / camera raw open (I'm editing like 30 pictures) ....
 
oboyco said:
Just upgraded to 8 GB, for no other reason than I believe DDR2 ram prices will never be cheaper. And yes Vista loves to use every bit of ram you can feed it. Absolutely no regrets, this 64bit system flies with 8gb, no matter how many programs are open. No slowdowns whatsoever.
Click to expand...

What kind of stuff are you running on your computer? Did you upgrade from 4gb?
 
Well up to 20 or more Firefox windows open, Yahoo IM, Office XP Word, WMC with my TV tuner, and a few others. 80 some processes going on and not even breaking a sweat. Not doing anything intensive like CAD, or video encoding.

And yes I actually upgraded from 2gb to 6gb, and then to 8gb. Never broke more than 2.11gb of physical memory used @ 8gb. However cached memory is a different story, which is good.
 
oboyco said:
Just upgraded to 8 GB, for no other reason than I believe DDR2 ram prices will never be cheaper. And yes Vista loves to use every bit of ram you can feed it. Absolutely no regrets, this 64bit system flies with 8gb, no matter how many programs are open. No slowdowns whatsoever.
Click to expand...

Did you turn off your pagefile after the upgrade?
 
You'll need Win64 for 8 gigs of memory.

Even if few individual programs support 8 gigs of memory, having lots of memory for each program in memory using a couple gigs realizes advantages.

Like almost all the upgrade-for-perf questions here, what results you see will depend on what you specifically do with your machine. I develop software and study very large databases. I'd certainly see a benefit, and am eager to upgrade to a motherboard that supports 8 gigamabytes.

jstenuf said:
Did you turn off your pagefile after the upgrade?
Click to expand...
I hope not. For reasons that have been covered repeatedly in the OS section of this forum, it's a bad idea.
 
xxEIEIOxx said:
I know I linked to this in another thread but it is an interesting read, and should answer some questions on the subject. http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/15/vista_workshop/
Click to expand...

That article discusses various principles of memory use in Windows, but its conclusion that "8 GB Improves Efficiency And Comfort" wasn't really supported by that; they didn't discuss efficiency and comfort or do any tests involving multitasking. Undoubtedly it will, if you do have several extremely RAM-hungry programs running at once, but the number of people who would benefit is currently small. And it recommends turning off the page file, again.
 
xxEIEIOxx said:
I know I linked to this in another thread but it is an interesting read, and should answer some questions on the subject. http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/15/vista_workshop/
Click to expand...

It bugs me how many errors that article has. I just glanced over it and noticed how they list web server as supporting 4 gigs of ram(it supports 2) and listing information for sbs server 64bit which doesn't exist(08 will be though). I think some of the other numbers are wrong too but don't feel like looking them up.
 
Keep in mind, if you're in to overclocking your RAM and squeezing as much speed out of it as possible, going with 4x2's may give you a tough time without going to DDR2-1000+, which becomes expensive. There comes a point where more Mhz is going to outperform more RAM in *most* applications. Right now, I think 4GB DDR2-800 in a 2x2 configuration is your sweetspot.
 
PilotKD said:
Keep in mind, if you're in to overclocking your RAM and squeezing as much speed out of it as possible, going with 4x2's may give you a tough time without going to DDR2-1000+, which becomes expensive. There comes a point where more Mhz is going to outperform more RAM in *most* applications. Right now, I think 4GB DDR2-800 in a 2x2 configuration is your sweetspot.
Click to expand...

point taken
any research into this ... i.e. links?
 
im on xp and have no plans to go to vista so me upgrading isnt gonna have any benefit im happy with 4gb
 
^Well you could go to XP 64bit
Why not go for 8GB, DDR2 RAM is so cheap nowadays it doesn't really matter.
 
otherwise i would be on 64 bit by now. Also i dont want decreased performance from windows emulating a 32bit environment
 
swatbat said:
It bugs me how many errors that article has.
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Yeah, there's a few more big ones in there. Like this:

In the end, this means that even with 8 GB or more of system memory installed, each 32-bit application can only use a maximum of 4 GB. The only recourse these applications have is to page some of their routines that are currently not in use to the hard drive, which is obviously not going to improve performance.
Click to expand...

Obviously? The only thing that's obvious here is that the author (and his editors) don't understand the application of virtual memory.

I wish these problems were limited to this article; it's really hard to find a hardware site that doesn't suck. Reviews that start with three pages filled with pictures of the boxes the parts came in, bad gaffes about technical issues, incorrect transcriptions of tables that are free for the asking, and the incredibly poor writing style. Are there any good hardware sites?
 
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