Noob - How is RAM used between 2 or 4 cores? I am pursuing a new box to build for some video editing and certainly some games. As I understand it, 4 cores for games right now is not the most bang for the buck but may be in the future. I will also be doing some video editing and other things like that so may pursue the quad core anyway.

What I am wondering is overall, how is the RAM used by the CPU? Pretend I have a quad core processor and 4 gigs of ram in 4 ddr2 slots. Am I pretty much limited to 1 gig of ram for each core to use for what ever it is doing? -or- Does each core have access to all 4 gigs if it needs it? Does it matter?

As a side, I read somewhere (here we go...) that most applications, even heavy games (BF2 in the article) use a little less then 1 gig when playing. I don't know if that is true, I just know it works fine on my computer with a Pent D30 and 2 gigs of ram in the only 2 slots for ddr2.

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The entire ram in your system should be accessed by each core. No matter if it is a dual or quad core, from AMD or Intel.

Be aware, though, that it is not the case of two socket systems like some servers/workstations and the future 4x4 platform from AMD; as they feature two processor sockets and individual ram slots for each socket.


About your other query:

It is known that 32bit OS’s can address a maximum of 2GB of memory per program. 64bit OS’s don’t have this limitation.

BMFM, Thanks for your time and thoughts.

4 sticks of 512MiB is around the same price as 2 sticks of 1GiB. The disadvantage is that you then have to either have more slots or you fill them quicker, but you could say that of any Dual Channel interface over a Single channel interface, or Quad Channel over Dual Channel (In woodcrest with FB-DIMMS)

A Hop to CPU #2 before hitting the RAM is similar to a hop to the Northbridge before hitting the RAM no?

This is why AMD's IMC has given them latency advantages for a while. Granted the advantage is lessened here, but the doubling in availible memory bandwidth gives other advantgages.

I think Windows XP can use 4GB ram, but 2GB of it will be used for the OS only.

JumpinJack,

Thanks for the notes. I appreciate the info on the memory controller bit with AMD and Intel. I use to have a VIC 20 and would record my programs on tape. Things have come a long way and it is nice to understand the inside of these toys as much as possible.

For the others, I am following the conversations and appreciate the input. To add further wood to the fire, is there any further advantage to having 4 gigs of ram (ddr2 800) rather than 2 gigs for 1) games, 2) video/audio processing. (Video editing and music mixing.) I am interested in the technical side of it. Does it just speed things up to have more ram? (Like it always did in the past.)

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