4 gigs < 2 gigs?? Did I just waste money?

The RAM is running at the same speed and timings with 2 and 4 gigs?

Vista 64 flattens out 2Gb. However it does help when multitask or using memory intensive apps like Photoshop just not that much. The gain isn't worth $350 that you paid for that ram IMO. In fact you running 1000MHz vs. my 800MHz isn't worth the $100 extra you paid for you ram. It's like a 1-2% increase at best.

Now if you are running an app that will really use it may be worth it. Just not much benefit for most of us.

Look at some games. 3dmark doesn't need 4 gigs at all. Check out some games in Vista especially Battlefield. Also check out this review, it's Vista 4Gb vs 2Gb.

Bcchardware 4Gb vs 2Gb

actually looking at those game benchmarks, vista with 4Gigs of RAM looks worth it to me, especially when you take into consideration that speedboost thing where it loads a program into RAM for quick access from loadup, and looking at those charts you get an almost constant improvement over 2Gigs, this performance edge can only improve as the OS is updated.. i kno if i go to Vista i will be taking 4gigs with me aswell.

I had a spare set of 2gb RAM lying around but was a firm believer that it would do nothing for my performance if added it to my already existing 2gb.

However, when I installed Vista 32bit recently, I got curious and added the RAM. Well I found it DOES improve performance, and you have to conclude it does based on these facts:

1- I measured my pagefile activity before and after with this app and found that with 2gb, several hundred mb would be written to my PF. With 4gb, it was reduced considerably, by about 80-90%. (With 2gb on XP, there was almost no pagefile activity, btw).

2- Superfetch. With 4gb, after a few minutes of booting into Vista, you would notice almost all of that memory committed to processes (or memory profiles I guess) of the apps used or expected to be used during your session, there was less than 10mb memory free. And the system did feel snappier, however that may be subjective.

I did notice in memory intensive games (that would normally write maps/textures to the pagefile), that some stuttering or jerkiness that was there before was now gone, and it was quite noticeable.

So far less than a week with the 4gb, but I am quite happy with the result. I do think that 4gb may be the sweet spot for Vista. Remember, just a couple years ago the same argument was being made for and against 2gb in XP.

P.S. and this with Vista 32bit, with 64bit its a no brainer that you did not waste your money. :wink:

one of the things you might want to make sure is if all the sticks are identical, sometimes that will kill performance, another thing is look for any settings in the bios that may affect the performance when using 4gb. I know i have at least 1 setting that you turn on when you have 4gb ram. Overall i dont think you wasted your money, very soon games will be needing more than 2gb ram and by that time youll be in heaven because your already in good shape for the future. It might not benefit you now, just like the move from xp to vista, but at least you are guaranteed a futureproof system  

I'm gonna be getting 2 gigs with my new PC build, but then upgrading to 4. So I really do hope that 4 is ALOT better then 2 ^_^