4 gigs worth it?

[BobaFettm]

Hey all! I have 4 gigs in Vista... yet when I run tests the computer comes out faster with only 2 gigs in it instead... I'm using a 680i board with OCZ titanium alpha VX2 running at 1000mhz unlinked 1066mhz 6800x

Is there anything I can do to correct this and make it faster? I thought vista would be faster with 4 gigs!!!

 

[bruce555]

You shouldn't see the biggest change in 2Gb to 4Gb yet. Bcchardware has done a review on the difference between the 2 and there is some gains. One thing to note between the two set-up's is that with 2gb you will have file caching once you load games. Windows automatically moves infromation to a temorary folder in windows while you load games that need more memory.

Games will also make up for that available memory by looking how much memory is used between the two configurations. ex.BF2142 will use 1.5Gb with a 2Gb config and 2.0Gb with a 4Gb but the FPS will not be that much different.

 

[lschiedel]

I have a question for you about your memory config.

Did you compare 2 1GB chips vs 4 1GB chips?
Or did you compare 2 1GB chips vs 2 2GB chips? (and if so were they the same timings?) (or 4 512MB chips vs 4 1GB chips?)

The reason i ask is that i had heard that some motherboards (or all?) are slower using 4 DIMMS vs 2 DIMMS but 2 DIMMS is faster than 1 DIMM.
And the reason we don't have or use 8 socket boards is that they seriously slow down the machine if you fill up all the sockets.

But if you compare 2 DIMMS of comparable timings to 2 smaller DIMMS, and still get slower timing for the 4GB than the 2GB setup, i would be surprised. (unless we are talking 3d framerates in which case the 4GB setup may be imparing the chipsets ability to memory map parts of the video card).

 

[BobaFettm]

I read this also... but it seems that the EVGA 680i does increase vistas speed with 4 gigs... there is quite a few of us running this styled setup now and enjoying the benefits.

I may have not gained a lot of power in benchmarks but there is a noticeable difference in overall computing speeds w/ vista 64

 

[lschiedel]

I really think the killer app for Vista 64 and 4 GB ram has to be Virtual PC.

You can run multiple Vista 32bit machines, each with 1GB of ram, and still have ram left for your main OS (running say Visual Studio?).

Developers really can make full use of this especially if they are testing client-server applications and need to debug both client and server at the same time.

Heck, when 8GB becomes feasible, you'll be able to run two copies of vista with 3GB each, or 3 copies of vista with 2GB each.

And of course this is also the killer app for that quad core. It can devote one core per virtual machine.

 

[halcyon]

I'm glad this thread is already started as I have been considering taking my Asus Striker Extreme based Xeon 3060 from 2GB to 3 or 4GB with virtualization in mind (from 2 DIMMS @ 5-4-4-11 timings to 4 DIMMS @ those same timings). However, the thought of paying to do that and possibly losing any performance has halted me.

In WinXP this would allow me to virtualize Vista and give it 2GB while XP would still have 1GB and with Vista as the host I could run a W2K3 server and XP clients virtualized.

I just want to be clear about whether or not I may lose performance (subjectively) if I choose the aforementioned memory configuration. Can anyone re-clarify?

 

[lschiedel]

I did some searching over in the ram category in the hardware forum and found the following discussion.
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/4gb-mem-lower-speed-ftopict224350.html
Apparently some motherboards have to lower the speed from (in this example) 900 mhz down to 700 mhz when going from 2 sticks of ram to 4 sticks of ram. Someone said that changing one of the timing numbers from a 1 to a 2 adds a cycle of slowdown but keeps the frequency the same.
But basically it seems that the overhead of addressing 4 sticks over just 2 sticks forces ALL ram access to be slower.
Thus it sounds like you might be better off selling your existing ram (or swapping with machines that have 1 large stick) and replacing it with 2 larger sticks rather than adding another 2 sticks.

Also, the bigger slowdown i saw is that some motherboards allow 8 sticks but that filling all the sticks forced the use of buffered ram which uses more power and is slower. But these are server machines designed for 8gb up to 64gb ram. But can you imagine having a quad cpu with 8 or 16 gb and using virtuallization? wow. 4 full speed and 2gb ram xp virtual pcs running on the same box.

 

[halcyon]

Thanks for the info. I think I'll stick with my 2GB for now. I'm still able to run Vista (when desired) and virtualize XP with 768MB of RAM which is okay. I can't imagine anyone would want to by my Corsair Dominator C4D ram so I'm stuck with it.