4gigs versus 8gigs using vista 64 - high end gaming pc

[ben10218]

Will there be enough of a benefit to lay down an extra 90~$ on 4 more gigs of ddr2 800? Will the increase in ram signifigantly increase my multi tasking speeds also? IE alt-tabbing out of games into mulitple other proccesses?

Thanks

 

[pinaplex]

there's been a recent article on tom's that talks about this.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/15/vista_workshop/

IMO, it would be worth it to throw as much ram as you can at vista 64. it would most definitely increase performance by allowing you to turn off disk caching and loading everything into ram.

I run Vista 64 Ultimate with 4gb DDR2 800 and i'm loving it, and I'm gearing up to get another 4gb soon. I can't wait.

 

[geofelt]

Most applications and games are 32 bit based. They will not of themselves use more than 2-3gb. If you will have 3 or more of these tasks doing significant work, then 8gb is good. Vista does love ram, and tries to make use of it. For $90 on a high end machine, why not? I had thoughts of using a ramdisk, but that did not pan out. One possible negative is that you may find it harder to overclock 8gb than 4gb.

 

[ZOldDude]

Will there be enough of a benefit to lay down an extra 90~$ on 4 more gigs of ddr2 800? Will the increase in ram signifigantly increase my multi tasking speeds also? IE alt-tabbing out of games into mulitple other proccesses?

Thanks

Short answere is NO.
Vista is slower than XP and needs more ram to start with -however- with XP and 2X1GB of ram and a 2GB pagefile I never see more than 43% of my ram being used in any game I have played and I have tried them all.

If your one of the very few people that for some yet unknown reason -insist- on converting DVD's/torrenting/folding at the same time while playing your games then it is faster and cheaper to build more than one computer that does not cost as much as a good used car.

 

[ImajorI]

Yes. Unless you think programs, in the future, will begin using less Ram not more.

 

[snipingkid]

um... 43% used you say....

and you've played all games... intriguing...

 

[lilsage]

Right now RAM is very cheap... who knows what will happen later on. Look at some of the older RAM out there... massively expensive compared to the current stuff... supply and demand.

Since we're talking $90, go for it... not like your looking at $300 models here. That then also buys you some future useability too. I'm not sure if anyone has ever tested the longevity of the different RAM configurations... but I myself would like to think having 4 sticks instead of 2 would help them all last longer as the work gets spread out. Really have no clue... but I like to think that.

 

[kad]

43% In all games !!!

Are you sure buddy ??

I'm still using Win XP Pro 32bit

2Gig Ram

Crysis only uses 1G ram

I checked when running Crysis

Out of 2G only 500MB still free

And it is 75%

But I believe this is the max

Cause Crysis is the most demanding game upto date

 

[JeanLuc]

Given how cheap ram is at the moment 8gb isn't as ridiculous as it might sound at first.

 

[immagikman]

Umm if anyone here plays Witcher you will see your RAM utilization head towards 90% after a while and it won't be long before you crash, Witcher usually runs in the 40% range and climbs from there...this was on an XP Pro system with 2GB installed and now it has 4GB witch seems to delay the inevitable crash (My system does only see 3GB but 4 is installed I guess a Gig is used for the hardware addressing)

 

[jitpublisher]

8 gig is a little overkill. But hey, like someone else said, it's less than $100, why not load the load the thing up if your running Vista 64.

 

[Guest]

The only good use for 8GB of memory right now is so that you can disable your page file and pull straight from your memory.

Now if you multitask to hell you may still run out of memory.

 

[turtle1]

No question. If you are running Vista 64 go for 8 gigs.

 

[LoneEagle]

With Vista64 and 4GB, I managed to reduce the Paging File to 512MB. I believe it never used and when I quit my BF2142 game, Vista is responsive right away.

To OP, at least, go 2*2GB and if not enought or better price later, just pop in 2 more 2GB stick (same or course).

I have 4*1GB and if I had instead 2*2GB would I go to the store to get more? Probably not because everything work fine and I'm satisfied now with what I have.

 

[xrodney]

4G ram under vista is nothig.
Someon speak here about Crysis using only 1G ram, well thats under XP.
Under Vista and with 1600x1200 resolution Vista will use 1.5G+ memory for texture memory with 8800GTX another 1G+ ram for game itself and for some reason increased even paging file 3->6G after few hours playing.
XP gived only necessary memory to application, but Vista is litle more "application friendly" it give it almost as many memory as application want.

 

[jnava121]

virtual servers baby!!! 8 gigs rocks !!!

 

[tjoepie]

Why is OC harder with 8gb?

 

[Guest]

4G ram under vista is nothig.
Someon speak here about Crysis using only 1G ram, well thats under XP.
Under Vista and with 1600x1200 resolution Vista will use 1.5G+ memory for texture memory with 8800GTX another 1G+ ram for game itself and for some reason increased even paging file 3->6G after few hours playing.
XP gived only necessary memory to application, but Vista is litle more "application friendly" it give it almost as many memory as application want.

Your grammar is almost as bad as your logic.

Just assume Crysis will even take 2GB of memory. (Which it doesn't)

This still leaves you with 2GB for Vista. 2GB is plenty for a Vista computer in general. Unless you are extreme multi-tasking, 4GB will never be completely used in Vista. Maybe in a few years, but not now.

Like I said, only go 8GB if you intend on disabling the paging file. Which I'm quite sure you can get away with having only 4GB of memory.

 

[lordroddington]

Like I said, only go 8GB if you intend on disabling the paging file. Which I'm quite sure you can get away with having only 4GB of memory.

I was getting up to 4.5GB of memory used when I was playing Lord of the Rings Online with the pagefile disabled. So it does happen. I wasn't doing anything else in the background either. I don't think there's really any reason not to go for 8GB if you can afford it (which shouldn't be too hard with memory prices being what they are at the moment - especially if you get a good sale)

 

[Guest]

$100 for 4-4-4-12 4GB kits on Newegg

$100 is a lot of money for a performance increase that you wouldn't notice.

If you crash because you use over 4GB and have the page file disabled, make the page file size 512MB min/max and you'll be fine.

The important thing here is, at this point you won't notice the difference. Wait 6 months or a year and see what memory prices do and see what applications do. If they start requiring more memory, go for it then. Money is worth more today and it will be tomorrow. Why spend it now if you won't need the upgrade for a year? Unless of course memory prices go up again.

 

[sailer]

The important thing here is, at this point you won't notice the difference. Wait 6 months or a year and see what memory prices do and see what applications do. If they start requiring more memory, go for it then. Money is worth more today and it will be tomorrow. Why spend it now if you won't need the upgrade for a year? Unless of course memory prices go up again.

You have the money part backwards. Inflation is working against us, so what costs $100 today may well cost $120 or more in 6 months. Just think about why it costs so much more to buy gasoline now then it did 6 months ago. Same will eventually happen to ram. Also, if DDR3 starts to come into larger production and its prices drop, DDR2 may become more expensive, same as what happened to DDR ram.

Though I have my doubts as to whether 8 gig will ever be needed for the home user, it might be remembered that when XP came out, 512mb was a lot of ram, but now 2gb is standard. That's four times the amount between the original and the end, so if the same holds true with the 64 bit OS requirements, the 2gb times 4 would end at 8gb. You never know what the future will do for sure, but $100 for the bet is cheap.

 

[Guest]

You have the money part backwards. Inflation is working against us, so what costs $100 today may well cost $120 or more in 6 months. Just think about why it costs so much more to buy gasoline now then it did 6 months ago. Same will eventually happen to ram. Also, if DDR3 starts to come into larger production and its prices drop, DDR2 may become more expensive, same as what happened to DDR ram.

Though I have my doubts as to whether 8 gig will ever be needed for the home user, it might be remembered that when XP came out, 512mb was a lot of ram, but now 2gb is standard. That's four times the amount between the original and the end, so if the same holds true with the 64 bit OS requirements, the 2gb times 4 would end at 8gb. You never know what the future will do for sure, but $100 for the bet is cheap.

I dont have it backwards. It was an open ended statement. The price of memory can go either way.

Nice job comparing apples to oranges there though. Computer hardware and oil are 2 very different things.

Now the cost of DDR2 memory appears to have leveled out. Note I said appears. 6 months from now memory could be cheaper, the same price, or more expensive. We all know eventually DDR2 memory will go the way of DDR memory, but that is at least a year out, AT LEAST. I would assume sometime after Nehalem, since it will be the first CPUs that will require DDR3 memory.

Now 6 months ago my 2x2GB kit of memory was $215. That same kit can be had for $99 today. That price change had what to do with inflation? 2 years ago that same kit would've been $800. Inflation usually doesn't play that big a factor in the computer hardware industry. The main thing that drives up the price of widely circulated hardware is supply and demand. Since they're still manufacturing DDR2 memory in large volumes, I wouldn't say the demand for it will go up at all anytime in the near future.

 

[geofelt]

Vista and XP can not use what it does not have. XP will page things out to the page file to conserve memory in anticipation of a future need. The question is how much memory could be used to keep things in memory without the overhead of going to and from the paging file. Just because one sees 1.5gb usage on a 2gb system does not mean that the same workload would not show 2.5gb on a 4gb system.
The key is the working set of ram needed to run a particular workload. That is the amount of ram needed to concurrently hold the most used parts of the application/s without causing a high rate of demand paging. If you get a demand page fault rate of 1 or two per second, that is the equivalent of losing 2-4% of your cpu power.

@tjoepie: 8gb requires all four slots to be populated with ram. This requires more power to the ram to keep the speed and timings up. It seems as though you need better ram with 4 sticks. I think OC with 4x1gb is also harder.

 

[bydesign]

You will not see a difference. I run Vista 64 w/ 8Gb and while gaming I never used over 33%. Crysis uses less than 1.5Gb, not optimized for multi core or 64bit despite their claims. Also turning off the page file does NOT improve performance and may cause problems with some apps. Benchmark it for yourself.

 

[MayDay94]

i am still on xp pro sp2 and 32-bit. i have 2 gig ddr. i play company of heroes and my ram usage is between 80-90% (1.6-1.8gig) with basically nothing running in the background since i only have single core cpu. most games run between 60-70% ram usage. i am not sure of my page file size at this time but it would sure be nice to be able to turn that off completely and just run 100% off ram and not have to wait for disk.