8 gigs of ram overkill?

There was an article that Toms Hardware did a while back saying 8GB of RAM was the sweetspot for Vista... I don't know / remember any more details than that because I only read the conclusion of the article. Here you go:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/vista-workshop,1775...

if you actaully got programs that will use a lot of ram, go a head.

I am running Vista 64 with 8GB.

It is nice. Yep, for sure.

Neccessary? Most likely not.

At startup, Vista 64 SP1 with a couple Window Sidebars and two programs auto-starting I am sucking up 1.1 GB of RAM.

Open a browser, add a program or two and I am easily at 1.9GB RAM consumption.

Start cranking the programs up and I hit 2.5 to 2.8 GB of RAM consumption.

(a good reason why 2GB is just not enough for smooth Vista operation)

The big hogs, photo and video editing, can get up over 4 GB. That is, of course, assuming everything is lleft open. The most I have every hit is 6GB.


Would I get 8GB? Yes, the cost of RAM is cheap enough. Better yet, I would buy 2x2GB and allow easy upgrade to 8GB if 8GB is really needed.

awesome, thanks arson, godless and stevie! much appreciated.

If you're ever going to get 8gb in ddr2, it's better to do it now instead of upgrading it later. Ddr2 is at its cheapest right now, in the exact middle of slow transition to ddr3. It won't get any cheaper.

When you upgrade, there's always the chance that the model of your first 4gb will be out of production. Of course, similar spec ram should work fine together, but it's always ideal to have identical sticks of ram.

Is 8GB Overkill??

Yeah....




So why do we do it???




Because we can.  



So your point is what, exactly??? <grin>

I just upgraded my Dual core Opteron workstation to 8 Gig from 2 and I am lovinging it! Hopefully I can upgrade it to a Quad core Opteron or Phenom but the max Ram is 8 Gig. I did a total swap out becuause the 4 Gig was < $40.00 and I get a $10.00 mail in rebate. so < $60.00 for 8 Gig of DDR2-800 RAM is not bad and I can use the 2 Gig for something else.

So Why did I do it?

Because I could and it was cheap!

 

Did you try 4 gigs first? I think you'll find that anyone who has a 64 Bit system at home has plenty of memory with 4 gigs. A tiny percentage at this stage of the evolution of home users may benefit from 8. Why not wait a couple years when really new and cool stuff comes out that would need 8 gigs. The memory would be much cheaper then too.  

I do video editing and have some problems accessing the stream when burning AVCHD files directly to disc and when I try to burn 24mbs file folder to disc. The program tells me that it is having problems accessing the stream. I have a quad core cpu that runs at 70% during the process and 8 gigs of 800 ddr2 that runs at 1.6 gigs during the process. I have doubts that all is as it should be. Windows 7 home premium 64bit.