The memory is very much used. I have 2 monitors. I game on 1 and I use the other to check web, emails and burn music for my wife (sometimes the music) I even watch movies while I game (If i'm doing repeditive task or waiting on friends to come online). I have bounced off 5.8 and a few time with Blu-Ray 6.3 gigs. It never interupts my game. Sure the CPU is about 75-85% loaded if Blu-Ray is going with a game, but that is what a quad is for. I do everything with my rig. TV,movies,music,games and web stuff. The 8gigs is very much usefull. The only time you will ever see a difference in numbers from 800mhz to 1100mhz is in virtual benches. The human eye will never notice it. As long as ur GPU is at tops you will never see the difference unless you have 233mhz ram up against 1333mhz. then maybe, but I game side by side with my friends sometimes and 1 of them wishes he never spent the money on the I7 Intel, because he was able to see no difference at all. His ram is clocked at 1600mhz at that. Twice my speed but equal on the visual. If you want virtual benches then have fun, but a freakin cheap ass HP or Dell with the right GPU will game just fine. 3gig, 4gig, or 8gig. No one can tell the visual difference.