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Would it be wise to upgrade to 4gb of memory?

Forum Motherboards & Memory : Memory - Would it be wise to upgrade to 4gb of memory?

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rabidbunny   10-09-2008 at 07:21:44 PM

I have my custom rig that I play an occasional game on (in my sig). I was wondering, with the price of ram being so low these days, if it would be of any benefit to upgrade from 2gb of memory to 4gb with windows xp 32 bit. I have looked at performance comparisons and my own experience and 2gb seems like it is fine. however, I am thinking that loading times would be cut in large games like sins of a solar empire (which uses about 1.7gbs of memory).

I know that xp won't use all 4gb of memory, but would it be worth the $80 or so to upgrade?
Plus, I would then have my spare 1gbx2 kit. It would be pointless imo to leave that sitting when it is perfectly good ram. I do not have any other computer to install them into either. So, then I have the question if I should install another 2x1gb kit instead of a 4gb kit so I can use my old ram that I paid $230 for two years ago!!!

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rabidbunny   10-10-2008 at 10:26:37 PM
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bump....

is this like a bad question or something?!?

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br3nd064   10-10-2008 at 10:36:11 PM
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From my experience, xp isn't as good at handling 4gbs of ram as vista is. You can buy the extra ram if you want, and you'll see faster loading times, but I'd plan on upgrading the vista x64 in the future.

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rabidbunny   10-10-2008 at 10:46:30 PM
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Yay! a reply.

Ok, so that solves the desktop question. I figured I will be building a new system within the next 3 years anyways. On a sidenote, my laptop i just bought has vista 32 bit and i'm thinking of upgrading that to 4gb sometime in the future. Again, i know that it won't see all 4gb since it's a 32bit os, but another 1.5gb should help.
I think my next rig will have a 64 bit os for sure. I didn't go for it two years ago and i'm glad I didn't a few months ago on my laptop. I know it doesn't hurt to have it, but there are some programs that do not work well in a 64 bit environment and I wanted to keep decent compatibility for the moment. Plus, there is no real need for a 64bit os right now.

thanks again!

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br3nd064   10-11-2008 at 05:56:36 AM
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Yes, it will benefit to have the extra 1 1/2 gb of ram in the laptop. XP x64 DOES still have a lot of incompatibility problems, but vista x64 has almost none. Don't let stories of driver problems stop you from upgrading to it. If you don't think you need it, that's fine, but IMO it just feels more snappy than 32bit.

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