6Gb or 12Gb DDR3?

[Kkkk1]

I'm building an i7 PC in 2weeks with GTX295. Question is will 6Gb RAM be enough or would I be better off going for 12Gb or would that just be wasting money? I won't be upgrading for at least 2 years again maybe even 3years so need to buy the best system poss.

I play Flight Sim X, Crysis, COD4. Also I game @ 1680x1050.

Thanks,

 

[rewindlabs]

I'm building an i7 PC in 2weeks with GTX295. Question is will 6Gb RAM be enough or would I be better off going for 12Gb or would that just be wasting money? I won't be upgrading for at least 2 years again maybe even 3years so need to buy the best system poss.

I play Flight Sim X, Crysis, COD4. Also I game @ 1680x1050.

Thanks,

Go for 6GB to start out with that will crush any game atm....

 

[Kkkk1]

Cheers mate.

 

[daedalus685]

With 12gig you will have a harder time overclocking. You will be able to operate without a paging file (at least without vista using one) though and perhaps be "future proof" for when real 64 bti games come out.. depending on your system this may help a lot.. or it may not. Unless you are doing 3d rendering or lots of photo shop you dont need mroe than 4gig of ram generally (granted 6gig is "standard" for i7).. but it can help for certain things (using a ram drive for one), or running crysis while you have WoW open on another monitor... lol.

I use 8gig becasue it allows me to remove the page file from my SSD's and not encounter problems I did with only 4gig but that meant the difference between runing the ram at 2:1 and 5:3.. drop of about 1% performance in situations utilizing only 4gig of ram, gain of about 1%-3% when it uses more. But it allowed me to save i/o cycles from my SSD's.. which is a huge benefit.

 

[Kkkk1]

With 12gig you will have a harder time overclocking. You will be able to operate without a paging file (at least without vista using one) though and perhaps be "future proof" for when real 64 bti games come out.. depending on your system this may help a lot.. or it may not. Unless you are doing 3d rendering or lots of photo shop you dont need mroe than 4gig of ram generally (granted 6gig is "standard" for i7).. but it can help for certain things (using a ram drive for one), or running crysis while you have WoW open on another monitor... lol.

I use 8gig becasue it allows me to remove the page file from my SSD's and not encounter problems I did with only 4gig but that meant the difference between runing the ram at 2:1 and 5:3.. drop of about 1% performance in situations utilizing only 4gig of ram, gain of about 1%-3% when it uses more. But it allowed me to save i/o cycles from my SSD's.. which is a huge benefit.

Thanks that's interesting reading daedalus685. A few points raised I'd not considered such as overclocking. I'm buying the overclocked bundle which is an i7 920 oc @ 3.6Ghz, 1.8Ghz OCZ RAM and Biostar mobo see link http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-000-OB

I thought i'd buy the OC bundle to A: save me the hassle and B: so I have a guarantee. Do you think I will encounter probs if I go 12Gb with this pre oc bundle?

Thanks

 

[daedalus685]

Its hard to find matched sets in 6's. Its not impossible to OC, but it does limit the top end a bit, and sometimes if the ram doesnt get along it wont OC well at all. The second point would be moot if they guarnatee to OC it for you and only use matched 6's. But if you ever want to go beyond their OC, it will be much easier with 3DIMM isntead of 6. Bear in mind they may also not offer the same level of guarnateed OC with 6DIMM for the reasons mentioned.

 

[mamw93]

Only buy six and spend the rest of the money on a solid state drive to install Windows onto.

 

[belial2k]

this was not really your question, but for your resolutions a gtx295 is overkill. You could easily get by with a 4850x2 for half the price, and if you decided you needed more graphics power in the future you could add another for quad crossfire and still have better performance for a lot less than the gtx295.

 

[ComputerNovice]

In my personal opinion everyone here has pretty much given the exact same answer I'm about to give for the most part, and yes I know this thread is very very... Old but I'm gonna go ahead and say it I just finished my i7 920 D0 stepping build and I use a 6Gb @1600Mhz set_up and its plenty fast enough. So in my honest opinion I think buying another 6Gigs worth would be rather unnecessary.

 

[MARSOC_Operator]

With 12gig you will have a harder time overclocking. You will be able to operate without a paging file (at least without vista using one) though and perhaps be "future proof" for when real 64 bti games come out.. depending on your system this may help a lot.. or it may not. Unless you are doing 3d rendering or lots of photo shop you dont need mroe than 4gig of ram generally (granted 6gig is "standard" for i7).. but it can help for certain things (using a ram drive for one), or running crysis while you have WoW open on another monitor... lol.

I use 8gig becasue it allows me to remove the page file from my SSD's and not encounter problems I did with only 4gig but that meant the difference between runing the ram at 2:1 and 5:3.. drop of about 1% performance in situations utilizing only 4gig of ram, gain of about 1%-3% when it uses more. But it allowed me to save i/o cycles from my SSD's.. which is a huge benefit.

Care to explain how do you remove the page file from the SSD? Can I do that even if I don't have a secondary disk for data?

 

[Bluescreendeath]

1. 6GB is more than enough unless you're running some sort of virtual machine...
My i7 920 rig uses no more than 4GB when I'm playing games + running adware scans + a hundred firefox tabs opened.

2. Don't get the GTX295, it's overpriced. The 5870 is almost as good, is $100 cheaper, supports DX11, uses less power, and runs much cooler.

 

[ComputerNovice]

1. 6GB is more than enough unless you're running some sort of virtual machine...
My i7 920 rig uses no more than 4GB when I'm playing games + running adware scans + a hundred firefox tabs opened.

2. Don't get the GTX295, it's overpriced. The 5870 is almost as good, is $100 cheaper, supports DX11, uses less power, and runs much cooler.

All Nvidia cards cost to much for what they do in my personal opinion. The HIS TURBO+ 4890 is basically just as good as any GTX275 and it cost less... So in my opinion buying a Nvidia card really just doesn't make since anymore these days. I used to own a 8800Gt but that was back when Nvidia was still kicking butt.