Is less RAM better then more RAM when you get faster speeds?

[midarkmind]

I was wondering if maybe I bought too much memory for my computer. I have 8GB of ram and I heard that putting too much will slow down the speed of my memory? I listed my PC specs below. I do game often and I wonder if taking out half the RAM would increase the speed on my PC for all my other applications too? Can someone please explain to me what I may have done to slow down my system by adding too much memory? I do run windows 7.


Here are the specs of PC:

AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor
GIGABYTE GA-MA785G-UD3H AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 785G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard
COOLER MASTER V8 RR-UV8-XBU1-GP 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler Intel Core i7 compatible
2 Cross-fired MSI R5770 Hawk Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
2 Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Kingston HyperX T1 Series 8GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KHX8500D2T1K2/4G
XION Power Real XON-1250P14HE 1250W ATX 12V v2.2 / EPS 12V v2.91 / SSI v2.92 SLI 3 ways SLI supported.

 

[jitpublisher]

Well, it is true to a point. Normally if you install over 4 gig of memory on a build like yours, the memory will default to 800mhz instead of 1066. Now, if you don't need the extra 4 gig, and I doubt that you really do, you could remove it and your memory will run at 1066mhz. Or you could go into the BIOS and force it to 1066 manually and see if you have any problems, it may work perfectly fine. But in the long run, you would never be able to tell the difference between 800mhz and 1066 speed anyway, if you are not having any noticeable problems like it is, I suggest you just leave it alone.
In other words, if it ain't broke don't start trying to fix it.

 

[clarkjd]

The more ram you have, the less likely your machine will have to page to the swap file on disk. Anytime you have to use the swap file, it will slow down your computer. HDD access times are an order of magnitude slower than even the slowest ram.

 

[midarkmind]

OK thanks for the clarification. I installed some gadgets so that I could monitor activity on my PC. A disk monitor that shows hard drive activity and one for the RAM as well. I see that the data access time on my PC is the biggest bottle neck. Surprisingly my windows 7 performance rating drops down to 5.9 because of slow hard drive speeds. I guess that is when my computer uses more RAM to compensate maybe. Sometimes, but not often I see my memory usage go up to 4GB, but almost never beyond that. That's mainly why I am wondering if I should just pop out 4GB and try for faster speeds. I tried over clocking the RAM, but it doesn't like it much. It pretty much just gets unstable or won't post at all. I think I would need water cooling or a hardcore RAM cooler to make them overclock at all. I don't want to really go with water cooling on this system. I am good with it as is. I overclocked the proc to 3.6 with a cooler and I am good with that. I guess I am just going to let sleeping dogs lay. I am thinking about just move on the the next build because its not very economical to throw more money into this one.