Hardware Is More Memory Better?

[Bindibadgi]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...emory-better/1

s 2GB still enough? Does 4GB make that much difference? What about 8GB - will you ever fill it? We test a range of games and applications to see where today's memory footprint lies.

[naokaji]

rofl at crysis... its such a ressource hog it would even profit from 8GB DDR3....

the 2GB limit of 32bit applications is a shame though, 4 GB DDR2 (or even 8) can be had so dirt cheap that there really is no reason why not to make apps 64bit and have them using more ram (since its such a cheap ressource).

[Bindibadgi]

Originally Posted by naokaji

rofl at crysis... its such a ressource hog it would even profit from 8GB DDR3....

the 2GB limit of 32bit applications is a shame though, 4 GB DDR2 (or even 8) can be had so dirt cheap that there really is no reason why not to make apps 64bit and have them using more ram (since its such a cheap ressource).

CS4 will be 64-bit AND GPGPU compatible

[mrb_no1]

i know its not a major, but on bootup/login to general use, do you turn page file off with more memory, as this is what i've done with 4gb on xp and logon to windows takes a few seconds, rather than 10 or so until its properly responsive, and games that use alot of ram become smoother as no page files are being accessed. I just couldnt find it mentioned in the review, and i see more memory and no page file usage as a major plus.

peace

[sotu1]

bugger. at the time 32 bit vista seemed like the sensible way to go....good work guys, valuable insight here i think we all wanted clearing on. as mrb no 1 said, be interesting to hear how you had your page file set up.

[mm vr]

Useful article as I'm configuring a new rig currently.

However I still think I'm going to get that 8GB.

[phuzz]

Every time I look I'm still amazed that you can pick up 2x2Gb of DDR2 (and decent Corsair stuff at that) for only £55. At that price why would you not? I'm thinking about picking up another 4Gb just because I can, add to that the Q6600 at £125 and you can see the beginnings of a gaming rig at PS3 type prices...

[Bindibadgi]

Originally Posted by mrb_no1

i know its not a major, but on bootup/login to general use, do you turn page file off with more memory, as this is what i've done with 4gb on xp and logon to windows takes a few seconds, rather than 10 or so until its properly responsive, and games that use alot of ram become smoother as no page files are being accessed. I just couldnt find it mentioned in the review, and i see more memory and no page file usage as a major plus.

peace

No we left the pagefile on because the vast majority of people will never turn it off and some programs still always require one.

Phuzz: At that price why would you not? - Absolutely, another reason why I wasn't too concerned about testing 4x1GB tbh.

[Shielder]

I have heard that programs like Photoshop require the page file to exist, which is probably why they never thought of turning it off. That said, I was slightly surprised at a few of the results. Now what you need to do is get the resident Linux guru to do the same sort of thing and tell us which is best, 2, 4 or 8GB on a linux workstation.

Andy

[liratheal]

I've been running 8gb for a few months now, and I've noticed so little difference over the 4gb I ran before, it's unbelievable. Infact, some things are slower to open. It's not the speed, because this is faster than the previous 4gb, at better latencies (After a bit of tweaking).

4gb is the sweet spot, unless you have the cash to throw around on 8gb, IMO, and even then, I'd suggest thinking really carefully about it :/

[Woodstock]

thanks for confirming that 4gb is what ill be after soon

[[USRF]Obiwan]

Great article about memory sizes. To bad there are no benches taken from cad/cam/3d rendering programs and especially AV editing. Most people nowadays have hd dv/hdd camcorder and use editing software on their PC to edit their vacation movies and putting it on dvd. We know that quadcore processor can speed up editing and rendering but how about more memory.

[Measter]

I must assume that when you said that 64bit OSs can address 16TB of memory, you meant current 64bit OSs, because the memory limit of 64bit is 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 bytes (17,179,869,184 GB).

Anyway, great article, glad I was correct when I chose to go for 2x2GB.

[wuyanxu]

very nice article.

IMHO, 8GB is well worth it. it might have lost out in your benchmarks, but if one is upgrading from 2GB, one will have 4x1GB sticks, which WILL perform less in comparison to 2x2GB.
so your recommendation of 2x2GB stands for current system builder. but i just want to add that 2x1GB kits should be considered useless now.

why 8GB is sweet?
1.5GB 0ms RAMdisk and very fast system response. 4GB might have seems faster, but 64bit Vista is perfect on 8GB. 4GB for 64bit Vista IMHO is not enough.
if one has the case, and building a £700+ rig, i think there is no reason to shrink away from 8GB.

when 4GB sticks are at right price (unlikely when Nehalem is so close) i will get 16GB. more IS better, you can never have too much disk space, same goes for RAM, you can never have too much RAM. same can also be said for CPU cores.

Originally Posted by [USRF]Obiwan

Great article about memory sizes. To bad there are no benches taken from cad/cam/3d rendering programs and especially AV editing. Most people nowadays have hd dv/hdd camcorder and use editing software on their PC to edit their vacation movies and putting it on dvd. We know that quadcore processor can speed up editing and rendering but how about more memory.

i can do benchmarks for you if you want, tell me what to settings to set, what software to use (needs to be free) and i will put my machine to work during day times.

[Bbq.of.DooM]

I've never heard anybody complain they had too much ram.

[Mankz]

I think with current prices, 4Gb's is what to head for.

4Gb or 1,066Mhz Dominator is about £85, which seems like a steal.

[konsta]

In the boot time tests, did you take account of the learning curve employed by superfetch? I find that when I first begin using superfetch on a new install, or after increasing the amount of memory in the system, for the first few boots it remains much as it was previously, then all of a sudden it begins loading far far more at boot time into memory, and that becomes the stable scenario going forwards.

[sotu1]

Originally Posted by Mankz.

I think with current prices, 4Gb's is what to head for.

4Gb or 1,066Mhz Dominator is about £85, which seems like a steal.

dude...that really is a steal. where you get that from?! i'm still on DDR and looking at a possible upgrade to DDR 2

[friskies]

Do you get dual channel when using 4 sticks of RAM? Do you have to use only 2?

[adamc]

the differences between 2x2GB and 4x1GB were very interesting. Thanks for the info