Hardware Is More Memory Better?

My 4 x 1GB of Corsair XMS2 4-4-4-12 loveliness runs a treat atm. It's begging to be overclocked though.

 

I'm not refuting or agreeing this, nor am I saying that it's changed, but the effect of memory amount and bandwidth on the "C2D" or C2Q "architecture" is entirely dependent on the northbridge.

Why wasn't this also tested on AM2(+)? Possibly with these http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/memory/ocz_ddr2_pc2_5400_am2_special_high_density_kit?

 

I've recently added 4GB of Corsair (2x2GB) memory to my existing 2GB (2x1GB) of Corsair, totalling 6GB. They run in Dual Channel mode at the same timings and the extra 4GB of space has made Vista x64 run like a dream. Multiple Virtual O/S on top of Vista, with plenty of potential space. I bought the original 2GB a couple of years ago for £195. Today's 4GB cost a little over £60, which shows how affordable memory has become. One last note, Half Life 2 only consumes ~450MB of the 6GB.

 

Because I just didn't have time unfortunately, even though I did plan to - this set of tests took a solid week to complete.

 

so im just wondering from a speed point of view, right now i have 2x1gb of 800mhz ocz stuff. i wasthinking with the cheap prices should i get a 2x2gb kit and add it to what i have now making 6gb but different sizes or just leave it with the 4gb. btw it'd all be the same brand and speeds. since its worthless to sell i was under the impression i may aswell keep what i have and add 4gb to it.

 

Does that mean that because memory usage became so large as to spill over in to the page file the OS started to prefer to give the RAM to other less greedy processes?

Fair enough. Does that mean this is part 1 of 2?

You tested with a Yorkfield (2x6MB L2) quad core on the P45.
Does testing on the P45 invalidate the results as everybody here will most likely be using the P35 or older?

On the Task switching (World in Conflict) test you are using a GeForce 9800 GTX with 512MB of RAM, maybe the time difference is because the 512MB of video RAM can't hold all of the data from both the game and Windows & Firefox? It's not unlikely that Superfetch has already filled the RAM on the 2GB system but as it isn't used to 4GB or 8GB it would not know what to do with such a large amount of RAM. The hard drive has a transfer rate of somewhere in the region of 100MB/s, if 512MB is written to it then 7.2 seconds is not unreasonable.

Does the Raptor win due to a superior access speed or transfer rate?
Which would win: a VelociRaptor or Samsung Spinpoint F1s in RAID 0/RAID 5?

Finally why on earth are you using quad core Xenons? For ECC support?

 

No, Sup Com used to simply crash but they've patched it now.

No, I have other features to write. It would simply be the same conclusion with slightly different numbers I'd imagine. What we are showing is how Vista, programs and games use memory. It would have been nice for inter-platform comparisons, but it just wasn't feasible.

No, again, the performance platform is kept consistent, the only variable is memory size. P45 is merely an evolution of P35 etc, and the results would in theory be reproducible it's unfeasible to test every possible platform under the sun.

The video memory would be dedicated to the DirectX overlay, yes, so the system has to disable this, fetch Firefox from memory and load that into memory. Graphics memory and the PCI-Express bus is faster than memory access in general, which is again faster than hard drive. Since Firefox was open before we started World in Conflict it will just reside in memory unless the system runs out of memory and pagefiles it because it deems it low priority since the game it playing.

That's a question for another article - the point is a faster harddrive provides a significant performance increase, even if more memory is being used because Photoshop is dependant as much on the scratch disk as it is memory.

Because I can because it's awesomely stable, never misses a beat and doesn't flinch when I fill all the memory slots. It's designed as a workstation for a reason.

 

what are you using to differentiate a workstation mobo and a consumer mobo?

 

Older chipsets are generally worse with memory. That's certainly the case with older performance chipsets disliking different mismatched memory etc. My P35 is currently running 2 very different pairs of 1GB DDR-800 for example. However my P5K Premium has huge problems with 4 identical DDR-1066 modules.

So it's best to use something in reviews that can cope with whatever memory you can stick in it. That's why it's so frustrating to find out that the P5Q Deluxe is unstable with 8GB...

 

In RAM terms can someone please explain what the difference between 32 and 64 bit compatibility, as in, why does 32 bit not go well with over 2 gig of RAM.

 

Great article and it confirms what i have seeing when i switch over from 2 to 4GB (3.5GB) under XP
I understand the decision to do only Vista 64 but i still think its a shame you dint do 2 vs 4GB under XP 32bit as it will stay for a long time a OS that's gone be used by a lot of people because
1) it delivers noting extra for most people so why upgrade to Vista,
2) there are people that don't like Vista period,
3) lattes technet meeting i was for the 2008 server role out there was not even one admin that was even thinking about upgrading to Vista all ware waiting on windows 7 and hoping it will be better then Vista.

Personally i still lean toward 2 as i like XP still better then Vista but will properly make the switch to Vista just because of DX 10 support for non gamers there is no reason to switch to Vista and for office PC's it even a big no no because of the cost of a vista role-out and license and hardware upgrade cost as there is no RL benefit over XP

I also missed a lot of background programs running on the test machine like a resource hog like Norton Internet security and MSN, Logitech key/mouse driver ect ect
Because a system whit only 17 task running is imho almost impossible for real live use.
Even do i understand that more background programs will pollute the test results a bid i still think it would be useful for RL usage Nr's

 

I did. In fact, the same thought occurred to me too.

I wondered how many people bought into the hype that x64 was too near the bleeding edge, and opted for Vista x86. In my experience, whenever a system is slower with *more* RAM, it is invariably only slightly slower. But when a system benefits from *more* RAM, sometimes the benefits are quite marked. I discovered when Vista came out in Nov 06 that 2GB wasn't enough for BF2. And extra 2GB meant the load times for a level were nearer 10s than 50s, and task switching was near-instantaneous.

I did notice a theoretical slowdown when I moved to 6GB (IE via Windows Experience Index) but not anything to concern me.

 

can i use 8gb ram on vista 32-bit?

 

Yes, if you don't mind not using 4.5GB of it.

 

READ FIRST before you ask please.

There is also the search button up top of this page that will lead you to one of the bazilion threads about this issue.

The short answer: 32-bit can use only 4GB TOTAL memory present in your computer. If you put in more memory (graphics cards, raid controllers, more DDR2 memory), the PC will work, it will just not see or use the memory.

64-bit can use a grand whopping total of 16 TERAbyte. Goo luck trying to break that barrier

 

yes you can.

have about 3GB of actual system RAM, then have 4.5GB of RAMdisk, set RAMdisk setting to use non-windows memory.

so you'll have 3GB RAM, a 4.5GB ultra fast disk

 

..This sounds like a challenge.

 

I think you mean 16.8 million terabytes.

 

Even better, set your Swap to use the RAMDISK partition!

 

> Even better, set your Swap to use the RAMDISK partition!

Look at it this way: a moderately expensive RAID 0 is capable of around 500MB/second;
faster RAID 0 setups can do sequential I/O faster, but the price premium goes thru the roof.

Now, be realistic and pay ~$100 for RamDisk Plus version 9 from www.suprespeed.com .

Our DDR2-800 / PC2-6400 4-4-4-12 is doing raw reads from our RAMDISK
at around 2.7 GB/second.

THIS MEMORY IS 3 YEARS OLD!!

Got your calculator handy? 2700/500 = what?

Now, ramp up to more modern DDR2 and DDR3 DIMMs. What then?

Rotating hard drives are just not advancing as rapidly as RAM e.g.
Western Digital's latest "black editions" are reported to be capable of 145MB/second
(WD's website is usually a bit optimistic, from my own experience).

FYI: we just filed for patents on a "Format RAM" feature in the BIOS, and
an enhancement to Gigabyte's i-RAM Box that uses SO-DIMMs instead,
plus SATA @ 300-600MB/second and DDR2 DIMM slots.

Can you think 2-5 years ahead to motherboards with 64-256GB?

There are already server motherboards with 32 x DIMM slots.


THE FUTURE IS MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF HIGH-SPEED RAM.

Mark my words!!


p.s. SSDs are not even close to current rotating hard drives,
so I've demoted mention of SSDs to this footnote.


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, Inventor and
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library
http://www.supremelaw.org/