Im about to upgrade my primary pc and with all the spares i then get im going to build a small gaming rig and do some oc on it too. One of the components i need to buy for the gaming pc is ram, but should i go with 4 or 8gb? I see ram is quite a lot more expensive than last time i upgraded so would rather not buy more than what i need.
The way games are headed I would use 8G minimum. Future proofing especially the way games are heading. You've got at least 2 years before ddr4 hits hard.
Its just im from Denmark and here atm the differance is like 3x the price when you jump from 4gb to 8gb... Just seems like a good deal more if i dont really need it. Trying to keep this cheap as its not my primary rig (the primary already has 16gb).
Then take 8gb out of your primary rig leaving it with 8, then put the 8 in the new one? Or is it a pair of 8s? Edit. No it's not. Just pull 8gb.
You won't see the need for 8g immediately then. But 4g and upgrade when you need it down the road, stagnant ram markets are making it cheaper all of the time.
You are right, I could actually pull a pair from the other rig and then buy new when the price is right... Had actually not thought of that I have the Corsair Vengeance LP 1.5v 1600MHz CL9 set - what should I expect to overclock them up to? There will be a 120mm fan pointed directly at them.
Depends on the gpu your pairing it with. To use 5gb in bf3 is duel sli / crossfire with 2500 + resolution for the record. Id buy 8gb now just for the sake of owning it as the cost is minimal.
Depends on the board, chipset and chip Each set may clock differently, so just have a play and see what you can get 8gb should be fine most of the time, only if you run a lot of things at the same time would you need more.
I have 8gb and have no issue when running anything on my system. Only problem is when editing extremely high resolution digital images. If I have a lot of them open I run out of RAM. But other than that for gaming Vram is more of a necessity tbh.
8GB is perfectly fine for Gaming and other casual usage. The only times you'll need more is when you use very tough programs that eat ram. Benchmarking software, video/photo editing, 3d modelling and rendering are all things that would require 16GB or perhaps more. But for normal usage and gaming 8GB is good enough. Most games don't utilize more than 8GB yet, actually most games don't even pass 4GB but 8GB is where you'd be for best futureproofing.
I made up my mind and yesterday rushed out to get a set of 4x2GB (total 8GB) Kingston Genesis 2400MHz sticks. Reasons: They are blue to match the rest of the machines color scheme, they are quick (and as my research shows speed is more important than amount or low CL for IvyBridge use), they are already packed as 4 sticks, which can always be shared into two times 4GB if I need in another machine or used in quad channel if I ever get the chance. Last but final reason, I could source them locally for less than £66 (about £25 cheaper than Amazon)! Imo that is an extremely good buy... What do you guys think? I have two weeks to deliver them back if im wrong
Well for future reference I'd recommend 4GB, windows automatically uses more if you have more ram, but 4GB for gaming and OC is plenty. 8GB if you like to run virtual machines, media editing, and having 30 tabs open in Chrome and 2 games running in the background.
FWIW I used to have 4gb in my gaming rig as I was sure I wouldn't ever need more just for a raw bones gaming PC. I loaded up NFS : Shift and applied 8XMSAA. I got a red warning message, saying "Your system does not have enough memory for this setting. Your setting has been reduced to 4XMSAA". As soon as I put 8GB in the message went away. I use Nvidia cards... I like to use extreme settings, so OP may get away with it, but personally I would use 8GB.
As you can see I just picked up a set of 4x2GB memory, just havent installed it yet. So no worries, I can always try out both 2x2 and 4x2, gives me a lot of flexibility. I only want to know now if I made a good deal or someone can find an even better one I should switch for?
yeap, if you are gonna play bf4, you might actually be pleased with the 8gig you have bought. with console getting 8gb of ram now, developers should be pushing the boat out a bit more, and pc games should benefit
This. I'm interested to see if Nvidia change the way that texture streaming works. Right now when you run out of vram it uses the paging file on your hard drive. Woefully un-ideal. If they can page that to your ram? I think it would be better (though still miles from ideal).
If your motherboard supports up to 8GB then I suggest also to make use of it while you still can, upgrading later might bring some problem..
I would never go under 8 GB of Ram these days. The little price difference is so low thats its an easy pick. Go for 8GB.
