Performance jump going from 8gb to 16gb

clarkey01 · 08-22-2012, 03:04 AM

Hi Guys,

Looking for a cheap upgrade, I use VMware workstation for a test domain and game quite a bit on BF3/Civ5.

My question is how much of an improvement would going from 8gb to 16gb be?

My MB only support - DDR3 Dual-Channel - PC3-12800

Cheers Guys

Ancalagon44 · 08-22-2012, 03:14 AM

Open up all of the programs you usually use (including BF3, just alt tab), right click on Taskbar -> open task manager - click on Performance tab - read the Available figure listed under Physical memory.

If its low, then more memory will help.

But I'm thinking a 256GB SSD would help far more.

ShintaiDK · 08-22-2012, 05:03 AM

If you use less than 8GB the difference is 0.

SSD will be a much bigger upgrade as said for example.

clarkey01 · 08-22-2012, 06:56 AM

Well an SSD is a little out of my price range , the 16GB of ram is only £70. My board only supports up to PC3-12800 I believe

Ancalagon44 · 08-22-2012, 07:01 AM

Here is a 120GB Intel SSD for only £10 more.

You can put Windows, essential programs, and your swap file on it.

If you can stretch to a 240GB SSD, you can put Steam on it too, if you use it.

Blain · 08-22-2012, 07:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by clarkey01

Looking for a cheap upgrade, I use VMware workstation for a test domain and game quite a bit on BF3/Civ5.

My question is how much of an improvement would going from 8gb to 16gb be?

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShintaiDK

If you use less than 8GB the difference is 0.

SSD will be a much bigger upgrade as said for example.

Quote:

Originally Posted by clarkey01

Well an SSD is a little out of my price range , the 16GB of ram is only £70.

For just £9.09 you can have a 128GB Crucial M4 and actually notice a performance difference.

clarkey01 · 08-22-2012, 08:03 AM

I'm tempted but it would have to be a weekend job re-installing everything.

I usually build in 4 year cycles, this rig is now 2.5 years old. I was thinking the slight ram upgrade now then a video card upgrade.

I had an ssd in mind for my next rig, hopefully cheaper bigger SSD's

ShintaiDK · 08-22-2012, 08:07 AM

Adding memory got zero benefit unless its used. So unless you hit a memory wall, then save the money or spend it on components that will actually make a difference.

MontyAC · 08-22-2012, 09:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShintaiDK

Adding memory got zero benefit unless its used. So unless you hit a memory wall, then save the money or spend it on components that will actually make a difference.

+1

bryanW1995 · 08-22-2012, 09:53 AM

If all you're looking for is gaming improvement, then neither the ssd nor extra RAM is likely to help. Just keep what you have.

Compman55 · 08-22-2012, 12:08 PM

Explain exactly when your slowdown occurs and we can help make a better recommendation. 8GB is good for now, but not for another 2 yrs if you are using close to it.

thelastjuju · 08-23-2012, 11:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Compman55

Explain exactly when your slowdown occurs and we can help make a better recommendation. 8GB is good for now, but not for another 2 yrs if you are using close to it.

What makes you think this? 8gb is already almost 4x as much RAM as I've ever seen a single game utilize. Games today average 2.0-2.5 gb ram usage.

By the time we put a whopping 16gb of RAM to use, we will be two, maybe three DDR revisions ahead of where we are now, and so those old ram modules you think you'll use one day? They won't even fit in the future motherboard slots.

The only ones benefiting from this whole "ram is cheap so just buy as much as you can" philosophy are the RAM manufacturers, making out like bandits with all these people who think they need inordinate amounts and nonsense like fancy heat spreaders.

Blain · 08-23-2012, 12:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by clarkey01

I'm tempted but it would have to be a weekend job re-installing everything.

I usually build in 4 year cycles, this rig is now 2.5 years old. I was thinking the slight ram upgrade now then a video card upgrade.

I had an ssd in mind for my next rig, hopefully cheaper bigger SSD's

* The Crucial is only £9.09 more than you're already going to spend
* A reload and reinstall is work, but would yeild nice performance benefits over the next 1.5 years until your next cycle build.
* Did I mention it was only £9.09 more than you intended to spend anyway?

Buy Fab's Auto Backup to help take the sting out of a reinstall.

yours truly · 09-03-2012, 04:14 PM

I upgraded from 8gb of ram to 16gb today for no reason other than it was cheap.

Interestingly enough, my heaven benchmarks have changed:

8GB

16GB

I haven't changed any of the settings or changed drivers but my minimum fps has increased. The only difference is in the first screenshot, heaven incorrectly identifies my GPUs.

hhhd1 · 09-03-2012, 07:42 PM

max fps and average fps looks the same.

looks like the low ram resulted in a quick drop in frame rate. probably due to paging.

Zorander · 09-03-2012, 08:41 PM

I'd sell that 5850 and add the proceed to your budget for a video card upgrade.

I have very similar rig to the OP (have a Crucial M4 though), that started its life with a HD5850 too. I'm now on a HD6970 and will be upgrading to a HD7950. Gaming is still a smooth experience on this rig, even at 2560x1600.

Smoblikat · 09-04-2012, 01:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ancalagon44

Here is a 120GB Intel SSD for only £10 more.

You can put Windows, essential programs, and your swap file on it.

If you can stretch to a 240GB SSD, you can put Steam on it too, if you use it.

Why would anyone need a page file if they already have enough RAM?

Cerb · 09-04-2012, 01:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smoblikat

Why would anyone need a page file if they already have enough RAM?

1. Overcommit .
2. Safety margin.

_Rick_ · 09-04-2012, 01:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smoblikat

Why would anyone need a page file if they already have enough RAM?

So that when they run out of RAM eventually, their applications won't crash?
Also, it should make more memory "available" through preventive paging.

Also, extra RAM will always be used as disk cache, at least in Windows 7.
Currently I have 14G in use as disk cache, 8.7G in use for being at the desktop (Opera alone takes 4.5G)...

More RAM is always good.
And unless you have way too much RAM, and know you will never use it, a pagefile is convenient.
Even then it only takes one memory leak, and suddenly applications start crashing en-masse. At least with a pagefile you get a slow down as warning...

Ancalagon44 · 09-04-2012, 01:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smoblikat

Why would anyone need a page file if they already have enough RAM?

When I bought my SSD and upgraded my RAM, I read up on the subject. It looks like a lot of applications, and often windows itself, is designed with the idea that a swapfile is always present, so it may not be a good idea to disable it.

BrightCandle · 09-04-2012, 03:43 AM

Actually more RAM does help even if you don't directly use it for applications. If you work on lots of small files (programmer, compilation, small digital assets) then you may well find the additional RAM useful. Windows/Linux will use the spare RAM to cache the disk and it provides a decent boost over and above an SSD. But its a pretty narrow case and if we are talking games its unlikely to do anything at all.

dagamer34 · 09-04-2012, 10:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yours truly

I upgraded from 8gb of ram to 16gb today for no reason other than it was cheap.

Interestingly enough, my heaven benchmarks have changed:

8GB

16GB

I haven't changed any of the settings or changed drivers but my minimum fps has increased. The only difference is in the first screenshot, heaven incorrectly identifies my GPUs.

Min and max aren't useful measures unless you've got a chart graph plotting FPS compared to time. A slight dip for 1 frame would make the comparison pointless (plus, you also need to run the benchmark several times so that it kicks out other data from previous apps you used).

I think the random read speeds of an SSD make the pursuit large chunks of RAM a moot point for everything except for professional work (video, audio editing, anything with tons of assets) and virtual machines. The only reason to have lots of RAM is because reading from the disk in the past was tremendously slow considering you have to wake up the drive, seek to the location you want, read the data into RAM at 100 MB/sec before anything gets done.

Now when seek times are 0.1 ms (basically pointless to measure with SSDs) and sequential read speeds at 500+ MB/sec, you can fill the entire contents of 8GB of RAM in 16 sec, something that would have taken 13 minutes on a typical hard drive.

All of this is a way of saying, save your money and buy an SSD. The SSD isn't really the bottleneck as much as the CPU and GPU are these days.