16GB of RAM and Win7-64 barely uses a quarter of it

[SimMike2]

I'm beginning to think going to 16GB from my original 8GB is kind of pointless. It never seems to use more than about 4GB. Is 16GB a waste for people like me? I do occasional video editing and I like to use an older version of Adobe Photoshop, but even this doesn't seem to use the memory.

 

[ViRGE]

It depends on what you do. It's unlikely that you have any programs that are 64bit and can actually use all that memory at once. So it's a question of whether you run enough 32bit programs concurrently to consume that much RAM. Otherwise the only benefit is a larger RAM cache for SuperFetch.

Even if you had Photoshop, a web browser, a video game, and an OS going at once, I'd have to imagine you aren't filling up 8GB yet. So whether it's worth it depends on whether the extra RAM is being put to good use by SuperFetch at all, and if you expect to use more RAM in the future.

 

[Modelworks]

download a trial of autodesk maya and start loading in some million poly models, render it at full 1080P size with full 4096x4096 texture maps. It will laugh at your 16GB and want more.

 

[greyeyezz]

Here's CS5, Acrobat pro, outlook, word, streets, IE, Med Cntr, Opera and i haven't used half my ram.

Unless your heavy video editing or autocad or maya 16G is a waste of money.

 

[Dahak]

Those as well as if you are using alot of vm;s on your workstation for development or testing 16GB would be nice too

 

[hectorsm]

Maybe you didn't need to expand to 16GB. But like other have said it depends on what you do. If you edit long HD videos then try PowerDirector 9 which is a 64bit program and can make use of your extra memory.

 

[gmaster456]

Sounds to me like you don't really need it. I don't see a reason not to keep it though.

 

[SimMike2]

So it sounds like if I get a 64 bit video editing or photo editing program I might need the memory. Oh well, the extra 8GB only cost me $35 with free shipping and no tax.

What about gaming programs, which I really don't do, does that use more of the RAM?

 

[gevorg]

If you don't have SSD, you can dedicate like 10GB of it for RAM-disk.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

I'm beginning to think going to 16GB from my original 8GB is kind of pointless. It never seems to use more than about 4GB. Is 16GB a waste for people like me? I do occasional video editing and I like to use an older version of Adobe Photoshop, but even this doesn't seem to use the memory.

good thing RAM is cheap these days.

why did you go 16gb if you weren't going to make use of it?
i ran out of RAM at 8gb running a couple of VM's. i had a reason to go to 16gb.

 

[SimMike2]

good thing RAM is cheap these days.

why did you go 16gb if you weren't going to make use of it?
i ran out of RAM at 8gb running a couple of VM's. i had a reason to go to 16gb.

I was in the process of putting together a new computer and I didn't realize that 8GB would have been enough. For $35 it was cheap and gives me some headroom if I start using some memory intensive 64bit programs in the future.