2GB or 3GB of Ram

[wblakenc]

I currently have the following rig:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ Windsor 3.2GHz Socket AM2
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit
ASUS M2N32-SLI Premium Vista Edition AM2 NVIDIA nForce 590
BFG Tech BFGE88512GTOC2E GeForce 8800GT 512MB
Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)
Sound Blaster X-Fi Gamer
WD SATA2 160 GB Hard Drive
Antec 550 Watt PSU

and was wondering it it would be a good idea to get another GB of Crucial memory. I know I will not be running in Dual Channel but I am not sure that it matters. I mainly use my computer for games and web design, but I do like to play games. I have not had any "problems" except for a few BSOD crashes when playing Call of Duty 4. I am not sure if it is memory, graphics card, or OS related.

In any case the reason why I am considering buying another 1 GB is because I get a message while using Dreamweaver that my system is low on resources (when I check I am using about 50% of my ram). As a web designer I normally have many windows open (Firefox, IE, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc) so more memory is better but I do not want to run into the 4GB vista problem (at least I have heard of such things) but here is my question, will adding the 3rd GB of ram (which will take me out of Dual Channel) give me a performance increase or could I be buying trouble?

Thanks for any help you can give.

 

[Nothinman]

Depends on whether your workload is more limited by the speed or the latency at which you get at data.

I'd probably take the extra step and get the full 4G even though Vista won't be able to see all of it, it'll run in dual-channel mode and whenever you decide to get Vista64 or Linux you'll be able to use all 4G.

 

[wblakenc]

Reasonable idea, but I have heard of people having problems running vista and 4GB of memory (other than not having it all show up or whatever), any truth to this?

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: wblakenc
Reasonable idea, but I have heard of people having problems running vista and 4GB of memory (other than not having it all show up or whatever), any truth to this?

If you do a fresh install of Vista 64-bit then you need to have only 2GB of ram on the board during Vista install. After Vista 64bit installs then you can add the remaining ram (however much you intend to have, 4, 6 or 8GB, etc).

Vista 64 has issues installing when the board has >2GB of ram. Go figure.

Now 32-bit OS'es (XP and Vista alike) will not make the full 4GB of installed ram available to you or your applications once booted into the OS. This has to do with address mapping.

The rule of thumb is the max ram you will see in 32-bit OS is 4GB less your video card ram less 256MB.

So if your video card is 256MB then your OS will likely show 3.5GB as that will be 4GB - 256MB (video card) - 256MB (misc address space from USB/etc).

Incidentally this is where folks with SLI setups in XP or Vista 32bit really get their 4GB ram lost - you throw 2 video cards each with 1GB of video ram on them and all of sudden the OS won't let you access more than 2GB of your system ram.

 

[Nothinman]

Now 32-bit OS'es (XP and Vista alike) will not make the full 4GB of installed ram available to you or your applications once booted into the OS. This has to do with address mapping.

Just to be pedantic the fact that 32-bit Windows can't use 4G or more of memory is a limit imposed by MS, if they wanted to fully support PAE in their 32-bit client OSes they'd be able to address up to 64G of physical memroy.

The rule of thumb is the max ram you will see in 32-bit OS is 4GB less your video card ram less 256MB.

256M is an arbitrary number but probably a reasonable guess and the video card memory only requires physical addresses if it's PCIe I believe.

 

[wblakenc]

Ok so, if I am reading this correctly with my set up if I add 2GB to ram to get 4GB total I will end up with around 3.25 GB after all is said and done (4GB - 512 (video) - 256 (other) = 3.25GB), so my question is this: The only reason I would add 2 GB to my current rig (instead of 1) is to continue running in Dual Channel and to have an extra 256MB of ram, is this worth it? Ram is cheap so it is not like I am worried about spending the extra $, but will I see a difference between adding 1 GB vs adding 2GB?

 

[Nothinman]

It depends on how tight you are for memory right now, if you're already paging a lot then every little bit helps but if you're not then the difference between 3G and 3.25G probably won't be appreciable.

But I'd still go with 4G incase I decided to get Vista64 or Linux (well technically I'm already using Linux so I'd have access to all 4G right away) unless you think you might wait long enough to upgrade again that you'll be looking at 8G or more at that point.

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

Originally posted by: wblakenc
Reasonable idea, but I have heard of people having problems running vista and 4GB of memory (other than not having it all show up or whatever), any truth to this?

Not in my experience. I have a straight 32-bit system running Vista Business with 4GB for my daughter with no issues. My main rig has 8GB and dual boots Vista Ultimate 32-bit and Vista Business 64-bit without any issues.

Heck, with SP1, even the 32-bit OS will report the full amount...it just still won't use it all.

A 23-bit OS sees 8GB of RAM?