4 or 8GB on new Z68 w/i5 system?

[Brutus04]

Upgrading from Q9550 to i5. Other than price is there a good reason to bump RAM up to 8GB? Mostly gaming and surfing, some photos. Thx!

 

[Capt Caveman]

Since you can get 8gb of DDR3 1600 1.5v for less than $40, why even consider 4gb? I have 16gb and hover at around of 4.5gb of used ram under normal activity.

fwiw - i just upgraded from a Q9550 to a 2500k Z68 system.

 

[C1]

Yes, this RAM thing is a waste of time for most people. I just found a couple Kingston 1GB DDR2 667 sticks which fit in my notebook, upgrading the DDR2 533 from 768 to 2GB. What a waste of time.

Save your money and buy an SSD

 

[Spikesoldier]

i would go with 8GB. when i went from 4GB to 8GB finally, i realized the slowdowns i would get during heavy gaming were a result of running out of memory.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

Yea agree the price right now on DDR 3 1600 is just to dang nice not to go with 8GB. You pick up the best gaming processor on the market why handicap it by only going with 4GB? If you want to use the IGP (Intergraded Graphics on Processor) you need to be able to dedicate some memory to that.

Christian Wood
Intel Enthusiast Team

 

[gevorg]

Nowadays, 8GB is the new 4GB.

 

[timoseewho]

Go with 8GB for sure.

 

[Skott]

4GB is plenty for gaming. If that and web surfing is all you are doing then don't bother getting 8GB. If you are trying hard to save money or within a certain budget stay with 4GB and use the saved money for a better GPU, CPU, SSD, or whatever component. However, If you are planning to do run a gazillion open apps(some people do this although I can't understand why), photoshopping, digital graphics, animation, or rendering then more RAM is going to help a lot so 8GB, or even more, is ideal. And like some have said, if you got the cash and don't mind spending an extra $20-$25 go ahead and splurge for the 8GB.

 

[zCypher]

4GB is ok "for now". Thing is, RAM prices today make it pointless to buy only 4GB. If you plan on keeping this build for a long time, having 8GB might come in handy later on when the operating system and your apps/games may take up more memory than they do today.

I remember when 2GB was "a lot" for XP computers.

 

[Slufa111]

Hell with the current price market of RAM, get 16GB!

 

[SolMiester]

I believe x64 W7 runs better with memory over 4GB

 

[capeconsultant]

8GB is cheaper than 4GB 8 months ago!

 

[Capt Caveman]

4GB is ok "for now". Thing is, RAM prices today make it pointless to buy only 4GB. If you plan on keeping this build for a long time, having 8GB might come in handy later on when the operating system and your apps/games may take up more memory than they do today.

I remember when 2GB was "a lot" for XP computers.

Just recently upgraded from my Q9550 system that had 4x1gb DDR2-800 Crucial Ballistix.

The first set of 2x1gb DDR2 cost me $200 back in the day and I remember buying the second set of 2x1gb DDR2 for $70, thinking I got such a deal.

Now, I have 16gb of DDR3 1600 in my new rig.

 

[Brutus04]

Thnks everyone! Gonna go with 8GB of these...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231311

Brutus04

 

[Spikesoldier]

Thnks everyone! Gonna go with 8GB of these...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231311

Brutus04

solid choice

 

[zCypher]

awww, "only" 8?

I kid I kid...enjoy!

 

[sub.mesa]

I have 16gb and hover at around of 4.5gb of used ram under normal activity.

Used memory for applications does not mean the other 11.5GB remains unused. The free memory is used for filecaching, which can reduce the amount of reads done to the storage device. Especially when using a mechanical HDD alot of RAM memory can severely speedup a system.

With RAM prices so low; new systems should never have less than 16GiB RAM in my opinion; it makes little sense to me to spend alot of memory on quadcore CPU but not utilize the current low RAM prices for a healthy bunch of RAM capable of caching alot of data, most likely having a lot of performance benefits for the casual desktop much more than a quadcore versus dualcore CPU would have.