Have 2 x 1gb Crucial Ballistix PC8500

[Oyeve]

Hi all. The system in my sig below is gonna go Vista Home Premium 32bit soon. I bought the 2gb of ram below for 75 bucks after rebate in early June. It is now on sale at Newegg for 130 after rebate. Should I get 2 more gigs of this mem for Vista or should I just use a USB readyboost flash drive? Will I gain anything significant by adding 2 more gigs? I mostly game. Thanks.

 

[chizow]

You should really check out the 3 Part AT Article on the "2 GB Wall". Addresses many of the problems with 2-3GB in a 32-bit Windows OS. If you're looking for the best gaming experience with Vista, I'd go with Vista 64 and 4GB. ReadyBoost isn't going to come close to an extra 1-2GB in either 32-bit or 64-bit Vista due to the slow write speeds of flash memory.

 

[dds14u]

2 gigs is fine, in fact readyboost really will only show noticeable improvement if you have less than 2 gigs.

I'm not having any "problems" running my Vista 32-bit with 2gigs of memory.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: dds14u
2 gigs is fine, in fact readyboost really will only show noticeable improvement if you have less than 2 gigs.

I'm not having any "problems" running my Vista 32-bit with 2gigs of memory.

Depends what games and resolution you run. There's a growing library of games that clearly show 2 gigs isn't fine and 64-bit Operating Systems with 2GB+ are the way to go.

As the article and recent Vista hot fixes show, the problems with memory management in Vista are much worst than in XP, so if you were close to hitting the 2GB wall in XP for the games/resolutions you run, chances are you'll be a lot closer to it running 2GB in Vista.

 

[JustaGeek]

Get 2x512MB for the 32-bit system, if you can find the matching memory.

If you decide to get 64-bit Vista, go for 4GB.

 

[n7]

Readyboost is in no way a replacement for RAM.

Honestly, it's a ridiculously small improvement in the best of cases.

Until MS lets us customize what gets cached on the Readyboost drive, it's a relatively useless feature sadly

If you want more RAM, get another 2x1 GB kit.

And don't get 32-bit Vista.
There's no reason to be wasting money on a dead future.

x64 = way you should be going.

 

[AuDioFreaK39]

Originally posted by: n7
Readyboost is in no way a replacement for RAM.

Honestly, it's a ridiculously small improvement in the best of cases.

Until MS lets us customize what gets cached on the Readyboost drive, it's a relatively useless feature sadly

If you want more RAM, get another 2x1 GB kit.

And don't get 32-bit Vista.
There's no reason to be wasting money on a dead future.

x64 = way you should be going.

Agreed. Especially on some Crucial Ballistix. Those things are WAY too hella fast for ReadyBoost to even catch up with. I have 4GB (4 x 1GB) of Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR2 1066MHz 8500 in my rig which I just got yesterday and they are unbelievably fast. In fact, they are even faster than my 800MHz FSB on my *temporary* and aged Pentium 4 550 3.4GHz - I have them temporarily running at DDR2 410MHz @ 4-4-4-9 with a 1:1 to my FSB, lmao. Until I can get my P4 back to 4.0GHz, it's gonna be pretty hilarious over here.



....still waitin on the Penryn