How much RAM is too much? 32gb? 64gb?

[DDR4]

Depends on your OS. If you have Windows 7 Pro or Ultimate and if you can afford it, go for it. I wouldn't say that games are huge RAM gobblers compared to video, they mostly rely on the CPU but it's still better to max out your motherboard.

 

[Stayfr0sty]

Way too much upgradeitis I see.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, my main point was that the extra DIMMs did affect stock performance and not just potential overclockability of the RAM. Though, I'm not aware of other chipsets which change the stock RAM speeds based on # of populated slots. For X79 it's something to keep in mind if you add RAM but don't pay attention to the memory settings.

S939 boards did that, many of them would drop from DDR-400 down to DDR-333, when you filled all four slots, even if those were DDR-400 DIMMs.

 

[exar333]

Yeah, my main point was that the extra DIMMs did affect stock performance and not just potential overclockability of the RAM. Though, I'm not aware of other chipsets which change the stock RAM speeds based on # of populated slots. For X79 it's something to keep in mind if you add RAM but don't pay attention to the memory settings.

True.

To be fair, there are very small application instances where RAM speed above 1600 makes any difference at all. The 'biggest' difference is in synthetic applications. When you are talking about APU performance (like Llano) then it is a different story though.

The 4 channels on my X79 appear to have plenty of bandwidth for multiple VMs and I am 'only' running 1333mhz. I bought more RAM that was a great deal rather than a smaller amount at a higher speed that did very little for me.

 

[tweakboy]

I think you mean Hans Zimmer.
On my PC, I use Sony Vegas for video editing, so that's why I went with 16GB (for now). The highest I've seen in use is 12-14GB of RAM.

NICE yes, that will help the Video Editing. Smart,,

 

[epidemis]

I can't understand what I'm reading here. People are actually supporting the OP in this? He's quite obviously wanting to buy more RAM than he needs. That means there is no point in buying that much RAM. Far as gaming goes, he will see zero benefit over 8GB.

To answer your question "how much RAM is too much?" - more than you need.

WRONG. He can create a ramdisk to load his games on! Just keep the computer on 24/7

 

[bryanW1995]

Computer is already on 24/7 running SETI. And yes, my plan is to create a ramdisk with the extra.

I can probably live with only 32gb, a 20gb or so ramdisk would be plenty for any game that I play. And something like nwn2 would see an unbelievable improvement in load times.

 

[Dave3000]

8GB RAM is enough for current gaming. There are better things will improve your gaming experience than upgrading to more than 8GB RAM, such as a faster GPU or a faster CPU. I have 16GB RAM I wanted 16GB RAM and it was cheap. Also I was upgrading to a new platform at the time and it was either downgrade from 12GB to 8GB (I didn't buy a new platform to downgrade) if I kept that specific memory kit or buy a new memory kit at a good price and upgrade to 16GB.

 

[chubbyfatazn]

With the recent bankruptcy of Elpida I think now's as good a time to upgrade to 16GB. I just picked up a second set of 8GB for $47, a bit higher than usual but they're rated at 1.35v so I'm happy.

 

[Jeff7181]

As much as you can afford and as much as the board with physically accept without downclocking the memory.

 

[tweakboy]

I have always stayed away from using all banks.

I am fixing to build a new system. If I do not plan to over-clock (maybe add a multiplier via the "k" chip possibly but nothing more), is it safe to use all memory banks? As cheap as memory is, I will if no problems from doing so?

YES my friend. BUT you have to follow these guidlines if you want NO PROBLEMS or hasles.

Get a known good vendor. Crucial , OCZ , G SKILL to name a few.

Once you have your vendor now you want the RAM which Im guessing would be 1600Mhz RAM sticks to be stable. How you do this is 2 things. One put the memory Voltage what the RAM specification says. The 1600 RAM will also get OCed if you overclock your CPU. Soo make sure your speed is 1600 or less. Leave timings on SPD. You can now fill all the slots. Also its known if you take up your voltage when you have all banks filled it helps with stability.. Ive noticed that....

 

[Jeff7181]

YES my friend. BUT you have to follow these guidlines if you want NO PROBLEMS or hasles.

Get a known good vendor. Crucial , OCZ , G SKILL to name a few.

Once you have your vendor now you want the RAM which Im guessing would be 1600Mhz RAM sticks to be stable. How you do this is 2 things. One put the memory Voltage what the RAM specification says. The 1600 RAM will also get OCed if you overclock your CPU. Soo make sure your speed is 1600 or less. Leave timings on SPD. You can now fill all the slots. Also its known if you take up your voltage when you have all banks filled it helps with stability.. Ive noticed that....

OCZ a known good vendor? LOL

 

[taltamir]

I've never really pushed the envelope on RAM in the past. In fact, I didn't even know that win 7 automagically created a RAMdisk until after I bought my most recent rig

superfetch is even better then a regular old ramdisk, since it also includes the caching algorithms to make use of the ramdisk AND it dynamically resizes the ramdisk as programs demand memory (shrinking / enlarging it on the fly).

In theory this could result in having your whole game already precached into ram. In practice there is a good chance that it wouldn't work out as you expect since:

1. Some things can be forced into pagefile anyways to "conserve" ram.
2. Windows might decide your game files are not high enough priority.
3. IIRC there IS a point beyond which you will find windows not fully utilizing your RAMdisk; I am having difficulty finding the review where that point was determined at the moment.
4. It takes quite a bit of time to fully populate it after each reboot (depends on the speed of your drives from which it reads).
5. Everything is compressed so CPU matters too, and even then it might take some time.

I did however just consider, if it is reading 4GB of uncompressed data to load a game fully at 150MB/s then it would take 27 seconds to fully read the data from the HDD.
Typically though it reads much smaller amounts and then decompresses it in ram, which the modern CPU can do faster then the HDD can read.

 

[anikhtos]

i used ramdrives from the win95 era
and they were so fast compared to a hard drive
all felt so instant
i even manage to run the system without a harddrive at all
i had 384 ram i made 256 ramdrive and left 128 ram
well win98se used somewhere 128 with all drivers loaded (small footrpint)
so i was booting from a cd loading the ramdrive and them copying the files from the cd to the ramdrive
it took somewhere 2 min (cd too slow to copy so many files)
pagefile was set off
but even i had an impact at cpu pii233mhz
working the sytem in a ramdrive was worthing it

by the way why to have pagefile still on if you have so ram???
after i mange to have 128 mega i always have pagefile turned off
that applies to winxp and win7
only to play age of empires which for a stange reason wanted to have pagefile turned on i do not see any point to have this on?
so and you can always point pagefile to the ramdrive lol
i like ramdrive so much cause i sent there temp folder
internet explorer folder
so i knew all was gone at every reboot

 

[Coup27]

OCZ a known good vendor? LOL

Aside from that, they don't even make RAM anymore.

 

[Timmah!]

Yeah, i'm fighting the urge to go from 24gb to 48gb on my x58. Why? The only reason I can come up with so far is why not.....

I do not think you can have more than 24 GBs on x58.

EDIT: Seems you can, i would swear though, i read somewhere before, 24GB is the limit

 

[Topweasel]

I do not think you can have more than 24 GBs on x58.

EDIT: Seems you can, i would swear though, i read somewhere before, 24GB is the limit

24GB was the limit when there were only really 4GB sticks out there, I think most of the 8GB sticks were registered and ecc sticks. So 6x4. It happens every couple of generations when memory does it 50% shrink. Manufacturers state limits based on testing and tend to only test the readily available stuff. Very few times do you actually see a hard set capacity limit (I remember something like 512MB on the PC133 P4 chipset), and most of the time the limit is by when a manufacturer stops updating BIOS's and the chipset doesn't recognize the new density.

Big issue on OEM systems. They get maybe a generation in a half of BIOS updates. On retail motherboards, specially enthusiast targeted ones. The capacity allowance increase stops when that type of ram is no longer being developed.

 

[Smoblikat]

Yeah, i'm fighting the urge to go from 24gb to 48gb on my x58. Why? The only reason I can come up with so far is why not.....

Because X58 has a max of 24gb i think...........

 

[Topweasel]

Because X58 has a max of 24gb i think...........

Not true. Tons of people are running 48GB on X58 boards. Most manufacturers are only going to certify it with 24GB setups, but as long as they still release BIOS updates for it chances are that they will get a density update along the line. Heck there is good chance that most X58 bios's support the density for current 8GB sticks out of the box. They were on the horizon and available just not cost effective.

Keep in mind that its not max capacity that usually limits these its again the density. So in 2015 when you see affordable 32GB sticks its possible that a 8GB stick won't work in a X78 setup. Not because it exceeds max size noted in the manual, but that the BIOS won't recognize the density of each chip on the module and it will be based on the highest density at the time and the amount of chips on the module. Meaning at that time it would only see 4GB per stick in all likelihood.

 

[Gillbot]

I do not think you can have more than 24 GBs on x58.

EDIT: Seems you can, i would swear though, i read somewhere before, 24GB is the limit

Many are running 48gb, but it MAY be a crapshoot. Still, if sticks were a tick cheaper i'd bite and go for it.

24GB was the limit when there were only really 4GB sticks out there, I think most of the 8GB sticks were registered and ecc sticks. So 6x4. It happens every couple of generations when memory does it 50% shrink. Manufacturers state limits based on testing and tend to only test the readily available stuff. Very few times do you actually see a hard set capacity limit (I remember something like 512MB on the PC133 P4 chipset), and most of the time the limit is by when a manufacturer stops updating BIOS's and the chipset doesn't recognize the new density.

Big issue on OEM systems. They get maybe a generation in a half of BIOS updates. On retail motherboards, specially enthusiast targeted ones. The capacity allowance increase stops when that type of ram is no longer being developed.

Not true. Tons of people are running 48GB on X58 boards. Most manufacturers are only going to certify it with 24GB setups, but as long as they still release BIOS updates for it chances are that they will get a density update along the line. Heck there is good chance that most X58 bios's support the density for current 8GB sticks out of the box. They were on the horizon and available just not cost effective.

Keep in mind that its not max capacity that usually limits these its again the density. So in 2015 when you see affordable 32GB sticks its possible that a 8GB stick won't work in a X78 setup. Not because it exceeds max size noted in the manual, but that the BIOS won't recognize the density of each chip on the module and it will be based on the highest density at the time and the amount of chips on the module. Meaning at that time it would only see 4GB per stick in all likelihood.

Exactly. Many of the old LGA775 boards had a "max" of 4gb with 4 slots because all there was were 1gb sticks and 32bit OS'es. As 2GB sticks and 64bit OS'es became mainstream, most had a "max" of 8GB because of the 2gb sticks. I'd bet if you tried 4gb sticks in DDR2, they'd probably work too with a max of 16gb. Though, I'm not willing to try it and be the guinea pig there. ;-)

 

[bunnyfubbles]

key word here is need

most will not need more than 8GB outside of workstation environments, but that doesn't mean more than 8GB cannot be utilized. There are a plethora of ways to make use of excess RAM, one of the better ways is through a RAM drive and using it for browser cache, a scratch disc for audio/photo/video editing, or for speeding up your favorite game by installing it entirely to RAM.

 

[readymix]

Yeah, my main point was that the extra DIMMs did affect stock performance and not just potential overclockability of the RAM. Though, I'm not aware of other chipsets which change the stock RAM speeds based on # of populated slots. For X79 it's something to keep in mind if you add RAM but don't pay attention to the memory settings.

well despite Anand's assertion in post #46 that was not the case with my P9. Anand's findings may be because all the early x79 reviews were on the intel dx79si board, so it could be board specific. my ram defaulted to the ram's stock settings, 1600\1.35v case 11. it currently runs at 1866\1.5 case 9. there is a small percentage hit to bandwith at 32 gig v. 16, though it is only iin the single digits, as i recall.

 

[Baasha]

Honestly, I would go with as much RAM as possible at the fastest speed.

Then, as you've already said, create a RAMdisk for some apps and enjoy the hell out of it. I myself only recently discovered the beauty of a RAMdisk and 'lawd be praysed', it makes browsing (among other things) SO much better.

 

[FAUguy]

Honestly, I would go with as much RAM as possible at the fastest speed.

Then, as you've already said, create a RAMdisk for some apps and enjoy the hell out of it. I myself only recently discovered the beauty of a RAMdisk and 'lawd be praysed', it makes browsing (among other things) SO much better.

Its been many years since I tired setting up a ramdisk (Win 98, I think). How would you recommend doing it in Win 7 x64 with 16GB 2133MHz RAM?

 

[Baasha]

Its been many years since I tired setting up a ramdisk (Win 98, I think). How would you recommend doing it in Win 7 x64 with 16GB 2133MHz RAM?

Use this program called DataRAM "RAMdisk" (link: http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk)

The free version has a 4GB limit but it's more than enough for basic tasks. If you want to actually have your games/programs RUN on the RAMdisk, I would assume you would need to get the paid version which removes the 4GB limit.

Once you go RAMdisk, you don't go HDD/SSD! XD