Is 8GB of RAM overkill?

[faxon]

i also have to recommend superspeed's ramdisk/ramdisk plus software. i dont have it running how but i have had the luxury of using it in the past with a special order set of 4x6gb sticks (24gb) in an i7 system. the guy loaded entire games directly into ram in a 4gb ram/20gb ramdisk configuration and the performance was nothing less of "load times? what are those?".

ed: just checked the pricing. used to be it was either $69~ for ramdisk or $99~ for ramdisk plus. all they did was make the 32bit versions cheaper for people who only need that much space in 1 ram disk

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: faxon
i also have to recommend superspeed's ramdisk/ramdisk plus software. i dont have it running how but i have had the luxury of using it in the past with a special order set of 4x6gb sticks (24gb) in an i7 system. the guy loaded entire games directly into ram in a 4gb ram/20gb ramdisk configuration and the performance was nothing less of "load times? what are those?".

ed: just checked the pricing. used to be it was either $69~ for ramdisk or $99~ for ramdisk plus. all they did was make the 32bit versions cheaper for people who only need that much space in 1 ram disk

Yeah I'm pretty sure they priced it in part with the mentality that if you (the consumer) already went to the expense of populating your dimm slots with high-density high-capacity ram then adding on another $100 to the total expenditure outlay to make good use of that ram is not going to be a deal-breaker for you.

It wasn't a deal breaker for me...but I have to admit I gave pause to the thought and question of whether I was really about to spend almost half as much on ramdrive software as the entire OS (32bit XP) cost me...in the end I was able to successfully suspend all rational logic and bought the ramdrive plus anyways :laugh:

 

[taltamir]

I can easily make a list of fun games made unplayable by excessive load times... so there is certainly justification for such a price. But I just had to pay for some expensive summer tuition and I am trying to skimp on non vital expenses. I will keep it in mind though for when I have a little more money.

Is there any free or open source solution? or is superspeed ramdisk the only worthwhile contender?

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: taltamir
Is there any free or open source solution? or is superspeed ramdisk the only worthwhile contender?

I tried none of the competition, superspeed was the first I tried and it worked so I haven't had a need to look elsewhere (yet).

 

[faxon]

It's actually recommended in several of my text books for the classes i have been taking, 3 of which were written by microsoft (lol), 2 by another company I dont remember off the top of my head, and one by the instructor i was working with at the time. I havent looked for an open source alternative yet, but when the alternative to get anywhere near that performance is raiding a few dozen X-25E drives in RAID 0, a feat which would probably cost as much as a luxury sedan, I think paying $100 for a piece of software and a price premium for 4GB DDR3 DIMMs on special order is the better choice right now lol

 

[LittleNemoNES]

8GB of ram on a desktop is fun because you can try a ramdisk or run a virtual machine

 

[themisfit610]

I can gobble up most of my RAM just with Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2. Not very hard.... If I do a bunch of work in Lightroom, then start batch exporting JPGs and simultaneously sending a few files into Photoshop in 16 bit ProPhoto TIFF, I've seen the processes using north of 6GB (not Vista cache )

I don't do this too often, but I also really like being able to encode video, play WoW, and have Photoshop, Firefox, Foobar, Digsby, and play an HD movie all at once

~MiSfit

 

[jimhsu]

8GB of ram currently is saving my butt when I mod ... typically I have something like a modding tool and two instances of the game open (I'm trying to diagnose a corrupt save problem on X3:TC where each instance uses 2GB). Plus of course all the other assorted junk like windows, a browser, photoshop, assorted MS office apps, etc.

Makes you wonder how we made do with having to close all open applications before launching a game. Or launching photoshop for that matter. Hmph.

 

[alcoholbob]

NWN2 on a clean install (no user-mods/save games) is 12GB on my hard drive -.-

RAMdisk support up to 512GB? Can you even fit more than 48GB of RAM on a standard motherboard? (Aside from the fact that its $6,000 of RAM).

 

[Malakai]

I use 8gb. I like it. I kill my page file and enjoy =)
In fact I like it enough that I would rather run 8gb at 960mhz than 4gb at 1066.

I recently upgraded my HSF and it covered 2 of my ram slots. I have corsair dominator with big heatsinks and there wasn't enough room for them under the fan.
At first I was just going to sell the other 4gb and just run the 4. But after a few days I missed it enough that I sold all 8gb of the dominator and bought cheaper gskill cas5 1066 with smaller ram sinks.

So yes 8gb is worth it. I run dual monitors and have a vista sidebar with all kinds of system stats, multi firefox windows, thunderbird, word or oooWriter, maybe excel. And of course a game on top of it here and there. Job + games on one pc = 8gb <3 <3

 

[Nathelion]

Heh. I have 16 gigs, and I almost never break the 5 gb barrier. Right now I'm looking into ramdisk software... could make for some awesome map loading times

 

[alcoholbob]

I only have 6 gigs of RAM but I'm apprehensive because like Malakai, my HSF covers my RAM slots (actually it covers an inch beyond my motherboard, so I can't even see my RAM) and is covered with razor sharp heatsink fins and I'm not keen on removing it (actually there's blood marks all over the heatsink already )

 

[superfastkyle]

just found this thread funny when I look at my ram usage 293 mb used with no swap file....I guess I'm not a real power user, haha. I usually top out about 700-800 when multitasking. XP performance edition, its so great who needs RAM?

 

[alcoholbob]

My fresh XP3 install is 230MB on boot with Logitech Setpoint and VIA EnvyHT24 audio driver panel loaded.

You have no swap file? Why? :\

 

[crazlunatic]

I got the 8GB lol. I only use 1.8GB most of the time -_- :'(
What's this ramdisk thing you guys talk about? Any software recommendations for it?

 

[Nathelion]

http://www.mydigitallife.info/...-2000-and-2003-server/

They have a free solution there... but further development is discontinued. It worked when i tried it, but I've gotta warn you, it also made my computer unstable... I ended up getting rid of it in <24 hours

 

[zerocool84]

I hope you guys aren't thinking that running a lot of RAM means you can kill your Pagefile. Some programs/games may not run correctly cus they need it.

 

[hclarkjr]

i just recently went to 8 and have seen to detriment to my performance from it. i did not notice any improvement either to be honest, all the benchmarks i use stayed almost the same as with 4

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: hclarkjr
i just recently went to 8 and have seen to detriment to my performance from it. i did not notice any improvement either to be honest, all the benchmarks i use stayed almost the same as with 4

If you didn't notice an improvement, and benchmarks say your performance stayed almost the same as with 4...then what tells you there was a detriment?

It is true that depending on how you had your 4GB sticks configured that bumping it up to 8GB could cause the latencies to increase, but other than synthetic benchmarks the performance impact of changes in your ram latency is hardly noticable.

If your app usage does not exceed 4GB, then adding another 4GB to the system isn't going to magically make the first 4GB faster at anything. Adding ram improves the user's experience only if their app usage exceeded the installed memory prior to the upgrade.

Or if you do what some people do and use the increase in ram to create a ramdrive and manually speedup some things that were gated by the speed of their harddrive.

 

[Zapper48]

I noticed going from 4 gb to 8gb of DDR800 that i had to lower my overclock or it took alot more tweaking to achieve the same OC.I plan to get 8gb of DDR1066 so that should resolve that issue.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Depends on what you do. I use 5+ GB of RAM on my main machine, but that's because I heavily multitask, run lots of application at once and because I also typically run at least one Virtual Machine. On my HTPC I have 4GB, but since it's HTPC, it rarely uses more than 500MB at any time.

 

[crazlunatic]

Originally posted by: Nathelion
http://www.mydigitallife.info/...-2000-and-2003-server/

They have a free solution there... but further development is discontinued. It worked when i tried it, but I've gotta warn you, it also made my computer unstable... I ended up getting rid of it in <24 hours

i'm not comfortable with using that but thanks xD

--

what do you guys multitaks with lol, I tried heavily multitasking just for the hell of it (i used to actually but learned to cut back on it recently) and didn't even past 4gb. With a virtual machine, for sure I'll pass 4GB but just not always using one

 

[sxr7171]

I'm down with all this excess of RAM - My peak commit charge has never exceeded 2GB in Win 7 - if someone can show me a way to boot Windows off a RAMDisk. How about one with battery backup?

Or at least one that syncs the entire OS onto a RAM Disk and then runs all OS components from RAM?

I find that Windows in general never seems to want to use all the RAM I give it. I have 1.2GB Cached and 1.5GB free physical memory right now on a 4GB RAM system. How do I get this thing to use more?

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: Nathelion
http://www.mydigitallife.info/...-2000-and-2003-server/

They have a free solution there... but further development is discontinued. It worked when i tried it, but I've gotta warn you, it also made my computer unstable... I ended up getting rid of it in <24 hours

That RAM Disk is working perfectly on my WHS right now and has worked without a hiccup for a month. It worked when none others worked. I don't know about using it on Win 7 but but it works on 2003.

BTW is based on a MS driver so it appears that way in device manager.

It works perfectly for me.

 

[chrisf6969]

Yes 8Gb is overkill, unless you have some VERY specific need for huge data sets. (mostly server related stuff)

Only a few situations do you (or any typical power desktop user) ever need more than 2-3Gb.... but with ram so cheap might as well get some 2Gb sticks for your dual or tri-channel set up.

4Gb is the sweet spot... at least for a dual channel set up.

Or 6Gb... if you have a Core i7 system then you might as well go with 2x3Gb = 6Gb

http://www.tomshardware.com/re...le-upgrade,2264-8.html