So 4GB RAM really does make an obvious difference (in Vista)

LungingAtThePope

Junior Member
Sep 9, 2008
9
0
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So about a year ago I bought 4 1GB sticks of DDR2 for my new build, thinking "hur hur hur 4gb is totally overkill", and it didnt really feel all that faster than my old pc with 1gb under XP. Then last week I had to replace my motherboard because the other one was annoying me (more detail than that would be very boring), and it turns out in AM2 mode the ASUS M3A78-T (my new board) wont run 4 sticks of this particular ram (GEIL Ultra), looking at the compatability sheet it seems quite picky. So I was forced to put just 2GB in, and suddenly noticed what a massive difference having 4GB makes. Memory usage at "idle" dropped from about 2GB to about 1GB, I am guessing because vista is not cacheing as much stuff. Switching between open apps has a tiny delay but after spending a year without this it is suddenly noticable, opening programs seems to take a tiny but longer and games have obvious drops in frame rate where the hard drive thrashes for a half-second or so. All this is kind of small and not hugely noticable when you go up to 4GB, but coming back down again it is so annoying I have been forced (thats my excuse and im sticking with it) to order a new AM2+ cpu (apparently in AM2+ mode it supports 4 1GB sticks of GEIL Ultra...).
No real point to this post but someone might find it interesting.
Also I'm bored.
Enjoy.
 

Blain

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
23,643
3
81
Originally posted by: LungingAtThePope
I was forced to put just 2GB in, and suddenly noticed what a massive difference having 4GB makes. Memory usage at "idle" dropped from about 2GB to about 1GB
What applications are running when you say the system is "idle"?

 

n7

Elite Member
Jan 4, 2004
21,281
4
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Of course it does.

I even find 8 GB improves things over 4 GB, though not nearly to the degree of 2 to 4 GB.

Vista loves RAM...it's just taken some people a long time to figure it out ;)
 

imported_Scoop

Senior member
Dec 10, 2007
773
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I'm probably the only one here who doesn't notice a difference between 2GB and 4GB. I mostly run just one firefox session beside mirc and messenger so I guess that doesn't really stress the system too much. And I close firefox when I don't need it. You should say it depends on the user whether they'll notice a difference or not, instead of just making it sound like it makes a huge difference if you just go online to check your email.