take advantage of 2Gb of RAM?

[bluemaverick]

I have 2 GB of Corsair PC3200 XLPRO now all at 2-2-2-5...4 x 512MB....and there doesn;t seems to be any differense compare to 1GB only.....any tweaking in windows i could do to increase performance? Thank you!

 

[KoolDrew]

No. Windows is tweaked out of the box. Take any tweaking sites you come across with a grain of salt.

Windows will try to use all of your memory.

 

[MisterChief]

The only possible advantage from two GB of memory would be in games like BF:V if you're hosting a game.

 

[alkemyst]

Originally posted by: KoolDrew
No. Windows is tweaked out of the box. Take any tweaking sites you come across with a grain of salt.

Windows will try to use all of your memory.

however many many motherboards will reduce timings for an extra 1GB or 4 dimms negating the perf. boost for most people. If you are running a server multi-GB's make a difference.

There is a lot of (idiots?) talking how they bought a A8N-SLI machine with 2GB because they are major graphics/movie monguls....they can't afford a dedicated machine/specialty workstation for this endevour but proceed to brag about the 3-4K in software they use (legally????)

being at 2-2-2-5 sucks if at 2T. Get CPU-z and see.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: alkemyst

Originally posted by: KoolDrew
No. Windows is tweaked out of the box. Take any tweaking sites you come across with a grain of salt.

Windows will try to use all of your memory.

however many many motherboards will reduce timings for an extra 1GB or 4 dimms negating the perf. boost for most people. If you are running a server multi-GB's make a difference.

There is a lot of (idiots?) talking how they bought a A8N-SLI machine with 2GB because they are major graphics/movie monguls....they can't afford a dedicated machine/specialty workstation for this endevour but proceed to brag about the 3-4K in software they use (legally????)

being at 2-2-2-5 sucks if at 2T. Get CPU-z and see.

That's quite the assumption. Ever consider that they can't afford a Workstation because they spent all their money on that Software?

At anyrate, BOT. 2gb is only useful in certain situations right now. Some games(very few ATM) might benefit and in some situations(such as brought up by Alk) 2gb(>1gb) can be useful.

 

[SynthDude2001]

I basically agree with the above. For most normal uses, 2GB is not necessary. Even the most recent resource-hogging games (the ones that I play at least) seem to do just fine with 1GB - I don't think I've ever seen memory usage above 600-700MB, even while gaming. Makes me happy at least that the 1GB of PC3200 I bought in August 2003 is still not outdated.

If you really need 2GB, you'll know it.

 

[thriemus]

I disagree, file cache can almost triple when you have 2 gb of ram installed. Also many games these days are dvd or 2/3 cds and so more files from the game will remain in memory when you have more ram. As for simple day to day use though, 2 gb of ram is not benificial unless you are running many applications at the same time, or editing large photos in photoshop.

Think about it, If mem usage is 600-700 mb then windows has 300-400 mb free for system cache, if you have 2 gb of ram then this increases to 1300 - 1400 mb of system cache. That works out at over 3 times the amount.

 

[Wicked2010]

Originally posted by: thriemus
I disagree, file cache can almost triple when you have 2 gb of ram installed. Also many games these days are dvd or 2/3 cds and so more files from the game will remain in memory when you have more ram. As for simple day to day use though, 2 gb of ram is not benificial unless you are running many applications at the same time, or editing large photos in photoshop.

Think about it, If mem usage is 600-700 mb then windows has 300-400 mb free for system cache, if you have 2 gb of ram then this increases to 1300 - 1400 mb of system cache. That works out at over 3 times the amount.

While I agree with most of what you said... some of it is indeed far too general.

Almost all applications that require alot of RAM for operation also require alot of CPU during normal operation. So you won't be editing a HUGE photo while playing Half-Life 2. You'll just be doing one or the other... no use multi-tasking a set of applications like this.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that... someone who cares about tweaking performance on their machine, would never consider using 4 x 512 MB for their RAM configuration. The 2T command rate is too big of a hit. Stick with 2 x 512 MB until 2 x 1024 MB becomes cheaper and more common place.

 

[ribbon13]

GF on my computer.
The Sims 2.
1688MB Physical, 464MB Paged.

 

[Forsa]

I have a memory problem. When i run HLSource my memory usuage goes to max physical (1024) and fills up my page file which is set at 1024MB. I am running nothing except for the firewall and HLSource. I have windows xp pro. Is this a windows problem because for somereason i dont htink hl2 uses 2GB of memory.

 

[alkemyst]

Originally posted by: thriemus
I disagree, file cache can almost triple when you have 2 gb of ram installed. Also many games these days are dvd or 2/3 cds and so more files from the game will remain in memory when you have more ram. As for simple day to day use though, 2 gb of ram is not benificial unless you are running many applications at the same time, or editing large photos in photoshop.

Think about it, If mem usage is 600-700 mb then windows has 300-400 mb free for system cache, if you have 2 gb of ram then this increases to 1300 - 1400 mb of system cache. That works out at over 3 times the amount.

Regardless of the cache size increasing, you'd be surprized how little it gets used. Search on it and about page commits and faults, etc. Most people aren't even taxing 512MB much of the time.

 

[Wicked2010]

Do you have all of the settings on high or something?

If not... spyware possibility.

 

[Capt Caveman]

I don't know about games. But for multi-tasking, 2gb can be helpful. Some apps are major memory hogs and if you have a number of other apps, that ram will get low and start going to your page file. With 2gb and 1gb(a lot of times), you can reduce your page file to 200mb or less. Another performance boost can be had by putting your page file on another disk drive besides the one where your os is running from.

And from my experience, there are a number of tweaks that you can make to disable unnecessary or unused processes that are using up ram to making Windows XP change it's behavior for better performance.

 

[thriemus]

Originally posted by: Wicked2010

While I agree with most of what you said... some of it is indeed far too general.

Almost all applications that require alot of RAM for operation also require alot of CPU during normal operation. So you won't be editing a HUGE photo while playing Half-Life 2. You'll just be doing one or the other... no use multi-tasking a set of applications like this.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that... someone who cares about tweaking performance on their machine, would never consider using 4 x 512 MB for their RAM configuration. The 2T command rate is too big of a hit. Stick with 2 x 512 MB until 2 x 1024 MB becomes cheaper and more common place.

I agree, however I knew that I would be transfering the RAM from my A64 box to my linux box so I went with the 4 * 512 MB, Its only a temp measure. I agree that there is a big hit with 2T on my machine but that just gives me something to look forward too when I get 2 x 1 GB 5-2-2-2 RAM

Originally posted by: alkemyst

Regardless of the cache size increasing, you'd be surprized how little it gets used. Search on it and about page commits and faults, etc. Most people aren't even taxing 512MB much of the time.

I disagree. If I am running many applications say 10 Firefox Windows/Tabs, Word, Excel, Visio, Powerpoint, Acrobat, Media Player and more (Which I do on a regular basis because of work) I definately see an advantage using 2 gig of ram and the cache hits noticably improve the performance of my machine.

 

[alkemyst]

Originally posted by: thriemus

I disagree. If I am running many applications say 10 Firefox Windows/Tabs, Word, Excel, Visio, Powerpoint, Acrobat, Media Player and more (Which I do on a regular basis because of work) I definately see an advantage using 2 gig of ram and the cache hits noticably improve the performance of my machine.

I have no idea why anyone would want to have all that open at once...nor an A8N-SLI for a work machine.

Most benchmarks I have seen show a performance hit or no gain from over 1GB of RAM at this time.

Even outside of the 1T / 2T debate, a 1GB stick must have slower timing to refresh fully.

 

Meh, I like to have 2GB of memory (4X512MB) for my gaming system. Seems that when I'm running with maximum detail, it runs alot faster. Personally, I like to have as much ram as possible. (Unless I'm trying to fill up a multi-proc system.)

 

[Capt Caveman]

I think benchmarks sometimes do not cover some real world scenarios. When I built my new rig, at first I was going A64(always been an AMD person) from everyone telling me that it's just as good at multi-tasking based on benchmarks. In the end, I decided to go P4 640 and find that for my needs hyper-threading has been invaluable. Everything runs so smoothly and I believe I made the right decision for my situation.

What do I have running on my pc?

All the time: Folding, Seti, Firefox(10+ tabs), Excel, iTunes, PartyPoker w/ 4 tables open, PokerStars w/ 4 tables open, PokerOffice w/ 8 trackers running , StatKing, mySQL DB and on occasion: Adobe PhotoShop, Quicken, adware/spyboot, etc...

Firefox and PokerOffice take close to 500mb alone. And I believe going w/ another 1gb of RAM is better than the OS using it's pagefile.

After listing all of those apps, I should probably run a dual cpu server or workstation.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Can I assume running 2x1gb will provide better performance than 4x512mb over dual channels?

 

[ribbon13]

Yes without a doubt. Patriot makes a 1024MB DDR400 stick that runs at 2-3-2-5.
PEP1G3200LL

I would just get Corsair Value.
VS1GB400C3

 

[JWMiddleton]

Originally posted by: bluemaverick
I have 2 GB of Corsair PC3200 XLPRO now all at 2-2-2-5...4 x 512MB....and there doesn;t seems to be any differense compare to 1GB only.....any tweaking in windows i could do to increase performance? Thank you!

MMMMMMMMM Nice! But, you have reach the point of deminishing returns. You MIGHT find an app that takes advantage of 2 GB of RAM, but I don't use any. The only way to know if it helps is to look at Task Manager and see what the Peak memory used is. If it is more than 1 GB, then you are getting a benefit, but not much of one. In a year you might be glad you have it.

 

[thriemus]

I have no idea why anyone would want to have all that open at once...nor an A8N-SLI for a work machine.

Most benchmarks I have seen show a performance hit or no gain from over 1GB of RAM at this time.

I have a p4 2.0 with 1 gig ddr333 ram running suse 9.2, a p4 3.0 with 1 gig ram ddr400 on an abit ic7-max3 with 128mb ati radeon 9800 pro and the ahtlon 64 is by far the fastest machine.

As for the the a8n sli, its the only board i could get to take all my hard drives. I have 3 x 250 GB sata 16 mb cache drives coming for a 500gb raid5 volume in a 2x 5 1/4 inch bays to 3 hdd bay cooled converter. I have to disagree about your claims that 2 gig of ram has no benifits over 1 gig. I use this machine for quotes and other work related tasks and it runs the speed of an fx-55.

The reason i bought the asus board is that over the past 13 years of building computers I have found them to be an excellent board with top notch stability.
I have blown 2 abit ic7-g boards in the p4 machine and then i upgraded to the ic7-max 3, then the 550 watt psu i had blew and took it out. Then i got a good 550watt psu and it blew another ic7-max 3. So i decided that i would just build up another machine for gaming and intensive work so i built this rig. I was using ultra vnc to controll the p4 but then i got frustrated and ended up moving it downstairs to the living room to let my gf use the net & to hook up the tv out to the tv to save a small fortune media costs. I was always an intel man until I got to play around on this machine.

History:

Athlon 64 3500 @ 2651
P4 3.0 Prescott @ 3.0 - 3.6
P4 2.8 Northwood @ 2.8 - 3.3
P4 2.4 Northwood
P4 2.0 Northwood
AMD Athlon XP 2000+
AMD Athlon XP 1600+
AMD Athlon 1300
Intel PIII 800 EB
Intel PIII 600E
Intel PIII 450
Intel PII 400
etc etc etc

I have given Intel a fair go of it and i have to say that recently intel have lost the crown. What always plagued me about AMB was noise and heat issues, now its the other way around.

Kudoz to AMD on a job well done

Even outside of the 1T / 2T debate, a 1GB stick must have slower timing to refresh fully.

Totally with you on that one, but athlon 64's memory controller cant do 1T across 4 sticks of memory. However if i get 2 x 1 gig sticks running at 1T ddr500 it will be faster than 4 at 2T ddr 400 i have currently.

 

[Soulkeeper]

2GB is a waste at this point in time for simple desktop/gaming setups imo

now workstation and server scenarios are a different story..

ddr2 is supposedly gonna match ddr1 prices in the next couple months according to online news.

 

[Jojo1971]

photoshop is the only reason why i have 2 gb.. it runs smoother when working with big files.. otherwise i would have stick with 2 x512 and overclock higher...

 

[edmundoab]

so it is possible to get 2-2-2-5 timings then

did you get the corsair 2-3-3-6 1GB module X2 and made them 2-2-2-5?

 

[wayne2456]

If you don't have 2gb then your............... poor