Been reading up a little about RAM, the role it plays in a complete system, and how the market looks. Tom's article pretty much sums up the answer to the last bit*, but I'm still not too sure about the role and importance of RAM. As the prices are ridiculously low I therefore thought to check it out myself and go for the full Monty: 8GB of DDR2-800 in 4 modules. My system is a Vista Ultimate 64-bit SP1, which, I'm told, supports up to 128GB (leaves a considerable margin for later experiments), and with its SuperFetch function more RAM is always welcome as it (supposedly) speeds up loading of frequently used applications. What I'm more uncertain about though, is the rumors I heard - and haven't been able to confirm/deny - that Vista (if fed with 8GB) automatically allocates 4GB for the OS and 4GB for applications. And more interestingly, how does this SuperFetch work with less 'normal' applications such as computer games. If the extra 4GB (read: $80) makes SuperFetch cache the games I tend to play I believe a lot of time could be saved in the loading processes, making the 8GB less of a deadweight and a useless voltage consumer. Or maybe I'm completely missing something?
*For those who haven't yet read it and can't be arsed to, the author throws about 20 benchmarks at anything from DDR2-677 to DDR3-1333 using a mixture of the older P4 Extreme CPU and a newer E8400. The point proven is that performance between the best and worst (cheapest and most expensive) of these models vary on average by 6%, at most. Following that conclusion the cheapest pair of stable DDR2-800 modules is pretty much the perfect fit for anyone but the wildly enthusiastic power-clocker who wants to throw mountains of money at no apparent performance gain (...puts on flame coat).
*For those who haven't yet read it and can't be arsed to, the author throws about 20 benchmarks at anything from DDR2-677 to DDR3-1333 using a mixture of the older P4 Extreme CPU and a newer E8400. The point proven is that performance between the best and worst (cheapest and most expensive) of these models vary on average by 6%, at most. Following that conclusion the cheapest pair of stable DDR2-800 modules is pretty much the perfect fit for anyone but the wildly enthusiastic power-clocker who wants to throw mountains of money at no apparent performance gain (...puts on flame coat).