why do we need all this RAM again?

[brblx]

i posted a thread in the video forum looking for a new card for my old core2duo gaming machine. 8800GT was okay 2-3 year ago but now was just a big hot turd.

so, in my infinite wisdom, i impulse bought a 'new' computer- know someone who works for best buy, which makes their B&M prices competitive with online ones. said fuck it and paid 230 for a 560ti (pny with a pretty decent cooler and small overclock) and like 45 for an antec 300.

case is super simple and efficient and looks nice. just the two stock fans move a lot of air on their medium settings and are pretty quiet. so yeah, i guess my point is, i think video cards are about as important as they're gonna get by now. big vid card upgrade + new case = new computer.

but it really is incredible how well this thing runs with just a new card. proc is an e7200 that's been running 3.3ghz on the stock cooler for forever. might even be stock voltage, can't remember. prolly my best proc buy ever, though the 300a remains in my heart.

whoops, rambling- point of post: what the hell is the point of 12GB of RAM? i'm now running all the newer games pretty buttery smooth on high or 'ultra' type settings at 1680...with a five year old core2. with 2GB of DDR2. crysis is smooth. with 2GB of DDR2.

granted, yes, i'm still running XP/DX9, so there is potential to be had. 4GB in XP wouldn't hurt. and it'll be needed when i finally buy a copy of win7. but 6GB becoming normal for home PC's? many gaming rigs with 12GB? how on earth could that be required for gaming at any close point in time?

maybe i'm just overanalyzing. ddr3 is getting pretty damn cheap...same crap that happened to ddr prices is happening to ddr2. stupid technology.

 

[fffblackmage]

IMO, 4GB is really all you need in a gaming rig, but before my upgrade to the Phenom II, I was still running XP and had just 2GB of DDR2 ram. That didn't work out too well with COD4MW.

 

[dualsmp]

When moving to Win7 64 bit I considered 2GB of RAM but glad I went with 4GB. Regularly see 2GB used after I've had the rig up for a few days. Generally just put it into sleep mode instead of shutdown.

With WinXP I could parse it down around 90-100MB used during a fresh install, with Win7 32 bit around 400MB and with Win7 64 it jumps to around 700 MB for a fresh install. You can get away with 2 GB with WinXP and Win7 32 bit, however for Win7 64 bit go with 4GB.

 

[darckhart]

6->12 is just multiple for people trying to take advantage of the triple channel. 4->8 for dual channel which SB on LGA1155 is sporting now.

as to what you actually need, win7 is nice in that the more you give it, the more it uses it better. needing >4 for office/surfing/gaming seems pretty unlikely from my experience. then again, if you have sli cards with 2gb of vram each...

and of course, with prices so cheap, why not? make a ram drive and wowza!

 

[RobertPters77]

I have 16gigs for the hell of it.

 

[yinan]

Running multiple virtual machines.

 

[TemjinGold]

OP: To answer your original question, e-peen.

 

[pcunite]

It is hard to make a case for over 4GB if you don't load virtual machines, write software, run databases, render movies, etc ...

 

[MichaelD]

I agree that for a gaming box, 4GB is all you really need. If you're gaming, most probably you've got a decent-to-great videocard. I.E. 512MB to 1.5GB of GPU memory. My gaming box has 4GB system memory and 1.3GB (whatever a GTX470 has) of GPU memory and even while playing games with huge textures I never use more than 2.5GB of system memory. Under non-gaming, everyday use (surfing/music) I use 1.3-1.8GB system memory on average. W7_X64, BTW.

That said, I do a bit of video editing on the same box (Sony Vegas 9) and find that if I don't close Outlook (I have a huge .pst file) or have too many IE windows open that the system can slow a little bit. I'd prefer 8GB of system memory but my MB is only a dual-channel DDR2 board, and DDR2 isn't cheap enough these days for me to justify the expense. My next system will have more memory simply b/c DDR3 is cheap. At least today, it's cheap. We'll see about tomorrow. You know how that goes.

 

[slag]

IMO, 4GB is really all you need in a gaming rig, but before my upgrade to the Phenom II, I was still running XP and had just 2GB of DDR2 ram. That didn't work out too well with COD4MW.

I'll _strenously_ disagree with you. I have 4 gb of RAM and WoW will take 3.8 gig of that. Things chug in the background, my browser takes longer to open, mail takes longer, etc.

Pop in another 4gb of ram and its like a new computer. Wow takes a bit more ram, but I now have a lot more available for other processes like Usenet browsing, multiple browsers open, etc. Everything feels snappier and quicker. 4GB is just not enough for a gaming computer.

 

[podspi]

8gb is the new 4gb, imho. 4gb works well, and you don't "need" anything more (especially if you have a nice SSD) but 8gb of RAM allows you to do what 4gb of RAM used to allow you to do: Have a huge buffer of free memory. The best part is, in Windows 7 it preloads things you normally launch if you have free memory, so everything loads pretty much instantly.

Anything larger than 8gb is probably useless for most people, though if you're running a lot of VMs pretty much as much RAM as you can get your hands on is a good thing.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

i posted a thread in the video forum looking for a new card for my old core2duo gaming machine. 8800GT was okay 2-3 year ago but now was just a big hot turd.

so, in my infinite wisdom, i impulse bought a 'new' computer- know someone who works for best buy, which makes their B&M prices competitive with online ones. said fuck it and paid 230 for a 560ti (pny with a pretty decent cooler and small overclock) and like 45 for an antec 300.

case is super simple and efficient and looks nice. just the two stock fans move a lot of air on their medium settings and are pretty quiet. so yeah, i guess my point is, i think video cards are about as important as they're gonna get by now. big vid card upgrade + new case = new computer.

but it really is incredible how well this thing runs with just a new card. proc is an e7200 that's been running 3.3ghz on the stock cooler for forever. might even be stock voltage, can't remember. prolly my best proc buy ever, though the 300a remains in my heart.

whoops, rambling- point of post: what the hell is the point of 12GB of RAM? i'm now running all the newer games pretty buttery smooth on high or 'ultra' type settings at 1680...with a five year old core2. with 2GB of DDR2. crysis is smooth. with 2GB of DDR2.

granted, yes, i'm still running XP/DX9, so there is potential to be had. 4GB in XP wouldn't hurt. and it'll be needed when i finally buy a copy of win7. but 6GB becoming normal for home PC's? many gaming rigs with 12GB? how on earth could that be required for gaming at any close point in time?

maybe i'm just overanalyzing. ddr3 is getting pretty damn cheap...same crap that happened to ddr prices is happening to ddr2. stupid technology.

E7200 C2D -- so this is LGA 775 socket . . .

I've got "too many computers." The two "latest" are LGA 775 with a 1st-gen C2Q, and the other with a top-end Wolfdale C2D. YES -- XP is fine with 2GB, and won't recognize but 3+GB if you stick in a 4GB kit of DDR2.

But I had to emphasize among my local friends -- one of whom tried Win 7 and won't follow that avenue on a machine that he doesn't use now -- his latest. He says that "XP is fine and fast enough." But the 64-bit OS's provide a noticeable speed jump, even putting aside the older 32-bit software that might be installed on them. Even so -- I'm using VISTA 64, which some might say has more "bloat" than Win 7 (64).

What I find -- with my quad-core and all the software I use with it, is that boot-up shows just around 40% of RAM already used. I also think there's a memory-leak with Media Center, which I don't think MS has ever patched since before the first VISTA service pack. What happens: I'll leave TV running for 24 hours or more, and the memory usage has climbed to between 60 and 70%.

Since both these machines use similar nVidia chipsets, and the C2D Wolfie is the faster of the two, I added 4GB on top of the 4GB already in that system (no "Media Center" usage, also using VISTA-64 with fewer programs installed.) With 8GB, I could notice an improvement right away -- memory usage hardly exceeding 20% -- EVER.

The C2Q will be retired. A hand-me-down to a relative who is "mainstream user." He won't use "Media Center." I"ve told him about 2x4GB DDR2 kits still available, and he'll probably get a Win-7-64 install disc for it. I also told him about the problems people had installing RAM to all four slots on the 680i mobo -- not a problem with the 780i using the Wolfie core . ..

 

[Griffinhart]

I run 12GB on my desktop, but I tend to use a lot of it. Photoshop (64-bit) with several images, VM's, Several Apps open while running EQ2... Sometimes multiple sessions of the game open at once on the same machine. I don't often use all 12GB at once, but I do tend to use a lot of RAM and cost was minimal. A quick glance shows me using just shy of 6GB at the moment, without doing anything particularily memory heavy.

My laptop has 8GB, which get's used pretty heavily, especially for VM's. My server has 12GB and I'm considering bumping it to 24 as current usage maxes out what it has, and I would like to add a couple more Test VM's to play with.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

For me, Unreal Tournament III uses 477,172K I may be wrong but that is no where near 12Gb

 

[Nothinman]

i posted a thread in the video forum looking for a new card for my old core2duo gaming machine. 8800GT was okay 2-3 year ago but now was just a big hot turd.

so, in my infinite wisdom, i impulse bought a 'new' computer- know someone who works for best buy, which makes their B&M prices competitive with online ones. said fuck it and paid 230 for a 560ti (pny with a pretty decent cooler and small overclock) and like 45 for an antec 300.

case is super simple and efficient and looks nice. just the two stock fans move a lot of air on their medium settings and are pretty quiet. so yeah, i guess my point is, i think video cards are about as important as they're gonna get by now. big vid card upgrade + new case = new computer.

but it really is incredible how well this thing runs with just a new card. proc is an e7200 that's been running 3.3ghz on the stock cooler for forever. might even be stock voltage, can't remember. prolly my best proc buy ever, though the 300a remains in my heart.

whoops, rambling- point of post: what the hell is the point of 12GB of RAM? i'm now running all the newer games pretty buttery smooth on high or 'ultra' type settings at 1680...with a five year old core2. with 2GB of DDR2. crysis is smooth. with 2GB of DDR2.

granted, yes, i'm still running XP/DX9, so there is potential to be had. 4GB in XP wouldn't hurt. and it'll be needed when i finally buy a copy of win7. but 6GB becoming normal for home PC's? many gaming rigs with 12GB? how on earth could that be required for gaming at any close point in time?

maybe i'm just overanalyzing. ddr3 is getting pretty damn cheap...same crap that happened to ddr prices is happening to ddr2. stupid technology.

I would say most games still target the 2G-4G market at the high end, so yea if you're just playing some games on a 10yr old, just about EOL, OS then yea you don't need much more than that.

But other people have different usage patterns like development, A/V editing, network design with multiple VMs, etc which benefits greatly from loads of memory. My laptop has 8G in it and at times I wish it had more so I could run more VMs, but the average day to day stuff I do doesn't usually break the 3-4G mark.

 

[Blain]

Memory is so cheap, you might as well run 16GBs.
XP running an AV, a couple of browser windows open, a game or two going and encoding a video...
BAM, you've eaten up half your 16GBs right there!

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Memory is so cheap, you might as well run 16GBs.
XP running an AV, a couple of browser windows open, a game or two going and encoding a video...
BAM, you've eaten up half your 16GBs right there!

. . . Except that only XP 64-bit will use more than 4GB. This morning, preparatory to tuning Mom's LGA 775 and putting in a faster processor, I was looking into "4GT" and other features which will adjust memory usage within 4GB for the 32-bit OS.

There is also a $40 utility out there that will RAMDISK any memory unused by XP-32, so you can use it for your internet cache and/or swapfile. Apparently, you would want to flush the swapfile on shutdown to do that sort of thing. But the 4GB kit doesn't allow any practical amount of "unused" RAM. The only way it makes sense would be 6GB or more -- perhaps (in Mom's case) a 2x4GB DDR2 kit . . . .

That possibility might affect choices for the OP, when he says:

"granted, yes, i'm still running XP/DX9, so there is potential to be had. 4GB in XP wouldn't hurt. and it'll be needed when i finally buy a copy of win7."

Because it's true -- prices are down. But a 2x4GB kit of DDR2 will still cost at least $160, even with 'free shipping."

 

[Blain]

Did you overlook I mentioned 16GBs?

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Running multiple virtual machines.

This. Or running a 64-bit app that could actually use more then 2-3Gigs Ram, something like Photoshop or something.

 

[Matthiasa]

When gaming I regularly hit the high 90% in terms of ram usage with my 4GB, so I could see how 6 or 8 could be helpful.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

IMO, 4GB is really all you need in a gaming rig, but before my upgrade to the Phenom II, I was still running XP and had just 2GB of DDR2 ram. That didn't work out too well with COD4MW.

Just finished Crysis on Insane, and the game was using 1.8GB of memory just by itself for most of the last level, and over 4GB by the time I'd finished. Plus Windows takes up nearly 1GB by itself, and I had Opera, which was another 300MB, as well as Chrome, just for Google Body, which was another 250MB-odd. Plus Outlook, Word, iTunes, etc. And this is without my VM running, which takes another 2GB (and if I had more RAM I'd like to give it 4GB instead of 2). It starts to add up. I'm definitely running into situations now where I could see the point of another 6GB of RAM.

 

[Excelsior]

Because it is so cheap and it only helps. I have 6GB on my Win7-64bit Q6700 machine and 8GB on my MacbookPro, because it didn't cost much and it gives me some peace of mind, in a weird way.

 

[Elfear]

Ramdisk. I have a 16GB ramdisk and use the remaining 8GB for system memory.

Like others have mentioned, ram is so cheap now you can experiment around with VMs or ramdisks without breaking the bank.

 

[Emulex]

16gb rocks. huge excel spreadsheets (thank god for excel 2007) and outlook with massive pst's and 4 or 5 browsers with a ton of tabs, streaming video app, bunch of 30" RDP sessions, XP mode(or vmware workstation - I7 quad cores can run OSX at about the same speed as an old mac mini!), less swapping to your ssd/hard drive if you so choose.

ram drive with sync to hard drive (so you don't lose your temp content), firefox use ram cache only.

With parallels server you can run vm's of osx server (as many as you have licenses for!) for hosting.(mac pro)

I run win7 ultimate on vmware fusion on my old macbookpro 17" core2duo 2.66 and honestly it runs at full speed 3GB to win7 and 5gb to osx all on ssd. i don't care much for office 2011 it has some pretty serious issues (no winmail.dat handling?! wtf)

since ram is at the bottom of the barrel pricing these days go fir it

 

[Gillbot]

I have 24gb in my main rig and 12gb in my "server". My wife's laptop has 8gb i think. It's cheap enough that you might as well load up!!