why do we need all this RAM again?

[Eddie313]

Well if all your doing is playing some games and surfing the web 4gb is plenty.
But a lot of people on here like me use all of say 8gigs plus of RAM.
If your really putting a load on your system then you need it. I'll have 35 windows open trading program and more ill use say around 5 to 6 gigs at one time.

 

[ksec]

It really depends on your usage really. If you have 8GB / + RAM. You could disable Pagefile and it will force everything inside Memory. I have 100 Tabs opened on Firefox, Music, Flash, Windows Live Messenger, Microsoft Office Starter, and Norton Internet Security etc.

I consider these really normal, day to day Apps. And 8GB with no Page File handles it perfectly well. And with 2 - 3 GB Free Memory to spare. Some of these Free Memory will be used as windows try to preload more things into memory.

Oh i forgot to mention i use iGPU most of the time. With Radeon GFX when i need it.
iGPU takes 128 - 256MB Main Memory Most of the time.

So unless you are playing games. 4GB + Pagefile, or 8GB without Pagefile for better performance. 8GB + for Gaming if you want, since most of the time you wont be gaming with other Apps opened, 8GB should still be sufficient 90% of times.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Some may not remember . . . there was a time in the mid-1990's when your Pentium or Pentium-Pro machine had "lots of RAM" with 64MB or 128MB. Since then, I've backed away from the extreme desire -- "To always want more . . . " [as E.G. Robinson says in "Key Largo" . . . . which many are ALSO not likely to remember. . . ]

It would be interesting to know something per the probabilities of module-failure with more sticks as opposed to fewer. The RAM-makers -- of course -- spec the life-expectancy for their product, determine their warranty arrangements on the basis of a quantifiable risk. A lot of them offer "limited lifetime" warranties, and there's the acknowledged rule-of-thumb about "infant mortality."

So . . . . I guess . . . . More is better . . . . IF . . . you can use it. If the OP continues with XP-32, he might also create a multi-boot with a 64-bit VISTA or Win-7, or start experimenting with VMWare.

And there's no doubt now -- memory is cheap. 8GB for $70? You might even be able to find a budget 2-module kit for a lot less . . . I'm sure you can -- I just haven't looked . . .

 

[Griffinhart]

Given how easy it is to break 4 and 6GB of memeory usage, I don't recommend, to friends, less than 8GB. Given the cost of RAM, 16 only adds about $80 to the price of a home built machine.

When I built my last PC, the motherboard supported 6 RAM slots, so I got 2 6GB tripple channel kits. I knew 6GB was less than I would need and still be able to work with decent VM's or even my daily use, so 12GB was the next logical option.

The way I see it, RAM is one of those things that it doesn't hurt to have more than you need of. It's also one of those things that gets utilized more and more as technology advances.

 

[Carfax83]

I recently upgraded to 12GB from my former 6GB, and getting more memory is definitely a good thing.

Even if you don't use all of it directly, Windows 7 will still use it as a system cache so it's not like it won't be utilized.

 

[Voo]

Given how easy it is to break 4 and 6GB of memeory usage, I don't recommend, to friends, less than 8GB.

Yeah but the only way to use more than 6gb "easily" is pretty much using the machine not as a desktop but as a server (or workstation) - both things which aren't true for the vast, vast, vaast majority of people.

Also the games I've played in the last time were still released with 32bit exes - so question to the people who claim they notice a difference between 4 and 8gb RAM: What games today do have 64bit exes? (I can think of only two atm)

 

[Nothinman]

Yeah but the only way to use more than 6gb "easily" is pretty much using the machine not as a desktop but as a server (or workstation) - both things which aren't true for the vast, vast, vaast majority of people.

Also the games I've played in the last time were still released with 32bit exes - so question to the people who claim they notice a difference between 4 and 8gb RAM: What games today do have 64bit exes? (I can think of only two atm)

A 32-bit binary can still use up to 4G of VM if it's LargeAddressAware and if you add that to what was already running (i.e. FF, Chrome, etc) you can easily have a very large commit charge. It's not about what 1 process can use, it's about the total sum of all of your processes.

 

[Jeff7181]

Superfetch.

In addition, RAM suffers from fragmentation just like your hard drive and leads to slower performance when you're using almost all your physical memory and there's less contiguous space. We're only talking nanoseconds, but add up a bunch of nanoseconds and now you're looking at miliseconds and your RAM latency is starting to look like hard drive latency. Not good.

Really, though, when you can get RAM for less than $10 per GB, why wouldn't you install 4 GB? Or 6 or 8 or 12 or 16 or 24 if you have a 64-bit OS? I can't think of one situation where more RAM is a bad thing, especially at $10/GB.

 

[Voo]

A 32-bit binary can still use up to 4G of VM if it's LargeAddressAware and if you add that to what was already running (i.e. FF, Chrome, etc) you can easily have a very large commit charge. It's not about what 1 process can use, it's about the total sum of all of your processes.

Yeah, but the thing is that the 32bit exe will have to run just as well on real 32bit OSes (so at most 3gb are available) and then I haven't heard of any game that demands the boot switch be set, so the game has to fit into 2gb for people on a 32bit OS (and there aren't that many games that need a 64bit OS as far as I'm aware). Also 1gb is enough for the nonpageable kernel data structures that are necessary and the rest can be paged ozt without much of a performance hit (and user data? oh no, when starting the game we have to write some data to the pagefile? What a horrible performance loss - and I see a small problem with browsing the web and playing a game at the same time). So still nothing you'll notice while actually playing.

 

[Griffinhart]

Yeah but the only way to use more than 6gb "easily" is pretty much using the machine not as a desktop but as a server (or workstation) - both things which aren't true for the vast, vast, vaast majority of people.

Also the games I've played in the last time were still released with 32bit exes - so question to the people who claim they notice a difference between 4 and 8gb RAM: What games today do have 64bit exes? (I can think of only two atm)

Not at all. I'm an MMO player as are most of my friends. It's VERY common to be running the game (EQ2 in our case) in Windowed mode, using Browsers, VOIP, E-mail Clients, Parsing applications, Media players, etc. If they use other apps like FRAPS... I don't know of anyone, not even causal users, that don't use multiple applications at once.

right now I am at 6.45GB ram being used running an EQ2 Session, Teamspeak, Ventrilo, Outlook, Zune player and a web browser. Note, that's not running any server type apps. A simple Desktop installation. Given that memory usages won't be decreasing limiting yourself to 4GB vs 8GB when the cost difference is $50, it doesn't make sense to not go with 8GB as a minimum. It's just poor planning.

 

[Griffinhart]

Yeah, but the thing is that the 32bit exe will have to run just as well on real 32bit OSes (so at most 3gb are available) and then I haven't heard of any game that demands the boot switch be set, so the game has to fit into 2gb for people on a 32bit OS (and there aren't that many games that need a 64bit OS as far as I'm aware). .

My Current EQ2 session is using just shy of 3GB at the moment and that can spike higher in conjested areas of the game. And as I said in my last post, RAM usage isn't going to decrease. So starting out Maxed out doesn't make much sense when you can have some headroom for $50 more.

What a horrible performance loss - and I see a small problem with browsing the web and playing a game at the same time). So still nothing you'll notice while actually

Everyone I know that has upgraded from 4 to 8GB of RAM has noticed increased framerates in the games we play.

 

[Nothinman]

Yeah, but the thing is that the 32bit exe will have to run just as well on real 32bit OSes (so at most 3gb are available) and then I haven't heard of any game that demands the boot switch be set, so the game has to fit into 2gb for people on a 32bit OS (and there aren't that many games that need a 64bit OS as far as I'm aware). Also 1gb is enough for the nonpageable kernel data structures that are necessary and the rest can be paged ozt without much of a performance hit (and user data? oh no, when starting the game we have to write some data to the pagefile? What a horrible performance loss - and I see a small problem with browsing the web and playing a game at the same time). So still nothing you'll notice while actually playing.

Running a 32-bit binary with the LAA bit set on a machine with <4G of memory shouldn't cause any problems, it'll still be limited to 2G of VM unless you boot with /3GB and if you're doing that then you deserve whatever happens. In theory the game could scale back it's memory usage depending on the amount of physical memory available, but I doubt any game developers take it that far.

And as mentioned by Griffinhart, many games benefit greatly from being able to do other things while playing. I know that when I used to play games regularly I always left all of my shit running in the background even if I wasn't using it at the time. Now it's a rare thing when I play a game on my PC, but when I do I don't stop anything, in fact occasionally I'll start something else up like a torrent or streaming radio station for background music. The days of closing everything down and booting to a special games floppy are long gone; if you're manually freeing up memory to play a game now you're doing something wrong.

 

[Voo]

Running a 32-bit binary with the LAA bit set on a machine with <4G of memory shouldn't cause any problems, it'll still be limited to 2G of VM unless you boot with /3GB and if you're doing that then you deserve whatever happens. In theory the game could scale back it's memory usage depending on the amount of physical memory available, but I doubt any game developers take it that far.

Yeah and that's the problem I see - contrary to the GPU you can't just use higher textures to affect the RAM usage, so in the end people have to get the game down into 2gb address space anyways - and the games I've played in the last time fell into that category. With still 50% or so of all windows installs being XP and therefore pretty much exclusively 32bit not that many developers want to abandon that market.

And as mentioned by Griffinhart, many games benefit greatly from being able to do other things while playing. I know that when I used to play games regularly I always left all of my shit running in the background even if I wasn't using it at the time. Now it's a rare thing when I play a game on my PC, but when I do I don't stop anything, in fact occasionally I'll start something else up like a torrent or streaming radio station for background music.

Well I played WoW a long time ago, so I can follow the argument of having a browser, music player and VT/TS open - but at least for me that stuff + kernel always fit easily into 2gb.

The days of closing everything down and booting to a special games floppy are long gone; if you're manually freeing up memory to play a game now you're doing something wrong.

Was there ever a reason to do that? I mean paging isn't exactly a new technology (understatement of the day) that does that stuff better and without manual involvement.

 

[Jeff7181]

Seriously? Is there really someone claiming that more memory isn't necessary because of paging? Now I've seen it all...

 

[AdamK47]

Memory is cheap now-a-days.

 

[RobS10]

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.

I ordered my Dell i5 2400 Win 7/64 bit box with 2GB of 1333MHz RAM and am in the process of adding at least 4 more GB. It regularly bumps to 75% and feels like my old P4 1GB XP box here at home. Only running Internet and occasionally Photoshop Elements 7 on a regular basis.

 

[mv2devnull]

Was there ever a reason to do that? I mean paging isn't exactly a new technology (understatement of the day) that does that stuff better and without manual involvement.

That must have been a reference to era, when the disk operating system did not manage memory (properly) nor provide uniform drivers for devices and therefore applications (games) did their own dirty work. Two parties (more recent OS and such old game) cannot play with memory simultaneously, unless you cheat them with emulation/virtualization -- another recent development.

 

[Nothinman]

Yeah and that's the problem I see - contrary to the GPU you can't just use higher textures to affect the RAM usage, so in the end people have to get the game down into 2gb address space anyways - and the games I've played in the last time fell into that category. With still 50% or so of all windows installs being XP and therefore pretty much exclusively 32bit not that many developers want to abandon that market.

According to Steam's stats, XP is only ~20% of their install base with over 70% being a combination of Vista and Win7. Obviously that only applies to Steam users, but I would guess that most gamers have Steam installed these days.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Well I played WoW a long time ago, so I can follow the argument of having a browser, music player and VT/TS open - but at least for me that stuff + kernel always fit easily into 2gb.

Well I would say you're in the minority then, I've got ~40 tabs open in Chrome right now (counting the processes) with just 1 of them using ~1200M of VM (not sure why, I'll look at that later) and adding up the top 10 or so processes by RSS usage gets me at ~1500M. Obviously the math of memory management isn't that simple but it seems to clearly indicated that I couldn't hope to fit my current workload and even a single game into 2G of physical memory.

Was there ever a reason to do that? I mean paging isn't exactly a new technology (understatement of the day) that does that stuff better and without manual involvement.

Yes, most PC gamers back in the DOS days had special boot disks for at least a handful of their games. Getting network Doom to work over IPX was a huge PITA because you had to fit DOS, NIC driver, IPX driver, etc all into that 640K of memory so a custom boot disk was almost always the answer.

 

[smakme7757]

I only have 8Gb of ram, but it seems to be enough for me atm. I have an OpenVpn server running in a VM 24/7 on my machine which chews up a bit of it, but all in all my system is running very well. I might get a 16Gb kit later on though seeing as i'm working on a new VM project which will require some of it's own ram again.

 

[exar333]

It is cheap and DDR3 is here to stay for a while. RAM prices have proved to be anything but stable, and its nice to have enough to use for your next build as well.

 

[lamedude]

For the few games that support mods LAA helps. Civ4 without mods won't go over 2GB but some mods will. MMO's benefit too.

 

[code65536]

I built my SB rig with just 4GB (since that was around how much I was using at the time). Bumped it up to 12GB (added a 8GB kit when it sold for $56 at Newegg) and finally to 16GB (replaced the 4GB kit with a 8GB kit a month later when the 8GB kit fell to $46 at Newegg).

I was hesitant when I did the first upgrade from 4 to 12. I didn't think that I'd break the 4GB barrier all that often, but I was surprised to see just how much my usage went up; I could fairly easily hit 8GB of usage now, and it's nice to know that I still have 8GB of headroom left.

Being able to keep more programs open. Being more generous with the RAM that I allot to my virtual machines. Running multiple VMs at the same time (instead of shutting one down when I need to run another, as I used to do). Being able to virtually eliminate my pagefile (frees up space on my small SSD; I still keep a 1GB pagefile so that the kernel has a place to coredump if it BSODs). It's refreshing the amount of freedom excess RAM affords.

Oh, and the two 8GB kits that I got from Newegg? It's now $45 after rebate (during their 72-hour sale). That's close to how much I paid for my original 4GB kit! And that's the other reason to RAM up: it's dirt cheap.

 

[Concillian]

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.

WoW is not large address aware by default. That means WoW cannot take more than 2GB RAM unless you use a modified executable.

MOST games are not 64 bit or large address aware, and therefore cannot use more than 2GB per instance of the game launched.

 

[Bill Brasky]

I have 4GB right now, and it's adequate. I'd really prefer 8GB. Often I'll have to close a couple apps before I can game to prevent swapping to the disk. This is only a minor inconvenience though.

 

[tweakboy]

Hey gillbot Im guessing your running a Xeon 8 core , Nice rig

and why does the server have less. Youll never even use 8GB,

Do you have DAW or Video editing. The server should be 24GB ,, cuz as desktop its waiste. gl