Windows 7 and 16 gig Question

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Q

QcGuy

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Jan 4, 2006
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A friend of mine want's a new PC but he want's to go with 16 gig of Ram for whatever reason. I know there is a ram limitation for Windows 7 Home Premium.

My question is, if he goes with 16 gig is Home Premium enough or does he have to step up to Professional or Ultimate. I'm wondering if the Swap file has an affect on it and that's why he should step up to Professional at least.

Thanks
 
Q

QcGuy

Member
Jan 4, 2006
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That will help, he want's to build the new machine for gaming and right now I just don't see a reason to go over 8 gig but it's his money.

Thanks for the info
 
RampantAndroid

RampantAndroid

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2004
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QcGuy said:
That will help, he want's to build the new machine for gaming and right now I just don't see a reason to go over 8 gig but it's his money.

Thanks for the info
Click to expand...

16GB rocks. I love being able to kill my pagefile and not worry about closing apps when starting a game....

but I often have multiple browers open, Visual Studio (or some other IDE) and other stuff eating up RAM.
 
Matt1970

Matt1970

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Mar 19, 2007
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RampantAndroid said:
16GB rocks. I love being able to kill my pagefile and not worry about closing apps when starting a game....

but I often have multiple browers open, Visual Studio (or some other IDE) and other stuff eating up RAM.
Click to expand...

It probably makes sense for you, but the average user won't see much improvement going beyond 4GB.
 
RampantAndroid

RampantAndroid

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Jun 27, 2004
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Matt1970 said:
It probably makes sense for you, but the average user won't see much improvement going beyond 4GB.
Click to expand...

Uhh...I disagree with that absolutely. There's a bunch of stuff that the OS runs that'll eat RAM, and games these days are, if not 64bit, large address aware (thus, able to eat up more than 2GB of addx space) - 4GB was a fine number...6 years ago. RAM is just so cheap that there is no reason to be stingy with it (who knows who Skylake will change this.)
 
VirtualLarry

VirtualLarry

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Aug 25, 2001
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Matt1970 said:
It probably makes sense for you, but the average user won't see much improvement going beyond 4GB.
Click to expand...

Unless you are stuck for some reason on a 32-bit OS (for compatibility with 16-bit apps, for example), I see no reason to limit oneself to 4GB RAM, when 8 or 16 is so cheap.

My laptop only has 4GB, and it runs out after a while, and I have to reboot.

My desktop has 8GB (would have 16GB, but mobo only has two slots), and runs much better for a longer period of time without rebooting.

Edit: If you play modern games, 8GB is the essential minimum, with 16GB preferred, especially if you multi-task while gaming.
 
Q

QcGuy

Member
Jan 4, 2006
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I know my friend wants the machine for gaming purposes, after reading what people are saying in this thread I will encourage his push for 16 gig. I was just worried that Win7 Home Premium would not be enough for 16 gig.

After reading the link that JACKMDS sent me about Home Premium supporting 16 gig supported that helped. I just wasn't sure if the swap file was counted with the physical ram and that would have caused a problem.
 
Shamrock

Shamrock

Golden Member
Oct 11, 1999
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I also disagree. For me, 16GB is a MUST. In fact, it's the minimum for me. And yes, I CAN tell a difference.
 
RampantAndroid

RampantAndroid

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2004
6,591
3
81
QcGuy said:
I know my friend wants the machine for gaming purposes, after reading what people are saying in this thread I will encourage his push for 16 gig. I was just worried that Win7 Home Premium would not be enough for 16 gig.

After reading the link that JACKMDS sent me about Home Premium supporting 16 gig supported that helped. I just wasn't sure if the swap file was counted with the physical ram and that would have caused a problem.
Click to expand...

It's physical ram. Even so, if the swap file is counted....turn it off. If you actually max out 16GB of RAM...well, you need to think about more RAM. I've killed my swap file, and as a result the system DOES feel a bit snappier, the only downside being that a blue screen of death doesn't save off data correctly.

But I have not had a BSOD in years.
 
postmortemIA

postmortemIA

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Jul 11, 2006
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escrow4 said:
Its extended support only, no more mainstream. Won't support DX 12 at all, 8.1 may get bits backported, its creaky and old compared to 8.1/10. Meh.
Click to expand...
And over 50% PC still run it. Looks like Microsoft's problem, not ours.
And 99% of these 50% don't care for new features. If they keep fixing existing, that is just fine.
It is like I buy a car, why would I expect new features 6 yrs down the road? If it keeps running for another 5 without problem, I am sticking with it.
 
Matt1970

Matt1970

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Mar 19, 2007
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VirtualLarry said:
Unless you are stuck for some reason on a 32-bit OS (for compatibility with 16-bit apps, for example), I see no reason to limit oneself to 4GB RAM, when 8 or 16 is so cheap.

My laptop only has 4GB, and it runs out after a while, and I have to reboot.

My desktop has 8GB (would have 16GB, but mobo only has two slots), and runs much better for a longer period of time without rebooting.

Edit: If you play modern games, 8GB is the essential minimum, with 16GB preferred, especially if you multi-task while gaming.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you have a memory leak problem. I run 4GB and when I close everything down it goes right back to 1.1gb or so of use and I will often go over a month without a reboot. It isn't exactly the cheapest thing in the world to go to 16GB. 4GB stick is $30 and a 8GB is $50 and that's on the value ram.

Also, the vast majority of computer users are not gamers, so I think my original statement holds true that the average user won't see much improvement going beyond 4GB.
 
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Matt1970

Matt1970

Lifer
Mar 19, 2007
12,320
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postmortemIA said:
And over 50% PC still run it. Looks like Microsoft's problem, not ours.
And 99% of these 50% don't care for new features. If they keep fixing existing, that is just fine.
It is like I buy a car, why would I expect new features 6 yrs down the road? If it keeps running for another 5 without problem, I am sticking with it.
Click to expand...

According to this more people are still using XP than are on 8 and 8.1 combined.

http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0
 
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mikeymikec

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
20,401
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Shamrock said:
I also disagree. For me, 16GB is a MUST. In fact, it's the minimum for me. And yes, I CAN tell a difference.
Click to expand...

This sounds distinctly like an "audiophile diamond encrusted cable claim". If you know that your needs require >4GB RAM, then good for you. Making such a claim doesn't mean much for other people unless their computer needs match yours. It might also encourage people to go and buy way more RAM than they currently (or possibly will ever) need in that PC (and even if it's cheap in the USA by someone's standards, that doesn't mean that's the case by everyones' standards everywhere in the world).

Modern versions of Windows will cache some program files and user data that has been requested since that session of Windows began, but I really don't see, for example, a regular user of Facebook and webmail managing to rack up that amount of cached data, and most importantly, that you could tell the difference in how their PC is running dependent on whether they had 4 or more GB RAM.

One other factor which completely screws with the whole "how much RAM do I need" topic is an SSD. A little while ago I replaced a customer's ailing HDD with an SSD. Their computer only has 1.75GB RAM available for system use (not upgraded at the time for budget reasons), yet when it hit 99% memory usage (not an exaggeration) during Windows Update, I was still browsing on it and I honestly couldn't tell the difference in responsiveness, it certainly wasn't anything like when a HDD only system runs into that scenario.
 
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E

escrow4

Diamond Member
Feb 4, 2013
3,339
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postmortemIA said:
And over 50% PC still run it. Looks like Microsoft's problem, not ours.
And 99% of these 50% don't care for new features. If they keep fixing existing, that is just fine.
It is like I buy a car, why would I expect new features 6 yrs down the road? If it keeps running for another 5 without problem, I am sticking with it.
Click to expand...

Irrelevant analogy. A car isn't software that is constantly updated and changing.
 
Matt1970

Matt1970

Lifer
Mar 19, 2007
12,320
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escrow4 said:
Irrelevant analogy. A car isn't software that is constantly updated and changing.
Click to expand...

I think it is very relevant analogy. Those cars are still safe to drive down the road much like Windows 7 is a secure operating system. And while Windows 7 may not have that new car smell anymore it is far from an old clunker. And as always with new versions of Windows, many of those updates and changes are merely putting the instrument cluster in a new location. If software developers only want to target 13% of their potential audience by only writing software for 8/8.1, that's on them. Windows 7 will probably still run 99.99% of all software out there.
 
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