Is There Such A Thing As To Much Memory?! (A Must Read For Memory Junkies!)

Well,,,, today has come and my memory has arrived. I now have 1536MB of ram in my pc (1.50GB). The first thing that hit my mind was benches and what kind of effect this much memory had on performance.

So, I did several tests using 3Dmark 2001 SE and SiSoft Sandra 2002. Click on the links below to see the results.

System Setup:

AMD Athlon 1.0GHz
512 / 1536 MB of Ram with CL3 used.
(512MB Infineon Dimm : 512MB Infineon Dimm : 512MB Micron Dimm)
GeForce2 Ti @ 260 / 430
2 X 80GB Maxtor D740Xs in RAID0
MS Windows XP Professional with SP1

In the Sandra benchmark, the use half the total memory was turned on which resulted in 768MB when 1.5GB was installed and 256MB when 512MB was installed.

I conducted several tests of the same benchmark to ensure that the results were as close as possible, and of course, I used the fastest results to compare.

Results:

SiSoft Sandra 2002

512MB of ram at 133MHz CL3
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/lindgren/512133cl3.jpg


3Dmark2001SE

512MB of ram at 133MHz CL3
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/lindgren/3dm2001se512.jpg



SiSoft Sandra 2002

1536MB of ram at 133MHz CL3
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/lindgren/1536133cl3.jpg


3Dmark 2001 SE

1536MB of ram at 133MHz CL3
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/lindgren/3dm2001se1536.jpg

With the 1536MB of ram installed, I took a shot of Win CPU ID for those of you interested,,,
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/lindgren/10001536wcpuid.jpg



What did we learn here from my system? Well, first off, it is true that you loose a little points in Sandra 2002 from adding too much memory to the system. But as you can tell from 3Dmark2001SE, the score not only stayed flat but gained additional points overall. This might not be a large gain points wise but in memory, going from 512MB of ram to 1.5GB of ram is a quantum leap compared to most PCs out there in the market today.

I highly recommend venturing to 1GB or behond for those of you who fear this upgrade.

Remember, you can NEVER have too much ram!


OC-Master

what operating system do you have? And why exactly do you need this much RAM? What do you do with it?

Kerry

maybe he is just one of those people that like to run 10000+ program at the same time.

KerryrreK said:

what operating system do you have? And why exactly do you need this much RAM? What do you do with it?

Kerry

Click to expand...

I am using Windows XP Professional with SP1. Well, first off, Doom3 brings my memory usage in task manager to 1.03GB which means it uses more than 1GB of system memory. Now that I have far more than that, absolutely no swapping is done throughout my fragging and Doom3 has become far more faster (absolutely no stuttering now).


OC-Master

well actually it's a proven fact that windows always does some swapping no matter how much memory you have.. yes, yet another crappy thing about windoze..

I'm playing AC2, which heavily graphic/memory intensive, so I think I'm gonna buy another 512MB of 1066MHz RDRAM for Christmas (expensive though )

Well said, OC-Master... a lot of people think anything past 512 is a waste. Ever since I upgraded to a gig, games especially run faster (load up significantly faster)... and like you said, swapping is minimal... in fact, I just turn my swapfile off.

Hmm, I don't think the Doom 3 comparison is valid. I would say that the final build should have much better memory management... or rather, it better. BF1942 is a huge memory hog as well.

I'm quite content with my 768mb of PC2700, but everyone wants a little more ram. Good post

hey thanks for the info, im getting another 512mb dimm for christmans also

A tip, oc-master with that much ram (and with less too) i will recommend you to stop using a page file, i´v done that myself and windows xp, it´s just amazing, try it and tell how it went, i HIGHLY recommend this for people with lots of ram

how do you stop using the page file, isnt that a registry hack of some sort?

Actually you can have too much RAM. I think XP-pro supports 2GB. After that, I don't know what happens... the black holes created could cause stars to collide... or it might just be a waste...

I can't positively remember how much Win98 supported, but I want to say 512MB.

Ugmore Baggage said:

Actually you can have too much RAM. I think XP-pro supports 2GB. After that, I don't know what happens... the black holes created could cause stars to collide... or it might just be a waste...

I can't positively remember how much Win98 supported, but I want to say 512MB.

Click to expand...

Ok, that just sounded funny hehe


But for reference, WindowsXP Home edition officially supports up to 2GB of ram while WindowsXP Professional supports up to 4GB of ram.

Only Linux and Windows 2000 Advanced Data Server can support up to 64GB and behond.

A little secret for those of you interested,,, The barriar to 32-bit computing from a single processor is 4GB of memory. By going 64-bit or allowing for multi processing, one can venture behond 4GB to 8GB with the dually processors or 16GB of ram on a Single 64-bit platform.

Just think, Dual Athlon-64s could support 32GB of ram on one motherboard.


OC-Master

Come to think of it, if I had the chance to get more ram, I would. But unfortuneatly, my motherboard only supports up to 1.5GB of ram.

The Athlon-64 motherboards can handle up to 16GBytes of ram so we should see my next PC with at least 4GB of ram to start with and hopefully 8GB of ram by 2006.


OC-Master

Maybe I'm wrong but wasn't the only Windows that couldn't see more than 512 98SE????

I know XP supports and will use more than that if you let it.
Thank the Gods for RAMPage!!!

Come to think of it I need another 512. 1gig isn't enough and if you are getting Doom to work that much better, then my UT2003 should run better as well.
Cool.

Thanks for the info O/C Master.

matt2364 said:

how do you stop using the page file, isnt that a registry hack of some sort?

Click to expand...

well mine is in spanish so i will translate it exactly, i hope you can follow me:
left click in My PC -----> properties ----> Advanced Options ------> Performace (the first one) ------> Advanced options (yes again) ------> Virtual memory and then! you just set the page file to none. isn´t that easy?

when you select your page file to none, remember to click on the SET button, and then restart your system

Hmm, I only have 768mb of PC2700, should I risk running w/o a page file? I hardly ever go above 150mb of system utilities running and I disable McAfee when I play games.

I've got 512MB of RAM on win98se and I've been without a page file for months, games run flawlessly, including Battlefield 1942 (a memory HOG). If you do this you will need to have nothing running in the backround (I usually have a zonealarm firewall only).

Kerry

i run sh*tloads of programs and still never really "needed" a pagefile with 512mb of memory, sounds completely safe to run without a pagefile with 768 and mo'

im prolly gonna get 512mb of pc2700 for christmas, sell my pc2100 (came oced at stock to pc2700 [under pc2100 sticker there is a pc2700 sticker]) and then maybe also get a new Hard Drive for Christmas also and sell off my old ones, giveing me enuff fof ranoither stick and a heatsink. MWAHAHAHHAHA I am sooooo 1337