Any point of 4GB yet?

{ace of spades} · Sep 1, 2007

Im over budget and trying to cut costs, is there any point me buying 4GB of RAM? Im running vista, and my PC will be used for gaming, a bit of photoshop and the odd bit of CAD.

Thanks guys,

James

Tyranos · Sep 1, 2007

No, not really. Games still don't use very much ram, PS and CAD can, but those have been fine for years on 1gb of ram.

David_N · Sep 1, 2007

Cutting down to 2gb would be a great way to save some money, especially because RAM is such an easy thing to upgrade in the future.

You have to remember, to utilize all 4gb you will need a 64bit OS, which has some program compatibility issues (mind you, they are getting better). If you aren't doing the photoshop or CAD stuff very often, cutting back on RAM would be an excellent way to save some money. There isn't much point of having 4gb right now, other than for bragging rights of course :beer:

I'll be honest, I haven't found a use for 4gb of ram yet, I just bought it because I ended up getting it for a little over $30 per module.

White_Pawn · Sep 1, 2007

A quadcore should be considered before 4 gigs of ram.

Magicuser · Sep 1, 2007

one word "Server" just to let you now i have a 4gb stick of ddr 2100 that happens to be ecc, fully buffered, i didnt notice it till i was looking at it but i got it for free..sadly i cant use it lol so..wacth out for fully buffered,ecc if you are not going to use it in a server.

{ace of spades} · Sep 1, 2007

Thanks for the help guys, i do appreciate it. However, i am getting a quad core CPU (Q6600) and i am getting 64bit vista, so does this change the situation much?

Tyranos · Sep 1, 2007

Not really.

aja · Sep 1, 2007

CAD uses more RAM for more parts in the assemblies - Solidworks recomends more than 1gig for 1000+ parts I believe... cant remember, anyway its on their site somewhere.

If you dont mind buying more ram to upgrade then get two - however if you are going to keep this setup for a long time, I would say get 4 gigs

OBLIVIONLORD · Sep 9, 2007

If any of you are a gamer and are using Vista than you know that it is a resource hog. It alone uses a good 600mb or so ram at startup as opposed to XP's 100mb or so after a fresh install as long as you disabled Superfetch this way it doesn't cache any of your most used apps.

When playing games it has to cycle out the data within the ram to be replaced with the games data since you'll never have any free memory available. This will somewhat bog the system a little as opposed to having more ram like 4gb to start with (3gb in 32bit or 4gb 64bit) this way it doesn't need to cycle anything "as much" since it has the headroom to work with.

Disabling Superfetch doesn't completely turn off its caching of apps in ram since XP does that to a certain degree but, it does help greatly.

I'm currently running an AM2 4600 with 2gb while Superfetch is disabled and it works like a heck of alot snappier than with Superfetch enabled. I am going to go with 4gb and re enable Superfetch mainly because I like how the feature works while having the headroom.

Besides ram is very cheap these days so why not.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227231

$72.99 afterrebate from $112.99.

Damn good price if you ask me.

shadin · Sep 9, 2007

Staying with 2GB for now would be a good idea if you're running over budget. At least in my opinion, 4GB is more trend at the moment than necessity, as anyone that needs that much RAM is using a program (as people mentioned, CAD, PS, or servers) and knows for sure they need that much memory. And as David_N said, RAM is such an easy upgrade to perform in the future. I just recently upgraded my 939 rig to 2GB.

Even as a gamer, unless your thing is playing multiple games at once

, 2GB will do you good for some time to come.

Neuromancer · Sep 9, 2007

4GB is great for server type situations... (Running an pplication server or Virtual machines) fora workstation everyone else already said it 2 is fine ..

(I have run 1GB in my Vista box with no problems gaming...)

Woomack · Sep 9, 2007

2GB is enough for gaming and other stuff you will use. I see no point to get 4GB because you won't use it or see no difference.

OBLIVIONLORD · Sep 9, 2007

I'll agree that 2gb is sufficient for gaming as long as your in XP or even Linux. However I'll disagree if you are using Vista and while having Superfetch enabled.

However if you are a serious PC gamer and you have either the 8800 or are awaiting for 9800 then it would be foolish to not use Vista since you'll be able to take advantage of DX10 unless you don't care all that much about the visual improvements of DX9 over DX10 which Crysis will deffinently show.

If your just a moderate gamer and will continue using XP or Linux then stick with 2gb. Nothing official from MS has been said about implementing DX10 to XP which is the only real reason why I'm running Vista.

del_signo · Sep 10, 2007

i have 4 gigs of ram and i often have 4 virtual machines going at once plus bioshock or css so i pretty much use it all but it can also be an investment so i a year or 2 when you need 4 gigs u wont have to get rid of you old ram because that would jest be a waist

Cheator · Sep 10, 2007

2 gig works great in vista. 1 gig was just enough but 2 gigs gives me plenty of room. I can even run dreamscene and play games with it. I don't see why you need more yet.

OBLIVIONLORD · Sep 11, 2007

Depending on what games you actually play will determine if 2gb is going to be sufficient for you in Vista. BF2 in XP needs 2gb in order to run its smoothest. Company of Heroes and Supreme Commander are others.

As i said before.. the OS uses half a gig alone outside of the apps that it caches in ram compared to XP. With Superfetch enabled... there just isn't any possible way for me to play Supreme Commander in Large maps, with Lots of units, while having my 2gb ram being cycled from cached apps to caching game files in real time to achieve the same performance as if I had more headroom like 4gb to start with. There wouldn't be any need of cycling cached data in ram in this case. Let's also not forget that you will eventually be using the pagefile once you run out of Physical memory.

Who knows how much ram UT3, Crysis, Alan Wake, BIA: Hells Highway.. will use.

Pntgrd · Sep 11, 2007

I have a question. I was able to basically trade an old Antec P160 and a OCZ Powerstream for 2 more 1 gig sticks of Crucial pc8500 Tracers. I dual boot XP and Vista 32bit so I know that 3 gig is all the os will use. My question is will it hurt anything to have 4 gig installed? I could just see what sticks are better and go with only 2 gig but I want to maximize what I can do with having 4 sticks.

MRD · Sep 11, 2007

I would suggest buying it in 2 1 gig sticks (assuming you have 4 slots) so that you can easily expand to 4 gb w/o throwing out the existing ram. If you order a laptop with 512mb of ram from Dell, they'll probably ship you 2 256 mb sticks, making it impossible to upgrade... I really hate that. You can still use dual-channel with 2 sticks, and have 2 slots waiting for the other 2 gig when it becomes more useful.

Pntgrd · Sep 11, 2007

Yes it is coming in 2 more 1gig sticks for a total of 4x1. I just wanted to make sure that even though 3 is probably all that will get used that the extra won't be a detriment. After reading the post about someone having issues after adding 2x512 sticks to 2x1024 I think I made the right choice.

Blkout · Sep 13, 2007

I run 4GB because I no longer need a page file, which seems to make the PC feel snappier. With 2GB, I couldn't get away with this because I would get a low virtual memory message every so often so I would have to keep a page file to keep Windows happy. With 4GB, this is no longer an issue.

4GB of G.Skill on Windows XP x64.

Any point of 4GB yet?

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