Should I trust this Corsair article?

[Kibokun]

http://www.corsair.com/_appnotes/AN804_Gaming_Performance_Analysis.pdf

I've got another 2gb RAM coming in the mail today and in my excitement I tried to find some comparisons between 2gb and 4gb. I came across this article explaining how when you're nearing your ram usage capacity, the OS (VIsta in my case) will allocate more space on the page file (slow) instead of on the ram (fast) for applications. When I run any game, I'm usually at 1.8gb out of 2gb total, so though I'm not at my computer to check, If Corsair isn't glossing over facts, I would assume a lot of my games' data end up in the page file, thus causing stuttering.

If these benchmarks and this information is legit, I'm going to be a very happy person in a few hours. :)

[petteyg359]

More memory = better performance. Good advertising for a memory company, and nobody with any sense can really argue with it :)

Vista's memory management wins. You'll see much more improvement in Vista with additional RAM than you would in XP, even in general usage, not just in memory-heavy applications, due to Vista's insanely better prefetch system. After having it installed for several months, it can keep 8+GB of RAM and swap full of stuff I might be about to use :)

[CGR]

I stopped gaming with 2gb of memory many years ago, back in the EQ days. 4gb is MUCH better for gaming, in virtually every example.

[jivetrky]

I remember the big step from 1GB to 2GB and it is the same thing from 2GB to 4GB. I wouldn't build a machine these days with less than 4GB. Or at least any machine that will be playing games, of course a net browser for you mom would still be fine with less.

I found that there was a little stuttering with 2GB and also found that it took longer to load and exit games because of the hard drive swapping.

Also it's nice to have the extra RAM so that your machine can easily handle it if you ALT+TAB out of the game.

I use my PC for amateur Djing (not scratching/mixing just playing music [ie. a wedding]) Well I seem to do long, all day typed parties a few times a year (just this weekend I did one that was 2pm to 12am). Well during that time I can only mingle and snack soo much, so I fired up a game of Prototype while playing music at the same time. My Quad core definitely helped make that possible, but 4GB of RAM helped eliminate the possibility of the music stuttering because of harddrive swapping.

[Kibokun]

Well, I got my RAM a few days early and I can say it's exactly as you guys and Corsair tell it. :) I can swap between apps with no problem and many of my games have a much steadier fps. It's changing the way I use my computer. (I heavily multitask, so I had to plan before. Now I can just do everything without caring.)

Not ever going below 4gb again. haha!

[jivetrky]

Well, I got my RAM a few days early and I can say it's exactly as you guys and Corsair tell it. :) I can swap between apps with no problem and many of my games have a much steadier fps. It's changing the way I use my computer. (I heavily multitask, so I had to plan before. Now I can just do everything without caring.)

Not ever going below 4gb again. haha!

I'm also a heavy multitasker, I was QUITE surprised at the boost I got from a Quadcore CPU. I also noticed it when going from single core to dual core. But the up from Dual to quad was almost as noticable.

I mentioned DJing and playing a game at the same time. Well a few weeks ago I was still using an E6400. I was DJing another all day party (memorial day) and got bored and wanted to play Bioshock. Well as soon as I got to the title screen, it was too much and the music started stuttering. Luckily at that point it was just background party music and noone was dancing. But I tried this again this weekend. And with my Quad core I was able to play games and DJ and swap back and forth between the two without any issue. (The DJ program is somewhat CPU intensive because of the processing it does; PCDJ Red mobile BTW, very good program. It amazingly makes the sound SO much better than any other program I have used. not sure how exactly it makes an MP3 sound better than any other program but it does it!)