12GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz Or 24GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz

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jaimelive

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Hi! I would appreciate if someone could explain me which option is better!
- 12GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 6 x 2048MB
Or
- 24GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz – 6 x 4096MB

It would be amazing if you could explain why, the importance of the differences between speed and memory!
Thanks a lot!
 
6gb of DDR3 1333 is more than you need.
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I'm thinking about buying a Alienware ALX X58 lol And I want to think about the future lol I want the system to last some years lol
I want to buy the best option! lol That' the idea! loool
So...
- 12GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 6 x 2048MB
Or
- 24GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz – 6 x 4096MB
??? lol Wich of them is going to give a best overall preformance?
 
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

look in the toms reviews somewhere they actually found excessive memory slows things down a touch, save yourself the cash and invest in a worthwhile upgrade like an SSD / better or extra graphics card or a sweet monitor.

The problem with 24GB of ram is the rest of your compnants will be superseded well before the ram is - reminds me of my first computer Cyrix 6x86 133+ 32mb ram (most people ran 8 or 12) and a matrox millenium g200 12mb and 2x 16 mb voodoo 2 cards - it didnt run anything well because the processor was a load of kak.
 
No system will last "some years". Theres no reason to go with that much ram for a gaming computer, its a complete waste of money unless your a big photoshop user.

12gb is extreme overkill, 24gb is just stupid.
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Actualy I am... Photoshop... Flash... Premier Pro (just a little bit)... Audition... And some times it is quite useful to run them simultaneously :)

I first thought that 12gb would be more than enought but than I decidede to ask someone with soma actual knowledge 😛

You see! It's not just a gaming computer!

Anyway do you think that it's worth to pay +2200$ to upgrade from 12 to 24?
 
Anyway It might be usefull to say that the processor is a Overclocked Intel® Core™ i7-975 Extreme 3.86 GHz with 8MB Cache
 


Man! It is a Alienware! lol It has a 512GB SSD! Dual 1,792 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 295 (3.5GB), a Overclocked Intel® Core™ i7-975 Extreme 3.86 GHz with 8MB Cache ... you know... lol cutting edge material... lol My only question is... Are 24GB of ram worth an additional 2200$ over the base price of 12GB?
 
well 12 GB is over kill too IMO

by the time u will need 12GB ram it will be uber cheap and ud prolly be doing a full upgrade

toms hardware showed a few weeks back that 3,6 and 12 gb ram gave the same preformance on games
 
Nothing will use the extra RAM for the interim. Never having done more than recreational photoediting I cant speak from experience, but from my understanding of the programs they cache the image/s and then refresh the individual parts that changed. So a higher frequency wouldnt help as much as a lower latency, as the later would help it refresh faster. In essence your not constantly pushing through new information so a higher total bandwidth ( created by a higher frequency ) wont actually provide an advantage. So get the 12Gb base model for the interim and buy more RAM if you find yourself needing it later. Newegg.com has the best prices ive found on memory and just about any other component. Id personally suggest building your own computer with the assistance of various articles on this site, as Dell charges ridiculous premiums for what they provide. If your looking for a decent rig, then ppl here will be more than willing to offer advice. Albeit with some bias towards certain products. See: Nvidia Vs ATI , Intel Vs AMD, etc
 
12 gigs has some slight advantages in a few memory heavy apps (compared to 6 gigs). 24 gigs is overkill. There's no reason to go to 24 gigs, especially with that kind of price premium (You do realize that for $2200, you could build an entire system that is quite fast, right). Oh, and if you built one yourself with an i7 920 (rather than that i7 975 EE), you could overclock it just as fast. The 975 can be pushed higher than a 920, true, but both will almost always exceed that 3.86GHz number you mention.
 
^You do need 24GB if it's a HPC/Cluster/server (and in some cases high end CAR/rendering) :) . For everyday CS4,etc use 12GB is more than enough. Just remember to turn off pagefile with more than 4GB RAM.


Imo, why not build it your self (DIY)? We will gladly help with a DIY build if you are willing to learn a bit an do a bit of work. 90% of the time you can get a better system for less money and the knowledge stays with you so you can keep building PCs in the future. For example a (6*2GB) 12GB DDR3 1333 kit will only cost you $200-250 (see Newegg) while 12GB DDR3 cost $500 for the Dell (see: http://www.alienware.com/customize/alx-x58-r2-desktop.aspx?SysCode=PC-ALX-X58-R2&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT ).

Side note: Don't put the drive on RAID0. Put the drives in RAID 01. Mainly due to data safety. Also if you don't have a good back up drive, get one.
 
Here's a comparable if not faster build but without the charge of having Alienware do everything:

Mobo: P6T deluxe V2 ($289)
CPU: i7 920 ($279) (Overclockable to at least 3.6GHz regardless of stepping, and if you get a D0, which is nearly guaranteed now, you could probably get over 4GHz without much trouble)
GPU: 2x EVGA GTX 295 ($1069)
PSU: Corsair HX1000W ($239)
RAM: 12 gigs Corsair Dominator DDR3-1600($358)
CPU cooler: TRUE ($75)
Optical drive: LG Blu-Ray Burner ($250)
Case: Cooler Master Cosmos 1000 ($169)
Hard drives:2x Intel X25-M 160GB SSD, RAID 0 ($1238, and faster than that 512GB model in the Alienware) plus a WD 1TB Caviar Black storage drive ($99)
OS: Vista Ultimate, OEM ($175)

Total: $4240
Comparable Alienware (as best I can replicate it): at least $6500, probably more

You really should consider building your own - note that the build posted above is by no means trying to use good value parts either - you could drop quite a bit from the cost by getting rid of the Dominator RAM, and going with cheaper SSDs. My point was to show just how good of a build you could get while still staying cheaper than the Alienware. You could also go with full liquid cooling, but I'm not familiar enough with that to know which components to recommend. EVGA has some nice liquid cooled GTX 295s though that come overclocked as well (you would need to already have the rest of the liquid cooling loop to run them though).
 
^Agreed. As for water cooling, expect to spend about $600-700 for cooling 2 GPUs + CPU + RAM and may be even MOSFETs,etc. For just cooling CPU, it can be done for under $350. Again, like cjl, I'm basing these prices on top notch water cooling items such as MCP655 + GTZ,etc. I'm not sure what WC set ups or option Alienware has but I'm pretty sure it's no where near the performance of a custom loop.
 
Okay unless you are doing auto-cad, daz 3d studio, vmware or something like that, 24gigs is stupidly overkill for your needs, 12gigs, is overkill but since its cheap nowadays then its okay to get it i guess, but even 6gigs is enough for you. Thats all I have to say.
 
Thanks everyone! I'm very gratefully ^^
I think I'm gonna follow your advices and try to learn something about building my own system!
 
I run memory intensive computations in MATLAB, and used 12 gb ram to reduce the number of programming nuances involved with dealing with large datasets. (removing variables, chopping into smaller blocks, these sorts of annoyances), and even here I have to have huge amounts of data loaded (in the obvious range) before I have to resort to boring programming tricks.

I don't see how someone who isn't routinely having 12 gb of crap needed to be accessed would even need 12 gb, and 24 is just not worth the price IMO. I'd much rather save 2 grand.
 
from my knowledge on memory i would say 24gigs is beyond overkill, 12 gigs is probably also overkill but will become the standard for mid & high end gaming machines in a year or two....

Someone mentioned turning off the page file with more than 4 gigs or memory, please explain how u do this? and how it helps? and to what extent?
 
Ok,there are lots of people giving suggestion and i don't think you will listen to mine but still i will say the right thing,Don't go over 8gb ram for Photoshop use because it can crash photoshop or the whole pc could freeze,ok ok ok it sounds stupid right?and it is stupid,and what you are saying upgrading to 24 gb ram is more stupid than that because if you are not a gamer then don't even bother to buy a core i7,so much ram,gtx 295,just keep on your budget and trust me it will save you atleast 500 bucks!!!!!!!!
 
Jesus christ... You and your lols.

And what type of suprume future proof machine are you building? 10 years in the future? I highly doubt 10 years down the line they will have 24GB's of ram in systems...

You don't if any need more then 8-12GB's. Stop being stupid. It's inpossible to utulize more then 8GB's of RAM in todays age anyway. INPOSSIBLE. Even tommorows age. People are just about having 4GB DDR3 as standard.

You're going WAY over the top... future proof or not, its a waste (richie rich.)
 
hey, godbrother,

- here is the thing: I have 8 Gb RAM on Win7/64 and let me tell you- this aint no future- this is now- this is bare minimum for me to chug along.. typical RAM usage profile: system use - 400Mb; + 15-20 open windows (IE, Firefox etc) with my blogs, articles, news, olympic games, youtube- that's 900 Mb; GoogleEarth- 700Mb; MS office, word, outlook, email etc- 500Mb; some graphics software (image manager) 300Mb; some video players (iTunes, or Windows or Real- HD- my monitos res. is 2560x1600) 500Mb; acrobat PDF- 200Mb; == it shows on Task Manager typically that 7-8 Gb of used resources... and ALL THAT - without even going into other heavy gear such as GAMES, Photoshop, Video editing etc.

for any serious computer user 8Gb to 12 Gb is PRESENT, not future. Just my 5 cents.. cheers.
 
I agree, I've been doing digital imaging for over 12 years testing some of the first systems for the military. I work with high res raw images and when you start editing 16 bit images you can create a single file over 4 gig. Now you might think why would you ever need that, but when you’re printing to a 16 bit large format printer the end product is going to drop jaws and move you into a whole new class of revenue for photography. If your producing even low end videos and laying 3 separate tracks of HD video on top of each other to edit with have less then 12gb memory then ..... good luck, if your able to render the work area before you get a low memory warning then you better be willing to wait a very long time to start working the video again. Video formats are changing as fast as the wind blows and trust me we haven't seen anything yet, in the next three years you will see huge changes and advancements and you'll find you system lacking again anyway. Talk to the people and companies who are working with and advancing the area of your needs .... video .... stills. They can't produce the products without the software and hardware to move them. Hasselblad makes a medium format 6o mega pixel camera http://www.hasselbladusa.com/promotions/h4d-launch.aspx that will lock up most computers that gamers have once you start editing raw images. With that much info, memory is very critical, now they'll probably say who can afford a $50,000 camera anyway. Ask yourself this, how long did it take for them to produce a $500 point and shoot with 12-15 mega pixels? If your using the Hasselblad H4D or H3D cameras and you have any photographic skill at all ...... your charge to do a wedding just crossed 6 figures and you would be surprised how many people will lay that kind of cash down for super high res images that will last 10 lifetimes. Not bad for a weekends worth of work! How many gaming computers can you buy for just one wedding? Something to think about if that’s where your passion lies. All you can do is talk to the people who make the hardware for compatibility and expandability; they can only see a small window of tech breakthrough in front of them. What you should be most concerned about is if these over clocked entities are compatible with your software’s and peripherals, some of them will make the application crash or not run at all. Buy the best most expandable hardware that’s available and that's gonna buy you some time but if you want to play with the big boys be ready to reup some funds every 3-4 years. Definitely buy it and make it yourself and if you’re not savvy enough to do that then make friends with your local neighborhood computer store and pay them guys to put it together for you and save some big bucks. Don’t get me wrong about gamers, they’re regular electronic beaker geeks when it comes to computers but digital imaging is a completely different animal and believe it or not it’s what‘s really pushing the industry because of all the professional applications ….. ie …… Hollywood, Military, Law Enforcement. I worked with some of the first high end digital cameras that were only 2.5 mega pixel but cost $30, 000, it was the military that pushed the industry and fueled the research and development. I’m actually in the process of building another computer and I’m installing 12gb of 1600 on the Asus P6T7 super computer mother board because it gives me some flexibility and upgrade options that will meet my needs now and probably for the next two years. I can add up to 4 GPU’s before it drops from x16 to x8 and that’s where a good portion of your bottle neck lies for imaging. It comes down to your apllications and how far you want to go with them. Good Luck!
 

If you have 7-8 GB used with google earth, email, several office programs, an internet window with a bunch of tabs, and an HD video, something is wrong. I have all of that open right now, and I'm using 3.6GB of RAM (and I have 12 gigs, so it's not like I'm not giving it enough RAM to work with).

I do frequently use every bit of my RAM, but in order to do so, I have to be running a program that uses up a large chunk by itself. Solidworks can chew through >8GB by itself for example.
 
No system will last "some years". Theres no reason to go with that much ram for a gaming computer, its a complete waste of money unless your a big photoshop user.

12gb is extreme overkill, 24gb is just stupid.
Click to expand...

DDR3 modules being relatively expensive, now; I upped total RAM in my system (Win 7 Pro) from 8 GB to 10 GB; incremental as I have 2 GB DDR3 modules and replacing each with 4GB DDR3 modules.

Rendering is faster. Smoother and image is sharper, too.

Almost as if I replaced the video card with a much higher more powerful model.

These subjective results make sense to me. Ordered another 4 GB module that will give me Total RAM 12 GB DDR3.

I like these changes. lesson, if you're building your Win 7 system and have $$ to burn, fill up the RAM slots before. since DDR3 RAM is relatively expensive now. you can do what I'm doing, incrementally adding 4 GB modules working up to 16 GB, (Maybe). 8 GB to 10 GB is perceptively better DDR3, Win 7 pro.

Suspect that video editing and other such tasks will be faster, too.

Images are more precise, clearer and rendered with better clarity....anything that requires memory is better. (now if I could just get a T1 line in here. :)
 
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