Do You Really Need More Than 6 GB Of RAM?

[resonance451]

I put 6GB in a professional editing system. I'm so glad I did. I'm considering upgrading to 12gb. This system shreds renders like LITTLE BABY SEALS.

 

[Guest]

There are many uses for a larger memory
(and faster CPU) including:
o virtualization,
o databases,
o data mining,
o simulations,
etc.

But most of the above uses are for work,
and of little interest to home PC users.

My hard learned lesson:
You'll probably be happier buying a
$1500 system and replacing it every two
years, than buying a $5000 system today, and
being stuck with it for then next six years.

In this economy it pays to be conservative,
especially if you're floating your system purchase
on plastic instead of paying cash.

 

[Guest]

Take note 3GB for Vista; probably 1.5 to 2GB for XP, and 512MB for Win98 would be recommended.
I found Win98 OOB works fine with 192MB of RAM. XP OOB works fine with 384MB RAM, and needs slightly more as more programs are installed.
Vista,I found needs at least 1024MB OOB for it to be responsive enough.
But I can imagine 3GB to be sufficient for some programs, after they get installed. I doubt the majority needs 6GB. I even doubt we need more than 2GB (Except perhaps on Win Vista 64bit versions).

Win7, in my estimation probably needs 512MB OOB, and runs fine from about 800+MB once programs are installed.

The results are as expected. I would have wanted to see this test being done with half the memory.

 

[tachyon2006]

WIth X64 version of Windows (am using 2008Server, I generally require around 12GB to be comfortable and 16GB for some headroom. Much of that (around 8--10GB, depending on the day) is dedicated to Hyper-V machines. Generally, I run my physical host as nothing more than a barebones container for the hypervisor and run a desktop OS in one VM, development in another, plus numerous servers for dev/test. It's quite nice to be able to snapshot the state of a VM just in case hotfixes or patches come along that don't agree with each other. For gaming performance, of course, I drop to a physical Win7 on the same machine and the "extra RAM" is just icing and anything over 4GB in reality is not yet fully used; for media class apps (animation, CAD and sci viz), I find the more RAM the better any day.

 

[Guest]

A common use case that this article does not address is multiple simultaneous applications. I often have 10-15 apps open... 8GB of RAM is quite appreciated when I'm tabbing between them and they come up instantly, rather than bogging down to swap themselves back in.

For single-task application users, RAM beyond 2GB+OS (so 3 or 4GB) is almost always wasted. Few apps go beyond the 2GB barrier in RAM usage... that will very slowly change. But when you have three, five, or 10 memory hungry apps open at once, more RAM is very noticable.

 

[ricin]

I've got 8GB and use every byte of it.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]MyrddinE[/nom]A common use case that this article does not address is multiple simultaneous applications. I often have 10-15 apps open... 8GB of RAM is quite appreciated when I'm tabbing between them and they come up instantly, rather than bogging down to swap themselves back in.For single-task application users, RAM beyond 2GB+OS (so 3 or 4GB) is almost always wasted. Few apps go beyond the 2GB barrier in RAM usage... that will very slowly change. But when you have three, five, or 10 memory hungry apps open at once, more RAM is very noticable.[/citation]

Tried 3, didn't try 5, testing is about consistency and the more you add the more inconsistent the results.

 

[Guest]

Everyone would like more RAM. But in the real world its often hard enough trying to convince clients to upgrade to 512M (from 256). Many of the PC's in everyday use simply may be too old to recognize/detect any more than 2G, let alone 8. Factor in the poor memory management of SOME older PC's(P4's etc): more than 1G of RAM can occasionally slow XP down...

 

[matt87_50]

the more ram we buy, the more it encourages lazy programmers and inefficient apps.

 

[Guest]

how about video editing sofware rendering time?

 

[SchizoFrog]

@ohim

If you are using apps that regularly max out you RAM, why the hell are you only on a dual core processor? Yes those apps will hit your RAM because they can, but the slow down will be more down to what the CPU is actually doing rather than what is loaded in to the RAM.

 

[dirkadirk]

Well Duh, Of course 4GB is plenty.

32-Bit applications (other than databases and such) can't use more than 2GB per PROCESS on a Windows OS (Regardless of the OS being 32-Bit or 64-Bit).

Source: Windows Internals by Mark Russinovich and David Solomon

All 32-bit games are single process and usually single threaded.

When 64-Bit games (and other software) arrive, this will change.

 

[dirkadirk]

Well Duh, Of course 4GB is plenty.

32-Bit applications (other than databases and such) can't use more than 2GB per PROCESS on a Windows OS (Regardless of the OS being 32-Bit or 64-Bit).

Source: Windows Internals by Mark Russinovich and David Solomon

All 32-bit games are single process and usually single threaded.

When 64-Bit games (and other software) arrive, this will change.

 

[elewand]

When analyzing large stacks in imagej, the more memory the better.

 

[overloaded007]

I have 16gb, I've found turning off your swap file in windows xp VS making a Ram Partion, the ram partition is better. I think it's because you can't totally disable virtual memory. Using a 256mb partion for tempor~1 makes a Huge difference when your loading ebay pages with 200 auctions at a time, hitting the back button results in a instant page load. And copying games to my ram partition, actually improved small jerks that everyone see's during game play, loading time from level to level or world to world, is instant. Best thing by far, having 2 6gb ram partions, downloading 4gb rar archives directly to the ram partition and extracting to the 2nd ram part. Then converting from 1 codec to another from ram part to ram part, it's just all GOOD.

 

[Geek1945]

Gee whiz what's Tom's definition of a power-user. With 8GB on XP64 with NO PAGING FILE, I'm always using 4+GB and when using 2x DVDShrink and 2x DivX encoding my RAM monitor goes red at 2GB or less RAM which it does. I have never went to less than 1GB. I would strongly suggest that 12GB isn't an out of this world figure specially for powerful I7 platforms. Tom's article running one task just isn't realistic for DIY builders.

 

[Guest]

I still have to see a benchmark for Photoshop for instance, or Premiere. Won't they benefit of a lot of RAM?

 

[alfaalex101]

What about video editors? Some of use use tonnes of clips (now more in HD) and we can easily fill up 4gb. Could you guys include a benchmark with Sony Vegas playing through a time line with many HD clips? Does it sustain 60fps or the desired frame rate?

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]alfaalex101[/nom]What about video editors? Some of use use tonnes of clips (now more in HD) and we can easily fill up 4gb. Could you guys include a benchmark with Sony Vegas playing through a time line with many HD clips? Does it sustain 60fps or the desired frame rate?[/citation]

I'll mention it to the benchmark developers, but until then...send the software please!

 

[giovanni86]

Thank you for this amazing article. I was wondering if i needed more then 4gb of DDR3 1800. Now i know i don't. But i just have that feeling of filling the gaps on my mainboard. Oh well, good article though i will definitely hold out till price drops on my memory modules before i spend money that doesn't need to be spent on considering there is no boost in performance in games which is the only thing i do on my PC. Thank you.

 

[Guest]

"The notion that bigger is better has taken a beating lately in all aspects of society."

Just watch. If you wait long enough the economy will improve, people will start making money again, banks will go back to their old ways (because we all know how criminally greedy they are and how all those execs and stockholders need to become billionaires) and you have to eat your words.

I am secretly hoping that I will have to eat my words but we'll see.

 

[Marcus52]

Interesting that the clear improvement in PCMark Vantage scores wasn't even mentioned.

While the 12GB install might be wasted in your average home gaming rig, I am a bit confused about the results here; I think more testing from a different perspective will be needed. I know there are games out there that can crash 32-bit Windows systems because of their memory usage, what happened to those games? Most of them are built with a 2GB limit anyway, or were, is this still true of games even when supposedly built to use 64-bit properties?

Sentences like "WinRAR was the single application that showed a noteworthy performance increase from added RAM, but it’s far from noticeable." hardly improve my confidence; this is self-contradictory. If it is not noticeable, it certainly isn't noteworthy!

The good news, if this information holds up, is that I can take the extra 6 GB out of my main i7 rig to put in my second build, lol. I'm NOT going down below 6 GB though, I don't care what you say!

 

[Guest]

Hmmmm! I was just wondering what would happen if you turned off your virtual memory would there be any difference in the results. I seems to me that much of the programs you were running rely on the use of virtual memory....

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]Marcus52[/nom]Interesting that the clear improvement in PCMark Vantage scores wasn't even mentioned.While the 12GB install might be wasted in your average home gaming rig, I am a bit confused about the results here; I think more testing from a different perspective will be needed. I know there are games out there that can crash 32-bit Windows systems because of their memory usage, what happened to those games? Most of them are built with a 2GB limit anyway, or were, is this still true of games even when supposedly built to use 64-bit properties?Sentences like "WinRAR was the single application that showed a noteworthy performance increase from added RAM, but it’s far from noticeable." hardly improve my confidence; this is self-contradictory. If it is not noticeable, it certainly isn't noteworthy!The good news, if this information holds up, is that I can take the extra 6 GB out of my main i7 rig to put in my second build, lol. I'm NOT going down below 6 GB though, I don't care what you say![/citation]

It's noteworthy because it's larger than the other differences. Take note, this is the biggest win! But the difference is still not large enough for the average user to notice.

 

[belardo]

What about the game Supreme Commander with thousands of units? Thast games does make use of lots of memory.