Experiment: Can Adding RAM Improve Your SSD's Endurance?

[youssef 2010]

Nice article..... Unfortunately RAM prices in my country have skyrocketed. My Rip Jaws X 8GB kit has doubled in price. I hope they drop soon so I could buy another one and save my Vertex 3 Max IOPS

 

[Someone Somewhere]

If you've got 8GB, you should be fine.

 

[Teszter]

How about RAM frequency? Is that important? Especially for Intel.
That is, should I go for 2400 MHz or is 1600 good enough?

 

[Teszter]

How about RAM frequency? Is that important? Especially for Intel.
That is, should I go for 2400 MHz or is 1600 good enough?

 

[smeezekitty]

2400 usually had long latency making it no faster than 1600-2133.
1866 or 2133 with good timing specs it probably the fastest.

 

[InvalidError]

That is, should I go for 2400 MHz or is 1600 good enough?

There isn't much benefit to going beyond 1600-9-9-9 unless you are using the IGP.

 

[photonboy]

DDR3 frequency:
For most things 1600MHz is sufficient, however I can show you several games that will benefit with a slightly higher frequency.

The cost difference between 1600MHz and 1866/2133 isn't very high so I advise to get either 1866MHz or 2133MHz CAS9 memory (i.e. G. Skill or similar).

I still recommend 8GB (2x4GB) for most users despite the guy who "hates that mentality" above somewhere. In Canada it's $80 currently for another 8GB. By the time you benefit from more than 8GB you'll need a new PC. Very few games use more than 2GB of System RAM (Skyrim goes up to 1.75GB and settles out). Even with the OS using some with 8GB you have 6GB left over. Windows will REMOVE tasks if it needs the space for a game so just because you show 4GB currently used before starting a game doesn't mean that's all you have left.

APU's:
AMD APU's are different. They use your System RAM as Video RAM and thus scale accordingly. New APU's can benefit from 2133MHz C9 easily over anything lower. It's pretty much linear up to wherever the bottleneck is near 2133MHz depending on the GPU frequency.

(I'm totally off topic now anyway so I'm done.)

 

[InvalidError]

I still recommend 8GB (2x4GB) for most users despite the guy who "hates that mentality" above somewhere. In Canada it's $80 currently for another 8GB. By the time you benefit from more than 8GB you'll need a new PC.

At the rate CPU performance is progressing, I think most people who do not let their inner geek overrule rationality will not feel much of a need to upgrade their CPU within the next 3-4 years and by then, they may very well wish they had upgraded to 16GB while DDR3 was still cheap to get another two years out of their system.

Back when I built my current PC, DDR3 prices were close to their all-time low and since I am used to paying twice as much for RAM than the CPU, I did not hesitate much to simply get 32GB for $180 while I could - I have always enjoyed how much smoother PCs feel when all frequently accessed files can fit in the OS' disk cache.

 

[fkr]

I still recommend 8GB (2x4GB) for most users despite the guy who "hates that mentality" above somewhere. In Canada it's $80 currently for another 8GB. By the time you benefit from more than 8GB you'll need a new PC.

At the rate CPU performance is progressing, I think most people who do not let their inner geek overrule rationality will not feel much of a need to upgrade their CPU within the next 3-4 years and by then, they may very well wish they had upgraded to 16GB while DDR3 was still cheap to get another two years out of their system.

Back when I built my current PC, DDR3 prices were close to their all-time low and since I am used to paying twice as much for RAM than the CPU, I did not hesitate much to simply get 32GB for $180 while I could - I have always enjoyed how much smoother PCs feel when all frequently accessed files can fit in the OS' disk cache.

and lets not forget about the fun that can be had making a cache disk out of the extra ram. my web browser loads up even faster now since they cache to the ram disk I made. I do use a ssd also so maybe if I get more use out of that it could be considered an offset of the price of RAM. I can always come up with an excuse as to why I need to spend a little more, not to mention you could always craiglist that extra RAM for some cash if needed. That is what I did with a twin frozr 7950 when I paid $205 for one from new egg and kept it CF for 4 months then sold it $180 to get my money back after playing with it for a while. My 1080P monitor did not really justify keeping for that long and I am waiting for a 4k monitor next.

It always comes down to budget and how much fun you derive from playing with your computer.

 

[drkarasheed]

You can create a scenario with no swap files on your C drive hard disk(or SSD) or re locate the swap files to a better location, if you have 16 GB of RAM. As Mr AndrewJacksonZA has suggested (which I have also tried with positive results) try to install a RAM disk of appropriate size and direct the Swap files to this. You are utilizing the RAM chips to the extreme.