Memory Upgrade: Is It Time To Add More RAM?

[nebun]

[citation][nom]luke904[/nom]now it is 92, what happened to ddr2? why is it so expensive? sorry about the split post[/citation]
supply and demand

 

[xonic]

what's the point of recommending 8GB+ when games perform the same as as 4GB system?

 

[zeroabg]

The highest I've ever gotten with 6 gb is 80% (29% usage at idle) and that was after a few hours with GTA4.

 

[jj463rd]

Some articles don't quite catch my eye initially (my fault).
Excellent article with some good lessons here.
I'll remember this one

 

[user 18]

[citation][nom]SteelCity1981[/nom]This is all lies! Bill Gates said 640k ram is more than anyone needed![/citation]

+1

How far we've come since then.

*sigh*
Time to add another 4GB

 

[nebun]

[citation][nom]xonic[/nom]what's the point of recommending 8GB+ when games perform the same as as 4GB system?[/citation]
all for the graphics...the more "free" mem your system can address for graphics the better the game experience. if you like to play games with all the graphics options enabled it really makes sense to have the extra mem

 

[yose3]

i got 8GB and i love it lol

 

[wortwortwort]

If I already have 4GB in dual channel, would it be a bad thing to fill the other two unused slots with another 4GB? I have a 5870.

 

[masterjaw]

Given a choice whether to jump to the 8gb RAM bandwagon or to dump my good old GTS 250, I'd say I'll go with the latter. That would give me the most performance boost in games. The benefits from this type of upgrade would also depend on your current hardware performance.

 

[dEAne]

"You won't see an overwhelming performance increase unless you're using very memory-hungry programs" - This is quite true, like photoshop and video editing apps.

 

[Chetou]

There is an important comparison missing. What about loading times with more memory and HDD swap (test should be done in 64-bit Windows, of course)? In your tests, there is always just 4 GB available. It would be interesting to see how 12 GB RAM + HDD swap/temp compares to 4 GB RAM + 4 GB RAMswap + 4 GB RAMtemp.

 

[SteelCity1981]

I have 8gb of ram and it's a bit overkill for me considering i don't play really any games or do a lot of heavy work loads on my pc, but it came with my pc when I bought it.

 

[HalfHuman]

i find the article usefull. have a bit mroe to add so i'll keep short:

if you have a decent amount of ram (+2gb) it always pays to use even a small amount (+200mb) of that for a ramdrive to put temp files and firefox profiles and othe temp files on it. i've been usign that for visual studio when i build projects. it makes a big difference. win 7 is smart enough to cache the reads if you have ram but it does not cache the writes much. even on a superfast ssd the writes will still be a lot slower than on ram disk.

if you use a 32 bit win and have more than 3,5gb of ram then it's quite smart to make a ram disk on the part that is not "accessible". i had 4gb of ram on win xp 32bit and 700mb were not accessible so i used that for ramdisk

about the swap file... i do not bother to disable it. if i have lots of ram i set it to be on another disk if i have one and limit it to 2gb or so. i see no point in putting the swap on ramdrive. ONLY if you have lots of ram on a 32bit win, created a ramdrive large enough, then put at least part of the swap on it. if you have a win 7 64bit with decent ram (+4gb) make a ramdrive.

conclusion: a ramdrive will make a big difference if you have programs that do a lot of (small) writes on the disk. if you manage to make them to do that on the ramdrive then it will be amazing. do not bother to store stuff on the ramdrive for reading as win7 is smart enough to cache the reads.
i have some benchmarks with 4k reads:
wd 500gb blue 0,259mb/s
corsair nova64 (indlix) 16,867mb/s
ramdrive 735,000mb/s
you do the math!

 

[Phoenixlight]

[citation][nom]musicaldevil[/nom]What's with the German text in the images on the page "64-Bit: Memory-Hungry Graphics Cards"?[/citation]
Yeah I was just about to make a comment about that as well.

 

[Guest]

I wish the benchmarked the 64 bit with 12/16 GB configurations with the SWAP Disabled....

 

[onebrokendownhorse]

I have to say this article has left me totally confused. For DDR2 can I use more than 4 gigs and should I? I am about to buy Windows Pro 7. If I buy Pro would 12 gigs work or do I need those programs that you talked about? (Why were there no links? ) Will FO:NV use another 8 gigs from my 4 gigs? Thank you

 

[pinkfloydminnesota]

Great information, still I'd like to hear more about the continued use of virtual memory in programming and the possibility of Windows being designed to use physical memory first ... it's frustrating when I've got 2.5 GB in use and 1.5 GB sitting empty but a swap file is in use.

At least that's how it appears to me in task manager. I really have no clue about what's really going on, M$ likes to hide stuff from dummies like me.

 

[catchercradle]

Takes me back to the days when I ran an amd x86 processor, I had 4meg of ram running DRdos and used 2meg as a ramdisk. Didn't half make dos and WP5.2 run quickly.

 

[Hockeyguyinoc]

On the 64 bit system I saw that the swap file was enabled and disabled.

1-Was it a HDD swap file or a ram disk(I assume ram Disk)?

2-What are the differences in performance of an HDD swap file vs ram disk swap file in a 64-bit system since you now have access to over 3.25gigs of ram?

I'm currently running 6gigs of ram and wondering if going with 12gigs with a ram disk swap would be good setup or negligible in performance gains.

 

[pinkfloydminnesota]

To bad the first sentence isn't true.

And in bold yet.

About two years back, the egg sold 4 GB of DDR2 1066 upgrades for $20 - $50 for a long time, plus $25 rebates in many cases, and sometimes free after rebate for 2 GB.

 

[dertechie]

I wonder if there's a way to set it up such that Windows itself can be run out of a RAM disk. Yeah, you'd need to dedicate ungodly amounts of RAM to it, but that system would scream.

 

[jeffdeath48]

Or you could just use as 64 bit version of windows

 

[mariushm]

On page 3 you're saying:

Once and for all, the 32-bit (x86) versions of Windows XP, Vista, and 7 cannot handle more than 4 GB of RAM. PAE modes, registry hacks, and different boot options will definitely not produce the desired result. In fact, these have the potential to cause system instability and crashes.

But then on page 4, you're saying:

With one of these programs, you can use the memory that otherwise wouldn’t be addressable by a 32-bit operating system. Remember to enable the memory remapping function in your BIOS or nothing will happen.

But this "memory remapping function" is exactly the PAE (Physical Adddress Extension) feature that you're saying on the previous page that it causes instability and unreliability.
The software recommended wouldn't work without PAE enabled so you're basically contradicting yourself.

There is absolutely no problem with 32bit versions of Windows working with more than 4GB - they're just artificially limited to this amount for maximum compatibility. In fact, there is Windows 2000 which can work with 32 GB of memory in 32 bit mode and Windows 2003 which is also artificially limited to 128 GB of memory. See msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(VS.85).aspx

And another problem in the article is the mention that 32bit applications can only access 2GB of memory - in fact with a flag in boot.ini the OS will allow apps to use up to 3GB of memory but apps (kind of) have to aware and compiled to support this, so I don't blame the author for keeping it simple.

Regarding swap file, you recommend creating an 8GB ram disk. Problem is for maximum performance, Microsoft recommends a maximum swap file of maximum 4GB -1 byte, so that it can be memory mapped in the memory (and use 32bit file/memory pointers and so on). Setting a swap file higher than 4GB is not recommended and really not needed, as it will barely accessed when the system has more than 4GB installed.
See support.microsoft.com/kb/889654 for more information.

I also have a hunch that some of the problems in the benchmarks were not caused by lack of swap space but by the OS aggressively caching accessed files so when games touched maps and content the memory would get full by crap - this is very noticeable in Windows 2008 for example and can be tuned from the system settings.

 

[gmiller2575]

Hey Tom! Any ideas for Mac users???

 

[henydiah]

i want buy this RAM