Should I Max out my memory banks on my motherboard?

[ITsonic]

Well I bought a new memory module for my PC now the count of ram that I have is now up to 3GB, I’m sending one of my OCZ gold series memory modules back to OCZ because it has gone bad. Good thing that the memory has a lifetime warranty on it but anyway I need to know should I max out my memory banks on my motherboard which is a Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H which can support 16GB of ram?

 

[runswindows95]

Depends on your usage and OS. Overall, unless you are doing CAD, hi-def video conversions, or running several virtual machines at once, 8GB is the highest for any modern gaming system.

 

[ITsonic]

Depends on your usage and OS. Overall, unless you are doing CAD, hi-def video conversions, or running several virtual machines at once, 8GB is the highest for any modern gaming system.

I have windows XP pro

 

[dalaran]

Is your windows XP 32 or 64 bits?

If it's 32 bits then there is no point going over 4Gb or RAM the OS won't even recognize it.

Also depends what you use the computer for as said by runswindows95

For general usage (Word processing, web browsing, email...) you don't need more than what you already have

For gaming it depends on the game but in most cases the 3Gb you have now is more than enough (in most cases any single process 32 bit process can't use more than 2Gb of memory anyways)

For other applications (CAD, photoshop, video editing...) having more ram could help

 

[ITsonic]

Is your windows XP 32 or 64 bits?

If it's 32 bits then there is no point going over 4Gb or RAM the OS won't even recognize it.

Also depends what you use the computer for as said by runswindows95

For general usage (Word processing, web browsing, email...) you don't need more than what you already have

For gaming it depends on the game but in most cases the 3Gb you have now is more than enough (in most cases any single process 32 bit process can't use more than 2Gb of memory anyways)

For other applications (CAD, photoshop, video editing...) having more ram could help

it's 32 bits the reason why i'm Asking this question is because I'm thinking about buy a new HDD and putting vista or Windows 7 64-bits on there on with XP. , I would have to Put in another GB for me to play NFS: the run if I install Windows 7 64-bits and I doubt that the game would run on XP.

 

[dalaran]

If the requirements posted on the nfs:the run website are to be trusted then you might be right, the requirements for the game indicate that windows vista or 7 is needed the only reason I can think of to do that is the lack of support for DX11 on winXP, but the game has not been released yet so it's hard to know for sure.

http://www.needforspeed.com/therun/faq#

The minimum requirements are as follows:

MINIMUM PC REQUIREMENTS:
OS: Windows Vista SP2 32-bit
DirectX: DirectX 10
Processor: 3.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Equivalent
Memory: 3 GB
Hard Drive: 18 GB
Graphics card (AMD): 512 MB RAM ATI Radeon 4870 or higher performance
Graphics card (NVIDIA): 512 MB RAM NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT or higher performance
Sound card: DirectX Compatible
Keyboard or Gamepad or Steering Wheel
DVD Rom Drive
Online: 512 KBPS or faster Internet connection

RECOMMENDED:
OS: Windows 7 SP1 64-bit
DirectX: DirectX 11
Processor: 3.0 Mhz Intel Core 2 Quad or AMD Equivalent
Memory: 4 GB
Hard Drive: 18 GB
Graphics card (AMD): 1024 MB RAM ATI Radeon 6950
Graphics card (NVIDIA): 1024 MB RAM NVIDIA GeForce GTX560
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
Keyboard or Gamepad or Steering Wheel
DVD Rom Drive
Online: 512 KBPS or faster Internet connection

From that chances are you'll need to upgrade to Windows 7. but I'd wait until the game is released to be sure so you don't upgrade for no reason.

As far as your original question is concerned, I wouldn't go above 8Gb or ram right now there's usually no need for more in most scenarios, and most of the time 4gb is sufficient, although I still recommend going for 8 Gb when budget allows for it, mostly for future proofing and because of the fact that ram is so cheap.

Keep in mind that 4Gb would be sufficient for NFS : The run if that's all you're interested in

 

[ITsonic]

If the requirements posted on the nfs:the run website are to be trusted then you might be right, the requirements for the game indicate that windows vista or 7 is needed the only reason I can think of to do that is the lack of support for DX11 on winXP, but the game has not been released yet so it's hard to know for sure.

http://www.needforspeed.com/therun/faq#

The minimum requirements are as follows:

MINIMUM PC REQUIREMENTS:
OS: Windows Vista SP2 32-bit
DirectX: DirectX 10
Processor: 3.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Equivalent
Memory: 3 GB
Hard Drive: 18 GB
Graphics card (AMD): 512 MB RAM ATI Radeon 4870 or higher performance
Graphics card (NVIDIA): 512 MB RAM NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT or higher performance
Sound card: DirectX Compatible
Keyboard or Gamepad or Steering Wheel
DVD Rom Drive
Online: 512 KBPS or faster Internet connection

RECOMMENDED:
OS: Windows 7 SP1 64-bit
DirectX: DirectX 11
Processor: 3.0 Mhz Intel Core 2 Quad or AMD Equivalent
Memory: 4 GB
Hard Drive: 18 GB
Graphics card (AMD): 1024 MB RAM ATI Radeon 6950
Graphics card (NVIDIA): 1024 MB RAM NVIDIA GeForce GTX560
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
Keyboard or Gamepad or Steering Wheel
DVD Rom Drive
Online: 512 KBPS or faster Internet connection

From that chances are you'll need to upgrade to Windows 7. but I'd wait until the game is released to be sure so you don't upgrade for no reason.

As far as your original question is concerned, I wouldn't go above 8Gb or ram right now there's usually no need for more in most scenarios, and most of the time 4gb is sufficient, although I still recommend going for 8 Gb when budget allows for it, mostly for future proofing and because of the fact that ram is so cheap.

Keep in mind that 4Gb would be sufficient for NFS : The run if that's all you're interested in

That's not all i'm interested in i'm just say that if I go with installing windows 7 64-bit I may need 4GB of ram to play the run or some other game were as vista (which has a lot of bugs in it's OS) I would still have the to install 3gb of ram.