Upgrading to 8Gb RAM

[carol_s]

I'm thinking about upgrading my memory to 8Gb (from 4Gb).

I have two choices available, both from Corsair. One set has memory timings of 5-5-5-15 and the other 5-5-5-18 and I could save myself around £45 (~$90) by going for the slightly slower timings.

Would I see much difference in performance by going for the slightly slower chips???

 

[croc]

A few more details about your system might help... OS? MB? GPU's? etc...

Also what are your needs?

 

[carol_s]

Gigabyte DQ6 mobo
Windows XP x64 (going to Vista 64 as soon as Gretag-Macbeth release drivers so I can profile my monitor)
Graphics card is a GeForce 7600GT

 

[Driiper]

What do you need 8gb ram for ? you can drive a computer and do almost everything with 2gb ........ if your not making a game like World of warcraft


The only thing that will go faster is your startup (maybe 2 seconds faster)

if you having windows vista 32 bit i dont think you even can have more than 4 gig. LOL no use for 8 gig just a waste of money

 

[ARM]

What do you need 8gb ram for ? you can drive a computer and do almost everything with 2gb ........ if your not making a game like World of warcraft


The only thing that will go faster is your startup (maybe 2 seconds faster)

if you having windows vista 32 bit i dont think you even can have more than 4 gig. LOL no use for 8 gig just a waste of money

Why don't you read his post?


@op: apparently, the end timing won't affect performance. You could try lowering it if you wanted to though.

Please post why you need 8 gigs of ram and system specs.

 

[Driiper]

Well ok here is what you need minimum to be able to use all of the 8gig that you want


Processor: Quad Extreme
OS : Win Xp/vista (64bit)
Graphic : Geforce 8800 GTX (SLI).


Well as you know crysis are soon realeasing. heres the specs to one of the worlds most detailed games

Minimum Requirements:

* CPU: Athlon 64 3000+/Intel 2.8ghz
* Graphics: Nvidia 6600/X800GTO (SM 2.0)
* RAM: 768Mb/1Gb on Windows Vista
* HDD: 6GB
* Internet: 256k+
* Optical Drive: DVD
* Software: DX9.0c with Windows XP

Recommended Requirements:

* CPU: Dual-core CPU (Athlon X2/Pentium D)
* Graphics: Nvidia 7800GTX/ATI X1800XT (SM 3.0) or DX10 equivalent
* RAM: 1.5Gb
* HDD: 6GB
* Internet: 512k+ (128k+ upstream)
* Optical Drive: DVD
* Software: DX10 with Windows Vista

LOOK!!! YOU DONT EVEN NEED 2GIG RAM TO DRIVE IT ON MAX!.. you should rather buy a new graphic card (Recommending ATI 2600 XT 512mb in crossfire)

 

[Dade_0182]

What do you want to do with this rig that takes that much ram. I can't for the life of me see why someone would even get 4GB. 2GB is just fine. I can't even notice a difference between my 1GB and 2GB and my 3Dmark scores back me up...

 

[carol_s]

I'm a photographer using Photoshop CS3 and the complete Adobe Creative Suite.

Processing Gb's of images at a time - that is why I need as much RAM as possible.

PS

This is a work machine - I don't play games on it. Games might not require 8Gb of RAM, my system and the things I am doing will definitely benefit from 8Gb of RAM - likewise I do not need a really high end graphics card for 2D applications, the 7600GT works fine in these applications.

Not everybody who posts here is a games nut you know

 

[Driiper]

THERE IS NO DIFFRENCE YET... GAMES OR PROGRAMS ISINT THAT DETAILED YET..

sorry caps


In maybe 1 to 2 years you will need 2 gig ram

 

[Driiper]

im sorry carol but it wont make a diffrence... then you have to buy new processor and mainboard to

 

[Surferosa]

Deleted.

 

[carol_s]

THERE IS NO DIFFRENCE YET... GAMES OR PROGRAMS ISINT THAT DETAILED YET..

sorry caps


In maybe 1 to 2 years you will need 2 gig ram

Sorry - but what you are saying is absolute poppycock. Try running Photoshop/ACR on a folder of 1000 raw image files and watch your system crawl - put in 4Gb and watch it fly. Put in 8Gb and the speed increase should be where I can do things in real time.

 

[carol_s]

Would I see much difference in performance by going for the slightly slower chips???

Really depends on everything else- whats your existing ram?

4Gb

Do you overclock?

No, system stability is more important to me (running Intel Core 2 Duo E6770)

What OS are you using?

At the moment Windows XP x64 Pro

And, dont know how else to put this, but wtf do you need 8gb for???

See other replies

 

[Ycon]

GeIL has started to offer Quad Kits (4 DIMMs rather than 2) and they are also available in 8 GB Kits and arent priced that high.
You might want to take a look at these.

 

[pdhcentral]

I think that just having the extra RAM will make the difference, no matter how quick it is. Memory speed won't affect you that much after your upgrade to 8GB. Just make sure your board/cpu, etc, accept that and run fine afterwards.

I would also see if anyone could lend you some of the higher timings you require, so you can benchmark it and see any difference......could be interesting.....

 

[chowner]

Why don't you purchase an 8 core Mac Pro with 16 gigs of ram?

 

[carol_s]

Why don't you purchase an 8 core Mac Pro with 16 gigs of ram?

Because I would then have to spend £x,000 more to change all my business software - so the total cost could easily run to £4K or £5K instead of £350 - plus I would still have to run a PC for all the programs I use which do not have Mac versions.

 

[chowner]

Why don't you purchase an 8 core Mac Pro with 16 gigs of ram?

Because I would then have to spend �x,000 more to change all my business software - so the total cost could easily run to �4K or �5K instead of �350 - plus I would still have to run a PC for all the programs I use which do not have Mac versions.

but the Apple will just work!!!!!

 

[RubberCement]

I'm not sure why no one will answer your straightforward question. Obviously, you don't want to buy a new rig ("Buy a Mac Pro?" :roll: )

I don't think you will see a noticeable difference with those timings you listed; I'd save the money. Even the change from 4-4-4 to 5-5-5 speed is only worth a few percentage points in benchmarks. However, you'll see a huge performance increase if you no longer have to hit the pagefile when manipulating your images, so the speed of the memory is largely insignificant in comparison (are you really manipulating gigapixel images? Wow!).

 

[systemlord]

Why don't you purchase an 8 core Mac Pro with 16 gigs of ram?

Would you please reread the post! Be realistic if she had the money to buy an ultra expensive PC with 8 core's 16gig's of ram do you think she would even bother to post here? Get a brain, but then you'd have to use it.

 

[pdhcentral]

Why don't you purchase an 8 core Mac Pro with 16 gigs of ram?

Because I would then have to spend �x,000 more to change all my business software - so the total cost could easily run to �4K or �5K instead of �350 - plus I would still have to run a PC for all the programs I use which do not have Mac versions.

but the Apple will just work!!!!!

So true......... :lol:

 

[locust]

just wondering what everyone is whining about. Games are not everything and there are applications out there that demand more ram.
Question is simple:

Would I see much difference in performance by going for the slightly slower chips???

According to me you will not see much difference with the slightly lower timings. I'm no expert in photoshop and your applications but I think latencies will not influence loading of your big files much. If you have enough ram (not sure if you have enough with 8Gb though), other factors will determine your efficiency more. And if 8 Gb doesn't suffice i dount you will see much difference in timings either.

 

[apt403]

This is OT as hell, but which monitor calibrator are you using? I've been trying to decide on one for a couple days now...

 

[croc]

I'd say that you'd be good to go with those timings, given what you want to do. You could save a bit more, with even lower timings.... A few ms in loading ram will be negligible.

 

[fred_likes_fish]

I don't think the slower timing will make much of a difference. Go with the cheaper ones.