What is better, RAM 4gb in dual channel or 5gb?

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djstone86

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Feb 17, 2007
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What is the better configuration to have I have a system with GB but an extra GB laying around I'm using windows xp 32bit with an on-board video adapter (my 7600gt) and a 4600+. I'm running windows 7 64bit. What is the better configuration to use?
 
Uh, I have 8Gb of RAM installed and right now my RAM usage is 73%. BS that you don't need more than 4Gb of RAM.

Then again, I have a 2Gb RAM drive for downloading files and such. If you multi-task like crazy, then consider 5Gb of RAM. If you want performance, stick with dual channel.
 

Which? XP-32 or Win7-64?
32 bit anything cannot use the whole 4 GB anyway, so adding another GB is useless. And in 64 bit, the performance gain with 4 GB dual channel is better than an extra 1 GB even if you do multitask.
 


Windows 7 might use caching a bit better, but unless you make a RAM drive to realize the speed of the RAM, in general, things may be slightly slower.

Can someone else comment?
 
what do you mean you have 2gb RAM drive for downloading files? You allocated 2GB of your RAM as some type of SSD device? What are you doing that you use over 4gb of RAM, I have never heard of anyone myself that has needed anywhere close to 8gb. I know some people do but I have never heard of a specific instance. Only thing I could think is running Photoshop CS4, encoding multiple videos, playing Crysis and running a virtual OS at the same time (or something similar). Of course, I don't know the exact RAM requirements for those programs so that could possibly go over 8gb, who knows?
 



running what programs are you using 5.87 gigs of ram??

and why would you download to a ram drive, is your download speed faster then your hdd can handle??
 


Are you running xp 32 or win7 64

32 bit os can't see 5gig of ram anyway so that's a mote point.

As to win7 depends an what you are doing. If you are using 4 gig of ram or less it would be better to have dual to double the bandwidth fo the ram. If you actually use more than four then it would be better to lose the dual channel to reduce swapping.


Just my opinion but, few people use more than 4gig of ram and those that do don't need to ask.
 



I once had 1 Excel file opened and it took 2G of RAM including undo cache. But it's highly unlikely you'll ever need more than 4G.
 
that must have been one huge excel file to use 2gb of RAM. I just added the last 3 years of excel files together to see how much space they use... only just got to 2gb combined
 
Okay people, unless you are running a Version of Windows server, a 32 bit OS can only use 4 gig of ram. And that includes ALL the memory in your system. If you have a video card with 512meg of memory, a normal Windows PC with 4 gig of RAM installed will only be able to make use of about 3.2 gig of RAM. That is it. No more. No way. No how.
If you are running XP, you don't need anymore memory. If you think you do need more though, you will have to install a 64 bit OS.
 


are you saying that windows server can use more than 4 gig of ram?
 


Downloaded a RAM drive utility from dataram.com. Freeware that allows for up to a 4Gb RAM drive.

I download to the RAM drive because there is no use for me to download files to the HDD if I'm gonna delete them after I use them (think .exe's, documents, etc.) I could set it up even for browser caching to increase privacy, but I don't.

At this moment, I have a couple dozen tabs open in Google Chrome. I also have WMP running, along with AIM and sometimes AIM video messaging. I also play an online game that uses a few hundred meg's. And, I even have Mozilla Firefox open for logging into some different accounts. Oh, and Eclipse is running.

Current RAM usage: 5.6Gb - 2Gb RAM Drive = 3.6Gb used. If I wanted to launch a game, I don't need to shut my apps down; I could just minimize them.

EDIT: I forgot: Vista also caches more based on RAM usage (there was a THG article).

EDIT II: I also have the Sidebar app open with 4 gadgets.

EDIT III: I just remembered that there was this one file that was 1.3 Gb on the RAM drive. I copied it to my HDD and it copied at about 200Mb/s+ according to Vista. I suspect that the HDD had to do very few head positionings to write it to disk, whereas downloading such a big file straight to the HDD would have required many head positionings (time to download 'cause I dl at ~150kb/s)
 

Although 32bit has 4gb barrier yet some pc's with proper version of windows can use upto 64GB ram by enabling PAE.
 
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