Do i need 4GB?

Yeah i pay £45 for my 4gig and seen it as cheap luxuary (not money burnt). Plus it was nearly as cheap as the single 2 gig stick i had to get for my laptop (vista actually needs 2 gig to stop me throwing it out a window).

It is a weeney bit OS dependent though.... (i mean vista 32 on my desktop pc isnt all that bad but not much better than on my laptop which is a lot worse but come xp x64 for some reason my desktop pc is wonderful...) Strange!
 
mr_x_plosion said:
I noticed an improvement going from 2 to 4Gb, also vista manages it very well as on idle right now mines using 1.2Gb.
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See in my book, that says the you only need 2GB. Empty RAM is RAM you didn't need. I want it full all the time.
Certainly on older windows, with random memory management, you wanted large amounts of "fresh" memory there for running apps and games. But these days, windows has fairly good management and current hardware doesn't mess around overwriting and clearing RAM, it just re-vectors it (or whatever you call it) and fires the new stuff in in place of cache and other non essential stuff.

It was using UNIX that openned my eyes to the wonder of stacks of hard working RAM, but now the windows has caught up, I no longer curse it for "wasting" "my" memory.
 
Going only slightly off topic, I find this an interesting discussion from a different perspective. I am planning a new build at the end of this summer, and am considering going DDR3, thus price does become a factor.

If I go with DDR2, then I'll get 4 or 8GB and use Vista 64; however, if I go with DDR3, then do I get 2GB, which I consider affordable, but I'll be stuck with Vista 32, or do I splash out on 4GB with Vista 64 (expensive and hard to justify!)? Right now, I'm thinking 2GB DDR3 with Vista 32, then get another 2GB (or 4GB) when prices drop next year and move to 64-bit.
 
no guarantee prices of ddr3 will drop anywhere near ddr2 prices though, ddr1 never got even close to this low.

unless you passionately want a mobo thats ddr3 only I really don't se any "upgrade" by going for ddr3 over ddr2, its certainly very low down the bang for buck upgrade league.
 
thegoonden said:
There is much wisdom on this thread.
However I feel compelled to add a note for the benefit of those who say that there is no point running a 32bit OS with 4GB of RAM......
The limit is not 2GB y'know. My vista 32 sees 3.6 on one of my machines and 3.4 or 3.5 on the other, the lowest I've personally seen reported is 3.2GB, you're only losing a few hundred MB.
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The limit is 2GB for standard applications as they are only written to use that much, you can use the /3gb boot.ini switch to enable an extra 1GB for those applications that are written to use that extra 1GB, which aren't many. The realistic limit is still only 2GB, and that's got nothing to do with the OS version, it's all to do with the limitation of a 32-bit OS. Your 3.6GB etc is how much memory is available after the GFX memory is referenced or due to a limit in your chipset.
 
asim18 said:
ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Fig 1: http://a-s-i-m.co.uk/other/ram2.jpg
  • Photoshop with 5 Raw 10megapixel images loaded
  • Expression Web with my site loaded
  • TWO 1080p HD movies running
  • Several internet explorers with various websites
  • Several Office 2007 documents open
  • 2 MSN messengers/kaspersky/ac3filter/ffdshow/
  • other small stuff
ALL without ANY lag whatsoever switching between any app.
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That's not exactly a lot of intsensive stuff going on there. 5 10PM images is nothing... try opening that ontop of a few 500mb PSD's and then see how your system fares....
 
TheVoice said:
2GB will likely do you fine. I went from 2GB to 4GB a little while ago...

and there was no difference whatsoever as far as normal Windows usage is concerned.
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same here
i have sold 2gb as i dont see any performance increase in any app i use except crysis an possibly a little slower when copying dvd on the flybut for the price of ram atm you may as well future proof your rig

it cant hurt and its only a cheap upgrade
 
Samione said:
That's not exactly a lot of intsensive stuff going on there. 5 10PM images is nothing... try opening that ontop of a few 500mb PSD's and then see how your system fares....
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Erm.. If you read the OP, he says he's only gonna use it for web, emails, office, and media center.

I was just proving a point, that he'll be able to do those things fantastically with 2gb of ram.
 
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asim18 said:
ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Fig 1: http://a-s-i-m.co.uk/other/ram2.jpg
  • Photoshop with 5 Raw 10megapixel images loaded
  • Expression Web with my site loaded
  • TWO 1080p HD movies running
  • Several internet explorers with various websites
  • Several Office 2007 documents open
  • 2 MSN messengers/kaspersky/ac3filter/ffdshow/
  • other small stuff
ALL without ANY lag whatsoever switching between any app.
Click to expand...

depends if you use your page file though, or delete and shift it all to ram makes things nice and snappy.








Also thats only 12 mins into the game, after a while (with large address aware header) supcom can get past 3gb on its own.
 
£70 or thereabouts home premium OEM.

I just question the point of buying RAM you can't ever possibly use no matter how hard you try, baffles me the amount of people with 4GB and 32bit.
 
matt100 said:
£70 or thereabouts home premium OEM.

I just question the point of buying RAM you can't ever possibly use no matter how hard you try, baffles me the amount of people with 4GB and 32bit.
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You're most probably only not using about 1GB of that though. I'm getting 4GB cause I plan to upgrade to 64bit in the future.
 
Strife212 said:
It costs nothing, you can activate the 64 bit version with your current 32 bit key legitimately, you just need to get a 64 bit disk somehow.
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indeed. just download it off the internet. the actual act of downloading the iso is a little naughty but **** it. the most important thing is that you have a legit key.
 
Janesy B said:
if you have 4x1gb you will stress out the Northbridge. you wont need more than 2gb for the time being. i can do everything on 2gb and thats on Vista ultimate.
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yeh my NB can't cope too well with 4x1gb (1.5v 33c)...see sig :rolleyes:

4gb is great on Vista, 8gb even better ...but unless you try it you'll never realise.
 
2Gb -> 4Gb actually slows down processor intensive applications in Vista 64, the proper improvement is from 2Gb -> 8Gb or more.
 
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